Francesca Leonardi, Ph.D. Student
Francesca Leonardi received a degree in Italian Studies from the Università degli Studi di Roma Tre in 2016, with a thesis on the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827). She worked as a teacher of Italian literature at a high school in Orvieto (Italy) from 2017 to 2019. In May 2021, Francesca earned her M.A. in Italian Studies from the University of Notre Dame (IN) with a thesis on the concept of aesthetics in the works of Giacomo Leopardi, entitled “The Aesthetics of Ugliness: body, disease and Materialism”.
She is currently a Ph.D. student in Italian and Early Modern Studies at Yale University. Her research focuses on autobiographism and the construction of the literary self in relation to the concepts of self-fashioning and melancholy.
Publications:
“Nel Corpo di Tasso: Tra Malattia e Malnconia”, Le Muse di Ippocrate. Studi d’Intersezione tra letteratura, scienza e medicina. (2021): 49-64.
“L’immagine mancante di Jacopo: incisioni, disegni e ritratti di Ugo Foscolo”, Scaffale Aperto. Rivista di Italianistica, 8 (2017): 53-88.