Giacomo Berchi, Ph.D. Student

He is a 7th year PhD candidate in Italian Studies and Early Modern Studies.

In 2022/23 he has been a visiting researcher at CHAM – Center for the Humanities of Nova University in Lisbon, Portugal, where he also taught Italian Literature at the Faculty of Letters of the Lisbon University.

His main interest is the relationship between literature and cosmology in the Early Modern period and beyond. His doctoral thesis focuses on the epic scene of the sea tempest as a representation of cosmic chaos in the work of Dante Alighieri, Luiz Vaz de Camões, Torquato Tasso, and John Milton. He is also interested in theories and practices of world literature.

He published articles in Italian, English and Portuguese, on Giorgio Orelli, Dante, Giacomo Leopardi, and Haroldo de Campos. His current article projects focus on Dante, Milton, Leopardi, Camões, and Auerbach’s idea of Philology of World Literature. Since Spring 2022, he collaborates with the Italian cultural journal “Prometeo” (Mondadori), with reviews and articles.

He wrote the introduction to the Paradiso entitled “Dante su Marte” for the Oscar Draghi Mondadori, 2021.

He is part of the Yale Graduate Crew of which he has been a captain in season 2019/20