Simona Lorenzini

Simona Lorenzini's picture
Senior Lector I
Address: 
320 York, Rm 523, New Haven, CT 06520-8311
(203) 432-7249

Simona Lorenzini graduated, cum laude, from the University of Pisa in 2003 with a thesis in Modern Italian Literature. She received a Ph.D. in “Humanist and Renaissance Civilization” from the “Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento” (Florence, 2008), with a dissertation on the Latin bucolic poetry of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio and its connections with the classical and medieval pastoral tradition. These researches culminated in a book published in 2011: La corrispondenza bucolica tra Giovanni Boccaccio e Checco di Meletto Rossi e L’egloga di Giovanni del Virgilio ad Albertino Mussato. After moving to the USA in 2009, Simona completed her PhD in Italian and Renaissance Studies at Yale University with a dissertation – “Questioning the Utopian Myth in Renaissance Pastoral Drama: From Politian to Guarini” – written under the direction of Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta (May 23, 2016). Simona has published on Boccaccio and Medieval literature, on Isabella Andreini, on contemporary Italian experimental writings, and on language pedagogy. She is currently co-editing, with Deborah Pellegrino, the volume Women’s Agency and Self-fashioning in Early Modern Tuscany (1300-1600) (Viella Kent State University European Studies Series).

 

Ofice Hours: Thursdays, 2-4pm: https://yale.zoom.us/j/95602488060) and by appointment

Courses

ITAL 204: The Making of Italian Urban Landscape: From the 'borgo medievale' to the 'città ideale'

What is a city? What a city can tell us about human life? How can we position ourselves in a city? How can cities bridge social, political, cultural differences to become more inclusive? How our perception of the urban landscape has changed during the centuries? This course explores the changing of Italian urban landscape from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance from a multidisciplinary and comparative perspective, from art to economics, from literature to urban design. We go through some discourses and representations of the city; maps, views, travel and narrative literature, tourist guides, films. These sources provide different ways to tell of the experience of the Italian urban environment, the evolutions of Italian towns, the changes in size and organization, the emergence of new spaces and new functions, as well as of new challenges (public health, demographic crisis, destructions, sacks, etc.). By considering the city as both a physical and conceptual space, we eventually relate the material covered in class with the world outside: What is an ideal city? What is an invisible city? What is our relationship with real cities?  The course is conducted in Italian.
Prerequisite: ITAL 140
 
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: MW 2:30-3:45p.m.