Erminia Ardissino is Professor emerita of Italian Literature at the Università di Torino. She received her MA in romance languages at the University of Georgia in Athens, a PhD at Yale University, and a doctorate at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. She has also taught as visiting professor in several universities across Europe and North and South America.
Dr. Ardissino’s research is focused on Italian literature, with a special focus on the relationship between the history of ideas and religious experiences. In particular she has gained a special expertise on the early modern biblical literature and women’s writing. Among her works, she has published two volumes on Torquato Tasso, L’aspra tragedia:Poesia e sacro in Torquato Tasso (1996) and Tasso, Plotino, Ficino: In margine a un postillato (2003); two on Dante, Tempo storico e tempo liturgico nella “Commedia” di Dante (2009; L’umana ‘Commedia’ di Dante (2016); a volume on Baroque sacred oratory, Il Barocco e il sacro: La predicazione del teatino Paolo Aresi tra letteratura, immagini e scienza (2001); one on Galileo, Galileo, La scrittura dell’esperienza: Saggio sulle lettere (2010); a monograph on women reading the Bible in Renaissance Italy, Donne interpreti della Bibbia nell’Italia della prima età moderna: Riscritture e comunità ermeneutiche (2020), and one on Poesia in forma di preghiera, Rivelazioni dell’essere da Francesco d’Assisi ad Alda Merini (2023).
She has received several fellowships and grants throughout her career, including the Renaissance Society of America Fellowship, the Italian Academy Fellowship for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, the Le Studium-Institut Fellowship for Advanced Studies Orléans (FR), and she has been Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Chicago.