Originally from São Paulo, Giovanna is a PhD student in Italian Studies. Before joining Yale, Giovanna received her bachelor’s in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Studies (110 cum laude) from the Università di Padova. Her degree was fully funded by the Padua International Excellence Scholarship, and her thesis investigated the political theology of Dante Alighieri’s and John Milton’s major works and treatises. She also studied Italian Literature at the University of St Andrews on an Erasmus+ exchange (2022-23).
At the University of Oxford, Giovanna pursued an MSt in Modern Languages (Italian and Portuguese). She was awarded the 2025 Senior Paget Toynbee Prize for her essay ‘The angelic trasvolar in Dante’s candid rose.’ Her master’s thesis explored the duality of corporeal performances in Dante’s Inferno XXIII and Gil Vicente’s Farsa de Inês Pereira.
Giovanna’s work focuses on reshaping modern readings of Dante’s Commedia by drawing on cross-cultural, geographical, and chronological convergences. She is currently interested in investigating movements, postures, and affects in the Commedia and exploring its resonances with Portuguese and English medieval and early modern texts. As well as medieval literature, Giovanna is interested in Italian postcolonial cultural production and has written about the representation of issues of identity and gender in the works of second-generation African-Italian authors.
At Yale, she is looking forward to further developing her transnational and interdisciplinary approach to Italian literature.