Valeria Finucci, Professor of Italian Studies and Theater Studies

Valeria Finucci

Valeria Finucci received a "Laurea" summa cum laude from the University of Rome and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She taught at Smith College and Gonzaga University before coming to Duke with stints at Penn and Johns Hopkins after. Her main interests are Renaissance literature and culture, theater, women's work, early modern medicine and pharmacy, psychoanalysis, and genre studies. And she loves everything connected to Venice. She has written on femininity and power in Renaissance discourses in The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto (Stanford, 1992) and on issues of masculinity and paternity in The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance (Duke, 2003). She is the editor of Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso (Duke, 1999); and co-editor of Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature (Princeton, 1994) and of Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History (Duke, 2001). Building on her interest in genre and gender study, she has edited a 16th century female verse epic, Moderata Fonte's Tredici canti del Floridoro (Mucchi, 1995); now in English too as Floridoro, a Chivalric Romance (U. of Chicago P., 2006); has brought out the manuscript of the only female prose romance of the Italian Renaissance, Giulia Bigolina's Urania (Bulzoni, 2002), which she then translated into English and published as Urania, a Romance (U of Chicago P, 2005); and has worked on the genre of early modern female tragedy with her edition of Valeria Miani's Celinda, a Tragedy, the first tragedy by a woman writer in Italian (Toronto: CMRS, 2010). She is co-editor of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies and has edited two special issues of the journal: In the Footsteps of Petrarch (Fall 2005) and Mapping the Mediterranean (Winter 2007), as well as yearly open topic issues since 2005. Petrarch is also the subject of her collection, Petrarca: Canoni, Esemplarità (Bulzoni, 2006). Recently, her love of Venetian costume books and university students' alba amicorum has resulted in a co-edited book in English and Italian, Mores Italiae: Costume and Life in the Renaissance // Costumi e scene di vita del Rinascimento (Biblos, 2007). She is currently the director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Office Location:  219E Languages Building
Office Phone:  +1 919-660-3119, +1 919-660-3100
Email Address: send me a message

Teaching (Fall 2012):

Office Hours:

Wed. 3:00-4:15 and by appointment.
Education:

PhD in Comparative LiteratureUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign1983
MA in Comparative LiteratureUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign1977
Advanced CertificateMount Hoyoke College1976
Laurea in Modern Languages and Literature, summa cum laude,University of Rome1974
Specialties:

Italian
Early Modern
Gender Studies, Feminism, Women Studies, Queer Studies
Comparative Studies: Translation, Travel Narratives, Trans-Culturality
Psychoanalysis, Psychology
Performance Studies
Research Interests:

Renaissance theater, epic, romance, and treatise; women writers, medical and literary understandings of the body, Venetian culture, Renaissance fashion, medicine in early modern Italy, New World's pharmacy, and psychoanalysis.

Areas of Interest:

Renaissance literature (theater, epic, romance, novella, treatise)
Venetian Culture and Early Modern University Life
Fashion and Self-Representation in the Renaissance
Women's Studies
Cultural and Material Studies
Early Modern Medical and Pharmaceutical Culture
Psychoanalisis

Current Ph.D. Students  

Representative Publications

  1. V. Finucci, Celinda, A Tragedy by Valeria Miani (2010), pp. 415pp, Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (Bilingual edition.)
  2. V. Finucci and M. Rippa Bonati, eds, Mores Italiae: Costume and Life in the Renaissance // Costumi e scene di vita del Rinascimento (Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 457) (2007), Bilingual Edition (English/Italian). Padua: Biblos: 232pp
  3. V. Finucci, ed, Mapping the Mediterranean, A Special Issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 37 no. 1 (Winter 2007)
  4. V. Finucci, ed, Floridoro, a Chivalric Romance by Moderata Fonte (2006), University of Chicago Press: 493pp
  5. V. Finucci, ed, Petrarca, canoni, esemplarità (2006), Rome: Bulzoni Editore: 361pp
  6. V. Finucci, ed and trans, Urania by Giulia Bigolina (2005), University of Chicago Press: 192pp
  7. V. Finucci, ed, In the Footsteps of Petrarch: Literature, Art, Music, Culture, A Special Issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 35 no. 3 (Fall 2005)
  8. V. Finucci, The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance (2003), Duke University Press: 321pp
  9. V. Finucci, ed, Urania di Giulia Bigolina (ca. 1554) (2002), Rome: Bulzoni Editore: 198pp
  10. V. Finucci and K. Brownlee, eds, Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity to Early Modern Europe (2001), Duke University Press: 327pp
  11. V. Finucci, ed, Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso (1999), Duke University Press: 328pp
  12. V. Finucci, ed, Tredici canti del Floridoro di Moderata Fonte (1581) (1995), Modena: Mucchi: 232pp
  13. V. Finucci and R. Schwartz, eds, Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature (1994), Princeton University Press: 277pp
  14. V. Finucci, The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto (1992), Stanford University Press: 329pp
Conferences Organized