Mattia Boccuti is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian. His primary research interests focus on Italian literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in particular Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Baldassar Castiglione. He is also interested in questions related to ecocriticism in medieval Italian literature, early twentieth-century cinematic representations of Dante’s Commedia, Italian Neorealism, second language acquisition, and digital humanities. He has published articles on Dante’s Commedia, Petrarch’s Penitential Psalms, and Roberto Rossellini’s Neorealist classic Paisà. His most recent publication is an environmental reading of the Commedia, in which he explores the relation between human and nonhuman forms of life in Dante’s masterpiece.
Boccuti has previously taught courses of Italian literature, language, and culture at the University of Notre Dame, where he was the recipient of a teaching award for his contribution to undergraduate education. At Mount Holyoke, he teaches courses of Italian language and literature. Mattia believes that building a collaborative, engaging, respectful, and multimodal learning environment is fundamental to helping students develop both socially and intellectually. His teaching is informed by a strong interdisciplinary ethos. His goal is to enhance students’ communicative competencies and critical thinking by incorporating various areas of inquiry in his courses, such as art history, geography, codicology, political science, film studies, and digital technologies.