Zoe Langer

Zoe Langer is a PhD candidate in Italian Studies at Brown University.  She is currently completing her dissertation entitled “Making a Modern Classic: Authoring Dante’s Commedia in Print in the Early Modern Period.” Drawing on the disciplines of book history, visual studies, and reception theory, her dissertation shows how the visual presentation of the poem in printed editions yields new insights into Dante’s position as an author and the history of reading the Commedia from 1500 to 1760.  Zoe completed her BA in Art History at the University of California, Berkeley and received her MPhil in Literature at the University of Cambridge. She has been awarded fellowships from the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, the Bibliographic Society of America, the John Hay Library at Brown, and the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. While at MAP Zoe will examine how the culture of the Medici court shaped the illustration and material support of the poem, including frontispieces, maps, and portraits. She is also interested in the role that Medici patrons, such as Ferdinando I and Leopoldo de’ Medici,  played in promoting Dante’s works in Florentine Academies and in establishing the Commedia as a text of linguistic, poetic, and scientific authority in the early modern period.