French & Italian

CONTENTS

Department welcomes three new faculty

Wayne Storey

Wayne Storey joins us from Fordham University, where he was director of the Center for Medieval Studies (1993-98) and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences advisor for prestigious fellowships and grants (1995-2000). He earned his MA from Brown University and a PhD from Columbia. Before arriving at Fordham, Storey began his career at the University of Virginia. Currently he is vice president of the Dante Society of America, a member of the editorial board for Dante Studies, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for Textual Scholarship.

Storey's principal research activities concern 13th- and 14th-century manuscripts and textual editing. Along with co-editors Furio Brugnolo and Stefano Zamponi, he is preparing the commentary and edition of Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Vaticano Latino 3195) for the seventh centenary of Petrarch's birth (2004). Building on his work on the applications of material philology in early Italian lyric (Transcription and Visual Poetics, 1993), he is writing a study of the develoment and cultural influence of the anthology in medieval and humanist Italy (tentatively titled Remembering and Rewriting Literary Heritage: Operational Strategies and Cultural Roles in Medieval Italian Anthologies). He is also revising a book on material influences and sources for the last six canti of the Purgatorio (The Materials of Earthly Paradise). His current editorial project is a collection of essays from the first international conference of the Dante Society of America, Dante2000: Methods and Themes for the Next Millenium, which (fingers crossed and arms twisted) should appear in early 2002.

Away from his desk, Storey's principal activities include shooting pool with his son, Pete, riding motorcycles, hiking, and rummaging through antique shops. A good vacation usually includes a view of the Arno and three solid weeks among the manuscripts at the Laurenziana or the BNCF.

Rebecca Wilkin

Born in the heart of Ohio Amish country to a French professor and a high school teacher of French, Rebecca Wilkin has had a lifelong involvement with France and French since she attended parochial school in Paris at the age of five. Thanks to the table française at the College of Wooster, where she enjoyed crawling under the table and tickling students' feet, and later, to high school French class with Mme Mathys, Wilkin did not forget her French when her family returned to Ohio

She did her undergraduate work at Brown University, where she studied with Lewis Seifert and started down the path to become a dix-septiémiste. Wilkin studied with Pierre Ronzeaud while in Aix-en-Provence with Wellesley College during her junior year, wrote a senior thesis on the libertine poet Théophile de Viau, and graduated from Brown with honors and a prize as the best French major in 1994. She began graduate work that fall with Domna Stanton at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In addition to coursework and teaching, she wrote two articles on French missionaries' encounters with Amerindians in Québec. In 1997-98, Wilkin carried out the research for her dissertation, Feminizing Imagination in France, 1563-1678, in Aix-en-Provence thanks to a Chateaubriand fellowship. While giving her access to the impressive fonds Baumier at the Bibliothèque Méjanes, Wilkin's return to Aix also afforded her the chance to reunite with Cédric Picard. They married at the town hall of Aix-en-Provence on a beautiful Saturday morning in August 1998. Wilkin defended her dissertation in August 2000, just two weeks before joining the congenial faculty of the Department of French and Italian at Indiana University. She obtained her PhD in December 2000.

Wilkin is thrilled to be at IU. To the department, she brings a strong feminist perspective, a fascination for the history of ideas, and expertise in 17th-century French literature, philosophy, and medical discourse. She is currently preparing an article on the idea of the fetus in Descartes's philosophy and will soon begin revising the dissertation for publication. To her students, she brings a deep commitment to communicating the relevance of literature through courses that address literacy, censorship, and intellectual property. As the director of the French House, she can be found every Thursday evening at French Table, (where, rest assured, she refrains from crawling under the table). When not organizing French House activities, writing, reading, teaching, or grading, Wilkin enjoys hosting wine tastings with Picard, tromping around Lake Griffy, swimming at the Royer, and, once in a blue moon, quilting.

Massimo Scalabrini

Massimo Scalabrini joined the department in August 2000 as an assistant professor of Italian literature. He received a doctorate in literature from the Università di Bologna in 1990 and a PhD from Yale University in 1998. He is working on a book on Teofilo Folengo and the macaronic tradition.

Scalabrini has published several articles on the Italian Renaissance. Among his most recent publications are two essays on the macaronic and picaresque tradition ("Quaderni folenghiani," 1998, and "Rivista di letteratura italiana," 2000) and one essay on the question of humanism and anti-humanism in 16th-century Italy ("Schede umanistiche," 1999). Previously he was a lecturer in Italian at Princeton University and an assistant professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. His interests include Renaissance and early modern literature and culture, lyric poetry, heroic and mock-heroic poetry, comic literature, and humanism.

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Last updated: October 3, 2001
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