Michele Rossi

Michele Rossi earned a Dottorato di ricerca in Italianistica e Filologia classico-medievale from Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice (2007) and a Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of Pennsylvania (2012).

Dr. Rossi’s research interests include medieval and Renaissance Italian literature and culture, with a special focus on Petrarch and humanist pedagogy, and interdisciplinary relations between literature, cinema, music, dance, and art. He has published articles and reviews in journals such as Studi petrarcheschi, Lettere italiane, Petrarchesca, and Modern Language Review. His first book, titled Pedagogia e corte nel Rinascimento italiano ed europeo (Pedagogy and Courtly Life in the Italian and European Renaissance), appeared in 2016 for the Italian publisher Marsilio. In May 2018, he has published the facsimile edition of Francesco Filelfo’s commentary upon Petrarch’s Canzoniere, for which he wrote an introductory essay, prepared the indices of names and classical sources, and provided an extensive bibliography. In April 2021, invited by the Ente Nazionale Francesco Petrarca, he has delivered a Lectura Petrarce at the Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padua. 

Dr. Rossi has experience in teaching Italian language, from elementary to advanced level, as well as Italian literature, culture, and cinema. He has designed and taught a variety of courses on different subjects: Dante’s Divine Comedy, Renaissance Italian Literature and Culture (“All in the Family: educazione, famiglia e politica nel Rinascimento italiano”; “The Skin I Live In: rappresentazioni del corpo nel Rinascimento italiano tra letteratura, arte e scienza”; “Growing up in the Italian Renaissance: Family, School, Sport”), Italian American mafia movies (“Italian American Organized Crime in Film and Society”, co-taught with Criminology, Fall 2019). In Fall 2022 he teaches Italian 140 (“Italian Language & Culture for Study Abroad”), and two sections of Italian 2.

In 2014 and 2015, Dr. Rossi has been the co-director of the Penn State Study Abroad Program in Reggio Calabria, Italy. He has been a member of the Italian Undergraduate Committee, the Teaching Faculty Promotion Committee, and the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee.

Recent Publications

• Michele Rossi, “«Malenconico, extenuato e pallido»: divagazioni su Filelfo, Petrarca e la malinconia.” Petrarchesca, X (2022): 49-79.

• Michele Rossi, “«Mal pratico poeta»: il Petrarca di Filelfo.” Atti e memorie dell’Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, vol. CXXXII (2020-2021), part III: 135-161.

• Michele Rossi, “«Non volli seguire la oppinione d’ignoranti»: Francesco Filelfo e l’esegesi petrarchesca alla corte milanese,” in L’esegesi petrarchesca e la formazione di comunità culturali, Berlin, 2022: 19-36.

• Michele Rossi, “Ipotesi per il ms. Correr 1494”. Studi petrarcheschi, XXXI (2018 but 2020): 1-42.

Books

• Francesco Filelfo, Commento a Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 1-136. Edizione anastatica dell’incunabolo Bologna, Annibale Malpigli, 1476, con introduzione e indici di Michele Rossi, Ente Nazionale Francesco Petrarca, Collana Commenti antichi dei Rerum vulgarium fragmenta e dei Triumphi, Treviso, Antilia, 2018.

• Michele Rossi, Pedagogia e corte nel Rinascimento italiano ed europeo, Venezia, Marsilio, 2016.