Maria Esposito Frank

Education

PhD, Harvard University

MA, Harvard University

Laurea, University “Orientale” in Naples, Italy

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Maria Esposito Frank is a Professor of Italian and Renaissance Studies. She teaches courses in Italian language and culture, the Divine Comedy, Renaissance Italy, Women in Early Modern Europe, 20th-century Italian Poetry, Death in Literature. She also designs and conducts study-trips to Italy for U of H students. Her research interests are in the fields of Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, Women’s Studies, Theories and Practices of Translation, and Poetry.

Her works, published in Europe and North America, include two books and nine articles:

• “The Historical Background of Decameron I, 2: Abraham’s decision to go to Rome” – Studi sul Boccaccio, vol. 51 (2023)
• “Alfonso Gatto” invited essay in The Literary Encyclopedia (2021)
• “Lost in Translation, Found in Translations” in From the Age of Print to the Digital Era (2017)
• The Translator as Mediator of Cultures (co-editor, Amsterdam-Philadelphia, 2010)
• The Snares of Allegory (Venice, 1999; jstor.org/stable/3301149)
• “Guidogozzano: Poetry for Vision” (2011)
• “Dante’s Muhammad: Parallels between Islam and Arianism”(2007)
• “Culture and Clinical Care: The Italians” (co-authored, San Francisco, 2005)
• “On love, the Devil, and Chastity during the Renaissance Witchcraze” (2003)
• “The ‘Inborn and Perpetual Thirst ‘ of Paradise” (1993)
• “Pedagogical Ideals and Political Praxis in Alberti’s Momus and Machiavelli’s Prince” (1992)
• “The ‘Stony Rhymes’ of Irene Maria Malecore (1991)
• “Leopardi as a Reader of L.B. Alberti” (1991)
• “Sergei Mikhailovich Kravchinsky-Stepniak: Underground Russia” (1983)

She has also translated critical essays from Russian into Italian, and contemporary poems from Italian into English for literary and scholarly magazines. She regularly contributes book reviews for Sixteenth-Century Journal, Renaissance Quarterly, Italica, and Italian Culture.

University of Hartford Faculty Awards:

• 2022-23 The Roy E. Larsen Award for excellence in teaching and contributions to University life. 
• 2020-21 of The Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Award for sustained service to the University.  
• 2011-12 Donald W. Davis All University Curriculum Award for outstanding contributions to the University Interdisciplinary Studies program. 

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Note: This faculty member will be on sabbatical for Spring 2025. During a sabbatical, faculty may not be available to support students or conduct other University business.