Visiting Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures
Alejandro Cuadrado’s research focuses on history, politics, and religion in medieval Italian literature, with a focus on Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He is currently finishing his first book, The Corruption of the Church and Dante’s Philosophy of History, an analysis of how Dante’s Commedia articulates a history of institutions. He is also working on a project that explores the ways in which medieval writers thought about urban topography. With Akash Kumar (UC-Berkeley) and Alberto Gelmi (Vassar), Cuadrado is one of the organizers and editors of Old Texts, New Questions: Critical Approaches to Medieval Italian Literature, an MLA working group that will publish its new perspectives on Italian literature in the 2026 Italian issue of MLN. Cuadrado is a regular contributor to the Settimana di Studi Danteschi in Palermo, an annual weeklong conference which aims to share scholarly and artistic approaches to Dante’s work with hundreds of high school students from across Sicily. He is an Assistant Editor of , a public-facing website for original research and ideas on Dante.
Before coming to 含羞草研究室 in 2024, Professor Cuadrado taught in the Italian Studies Department at Yale University. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and holds a PhD in Italian and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, where he was the recipient of the Campbell Award, the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize, the Brittan Family Fellowship, and the Provost’s Diversity Fellowship.
At 含羞草研究室, Professor Cuadrado teaches all levels of Italian language, as well as courses on Italian literature and culture ranging from Dante’s Divine Comedy to the critical study of modern tourism. Students who would like to know more about the Italian program, studying abroad in Italy, or conducting an independent research project are encouraged to reach out or stop by his office hours.
Articles and Chapters
“Flemish and Paduan Water Defenses: Toward an Eco-Historical Reading of Inferno4-12,” MLN Special Issue: Old Texts, New Questions: Critical Approaches to Medieval Italian Literature, ed. A. Cuadrado, A. Gelmi, and A. Kumar, 2026.
“The Structure of Dante’s Paradiso, or How to Tell a Story Beyond Time and Space (Paradiso 1-4),” Dante’s Paradiso: A Reader’s Guide, ed. R. Herzman and F. Gianferrari, Routledge, 2025.
“Mentoring Early-Stage Dissertation Writers through Peer-Led Interdisciplinary Writing Groups,” Getting to the Finish Line: New Directions for the Dissertation Process, ed. K. Reardon, C. Ferriter, and G. Busl, Modern Language Association, 2024.
Reviews
Dalarun, S. Field, and V. Cappozzo, A Female Apostle in Medieval Italy: The Life of Clare of Rimini, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023, g/s/i (gender/sexuality/Italy) (2023)
Phillips-Robins, Liturgical Song in Dante’s Commedia, Notre Dame University Press, 2021, Modern Language Review 118.2 (2023)
Crisafi, Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the Commedia, Oxford University Press, 2022, Bibliotheca Dantesca 5 (2022)
Morosini, Il mare salato. Il Mediterraneo di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, Viella, 2020 Bibliotheca Dantesca 3 (2020)
Veselovskij, Studi su Dante, La Parola del Testo XXI, 1-2, 2017, ed. R. Di Giorgi and R. Rabboni, Bibliotheca Dantesca 2 (2019)
Invited Lectures
“Dante e i decretalisti, o come fare carriera nel Medioevo,” Settimana di Studi Danteschi Giuseppe Lo Manto, XXVIII Edizione: “Son li giusti occhi tuoi rivolti altrove?,” Palermo, October 25, 2024
“Tre fiumi danteschi: Ecologia e storia nell’Inferno,” Dipartimento di scienze umanistiche, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo, October 23, 2024
“Popes in Hell and Nuns in Paradise: Dante’s Many Histories of the Church,” Killeen Chair of Theology and Philosophy Lecture Series, St. Norbert College, De Pere, Wisconsin, April 11, 2024
“Caso Dante: Historiador y Poeta,” Seminarios de actualización de Profesores, Instituto de Humanidades, Universidad Panamericana, Guadalajara, November 24, 2023
“The Structure of Dante’s Paradiso: or How to Tell a Story Beyond Time, Space, and Individuality,” Project Paradiso: A Gateway to Dante’s Heaven (online), University of California, Santa Cruz, November 10, 2023
“E temo che non sia già sì smarrito: La voce di Beatrice e la memoria del poeta,” Settimana di Studi Danteschi Giuseppe Lo Manto, XXVII Edizione: “Lucevan li occhi suoi più che la stella,” Palermo, October 16-20, 2023
“Los papas e nel infierno de Dante. Crítica ala Iglesia en la Divina Comedia,” Departamento de Letras, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, November 4, 2019
Conference Papers
“Colonial Triumphs from Padova to Puebla,” Global Petrarch(s) and Petrarchism, Italians and Italianists at Kalamazoo, 60h International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 8-11, 2025
“Dantean Shapes of History,” Reiteration and Recurrence in Premodern Aesthetic Forms, 100th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, Harvard University, Cambridge, March 20-22, 2025
“An Island in the Stream: Boccaccio’s Cyprus and Mobility in the Decameron’s Mediterranean,” Boccaccio at the Crusades, American Boccaccio Association, Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, March 21-23, 2024
“Reframing Decameronian Cinema,” Frame Narratives in Literature and Across Media, 55th Northeast Modern Language Association, Boston, March 7-10, 2024
“Urban Topography and Orsini Nepotism: Inferno 18-19 Reconsidered,” Dante’s Histories, Department of Romance Studies, Duke University, December 13, 2023
“Dante’s Work Ethics, or, a Poet’s Guide to Career and Retirement,” Dante I, Dante Society of America, 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 11-13, 2023
“‘Due bestie van sott’ una pelle’: Horses and Humans in Paradiso 21,” Animal Dante, Dante Society of America, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Washington, D.C. (online), January 6-9, 2022
“Dante’s Poetic Universe in Shane McCrae’s ‘A Fire in Every World,’” Dante’s Afterlives, In Via Dante Network, University of Leeds (online), June 24-25, 2021
“Intellectual vs. Higher Education: The University in Petrarch’s Universe,” Anti-Intellectualism in Medieval Italy, 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 9-12, 2019
“‘E un che ’ntese la parola tosca’: Dante in the Elementary Italian Classroom,” Teaching Dante in America, 50th Northeast Modern Language Association, Washington, D.C., March 21-24, 2019
“Boccaccio’s Parody of the Order of Saint Anthony: Historicizing Frate Cipolla as an Antonite Friar (Decameron 10),” Passion, Procession, and the People: An Interdisciplinary Panel, Italians and Italianists at Kalamazoo, 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 10-13, 2018
“Mapping Dante’s Tenzone with Forese Donati,” Digital Approaches to Italian Medieval and Early Modern Texts, 49th Northeast Modern Language Association, Pittsburgh, April 12-15, 2018
“Imagined Pilgrimages in Petrarch’s Itinerarium,” Mobility and Space in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Centre for Medieval Studies, Oxford University, Oxford, June 23-24, 2017
“Authorial Acrostics: The Vulnerability of Fra Niccolò’s Attempted Copyright,” Vulnerability in the Middle Ages, Medieval Studies Graduate Conference, Princeton University, Princeton, April 28, 2017
“Petrarch’s Unfinished Pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” Great Incompletes: Italy’s Unfinished Endeavors, Italian Department Graduate Conference, Columbia University, New York, February 3-4, 2017
“‘Angels in the Architecture’: The Case for a Dantean Framework in Paul Simon’s ‘You Can Call Me Al,’” Dante and Music, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, November 5-6, 2015
Public-Facing Scholarship
Panel Discussion Participant for “A Slice,” Directed by Jes Mack, A Broken Umbrella Theatre Company, International Festival of Arts & Ideas, New Haven, June 17-19, 2024
Dante Underground: Reading Inferno in the Times Sq.- 42nd Station, co-organized with Giacomo Berchi, sponsored by the Yale Dante Working Group (Whitney Humanities Center), New York, April 29, 2024
“,” with Louis J. Moffa, Canto per Canto video series, Dante Society of America, 2021
Prizes, Awards, and Fellowships
Branford College Fellowship, Yale University
Campbell Award, Columbia University Alumni Association
Provost’s Diversity Fellowship, Columbia University
Brittan Family Fellowship, Columbia University
Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize, Columbia University
Phi Beta Kappa, Princeton University
Joseph R. Strayer Prize in Medieval Studies, Princeton University
Gruppo Esponenti Thesis Prize in Italian, Princeton University
Dante Prize, Dante Society of America
Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fellows, Princeton University
Summit Foundation Scholarship, The Summit Foundation of Colorado
Rotary Youth Exchange in Vicenza, Italy, Rotary International
Grants for Research and Travel
RSA Diversity Grant, Renaissance Society of America, 2024
GSAS Conference Travel Fund, Columbia University 2019 and 2023
ASGC Travel Grant, Columbia University, 2023
Claudia Rattazzi Papka Memorial Fund, Columbia University, 2022
MLA Conference Travel Grant, Modern Language Association, 2022
TORCH Travel Bursary, Centre for Medieval Studies, Oxford University, 2017
