Author and Professor of Comparative Literature at Bard College
The Presidential Library: Books That Shaped Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Other Commanders-in-Chief
Joseph Luzzi is an award-winning author and widely sought after speaker whose recent books include My Two Italies, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, History, and the Mysteries of Love, a Vanity Fair “Must-Read” selection that has been translated into Italian, German, and Korean.
He received his PhD from Yale and is Professor of Comparative Literature at Bard College. Luzzi’s honors and awards include a Yale College Teaching Prize, Dante Society of America Essay Prize, and fellowships at the National Humanities Center and Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
An active critic and cultural commentator, Luzzi’s essays and reviews appear frequently in the New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, and Chronicle of Higher Education, among many others. Recent speaking engagements include One Day University, the 92nd Street Y, IVY: The Social University, the Dante Society of America, the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, the University of Rome, Harvard University, Cambridge University, and Villa Il Palmerino in Florence, Italy.