Profile picture of Gina Psaki

Gina Psaki

Professor Emerita of Italian
Professor, Romance Languages
Comparative Literature, Medieval Studies, Romance Languages
Phone: 541-346-4042
Office: 224 Friendly Hall
Research Interests: Italian and French literature of the Middle Ages; comparative medieval literature; medieval lyric and romance; Dante; Boccaccio; translation; medieval feminist scholarship; discourse analysis; metadisciplinary issues in medieval literary study; history of

Education

Ph.D., Medieval Studies, Cornell University, 1989;

M.A., Medieval Studies, Cornell University, 1986;

B.A., 18th- and 19th-c. Studies (independent major), Dickinson College, 1980.

Research

Having done a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies, I divide my research about equally between Italian and French literature of the Middle Ages and medieval feminist scholarship. In Italian I focus on Dante’s Comedy, including topics such as the role and nature of his love for Beatrice, and the way different translations inflect how English-language readers interpret Dante. Boccaccio is another focus, with projects in progress on both his Decameron and Corbaccio. In both languages I work on chivalric romance, particularly the Roman de Silence, the Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole, and the Tristano Riccardiano. A current project in both French and Italian is "The Traffic in Talk About Women: Misogyny and Philogyny in the Middle Ages", a study of non-fiction writings in praise and blame of women. Overall I tend to privilege questions of alterity and continuity between medieval and modern; textual transmission and context; translation of / and medieval material; and metadisciplinary issues in medieval literary study.