Faculty Profile Podcast (no. 2): Dario Del Puppo

Dario Del Puppo, Professor of Language and Culture Studies at Trinity College, sits down with Kevin MacDermott on this episode of the Trinity Faculty Profile podcast series. Follow @FacultyProfile on Twitter Dario Del Puppo is Professor of Language and Culture Studies. Besides teaching all levels of Italian language, he teaches courses on Dante’s Divine Comedy, surveys of Italian literature from the Middle Ages to the present, Food in Italian History, Society, & Art, Italian Cinema, and a course on the history of manuscripts and books from Greek and Roman Antiquity to the age of electronic texts. In all of these courses, Del Puppo encourages students to consider the way cultural phenomena have been transmitted through the ages and students frequently learn about the material formats of literary texts and how that influences interpretation and reception. His research deals primarily with the manuscripts and early printed books of Medieval and Renaissance Italian literature and, more broadly, with popular and material culture in Italy during the 14th-16th centuries. He also has a longstanding research interest in the Romantic poet, Giacomo Leopardi. Del Puppo is currently working on a book project “Poets, Scribes, and Enterprising Readers in Quattrocento Florence” which examines the development of vernacular literary culture before and at the time of the invention of the printing press. He is also Chairman of the Barbieri Endowment for Italian Culture which organizes lectures, exhibits, and performances dealing with all facets of Italian culture.