Professor Chiara Sbordoni is associate teaching professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame in Rome where she teaches the foundational course All roads lead to Rome as well as the Italian course Passage to Rome, an introduction to Italian literary texts and works of art across time and genres. She also directs the Rome International Scholars program, a semester-long undergraduate immersive program, whose focus is independent research.
Sbordoni received her Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from the Sapienza Università di Roma and she then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds (UK) on the project Oral Culture, Manuscript and Print in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700. Her research in Leeds focused on linguistic variety in treatises on language, and theatrical texts and their performances.
Sbordoni’s current research concentrates on the representation of Rome in Medieval and Renaissance Italian literature with particular focus on the texts of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Her study of Dante and Rome engages with the physical city (its urban texture, streets, sites, buildings, architecture, maps), Rome’s history and historical figures, its classical heritage (with special focus on Virgil), its role as the center of the Christian world and of the Church, and as a destination of pilgrimage. While Dante’s literary oeuvre is her focus, she utilizes an interdisciplinary approach which puts his writings in dialogue with historical, artistic and classical studies.
Sbordoni has most recently published two book chapters.
Her essay on Dante’s fortieth chapter of the Vita Nova, is hosted in the volume Dante's Vita Nova: A collaborative Reading edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski and Heather Webb and published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2023. The volume came out of a two-year-long series of international seminars aimed at a new interpretation of each of the forty-two chapters of Dante’s book. Sbordoni argues that in the fortieth chapter of the Vita Nova Dante is offering a map of the Christian ecumene, with Rome at the core of Christendom and that, for the first time, he is addressing his work to a universal audience outside the confines of Florence's city walls.
Her chapter for the volume Global Medieval Travel Writing: A Literary History, edited by Sebastian Sobecki is forthcoming in 2024 from the Cambridge University Press. Sbordoni’s essay surveys a variety of literary texts from different traditions, from the High Middle Ages to the XVI century, which describe the city of Rome as a destination of travel for Christian pilgrims ad limina Apostolorum and for those in search of antiquities of ancient Roman civilization.
Sbordoni also co-edited together with Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (Notre Dame) and Anna Pegoretti (Roma Tre) the Forum: Dante and Cosmology, a themed section of the journal Dante Studies, Volume 140, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022.
Among other projects, she co-organizes together with colleagues at Notre Dame and beyond, two series respectively dedicated to Medieval and Modern Italian Studies, aiming to promote a fruitful discussion among scholars of various geographical and academic provenances. The Three Crowns: Texts and Contexts of Medieval Italy is organized in collaboration with Prof. Laura Banella (Notre Dame) and Prof. Luca Lombardo (University of Bergamo) and co-sponsored by Notre Dame Rome and the Notre Dame Center for Italian Studies and Devers Family Program in Dante Studies. This series, which started in 2019, proposes the presentation of recently published books dedicated to authors and texts of Medieval Italian Philology and Literature and to the most current themes in these disciplines.
Modern Roads to Rome is a series dedicated to modern and contemporary Italy, its histories, languages, literatures, visual arts, and cultures. It is co-organized with Prof. Sara Boezio (Notre Dame) and Prof. Charles Leavitt (Notre Dame), and co-sponsored by the University of Notre Dame Center for Italian Studies and Notre Dame Rome.
Originally published by at rome.nd.edu on July 10, 2024.