I am a Professor of Italian at the University of Virginia. My research and teaching interests focus on Italian and Mediterranean visual and print cultures in the medieval and early modern eras. I've written monographs and articles on Dante's reception in the Renaissance, Bronzino's and Michelangelo's writings and co-authored books on special edition DVDs and popular adaptations of Dante. I'm the General Editor of The World of Dante, a multimedia site for the study of the Inferno. My most recent book is Sucking Up: A Brief Consideration of Sycophancy (2018). Recent articles have explored JFK's Dante, Race and Foreign Languages and the Future of Renaissance Studies. My teaching focuses on Dante, reinventions of the Inferno, Michelangelo, and literary and artistic inter-relationships in the early modern period.