Albert Russell Ascoli, Terrill Dis-tinguished Professor, teaches in the Department of Italian Studies, UC Berkeley. His principal field of research and teaching is Medieval and Early Modern Italian culture from the 13th to the 16th centuries.

He is the author of Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge University Press, 2008). He also has written extensively on Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Ariosto, and on the formation of Italian cultural and national identity. He is currently serving as President of the Dante Society of America (founded 1881).

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