Giovanni Spani

Biography

Giovanni Spani is Professor of Italian and Chair of the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He holds a Ph.D. from Indiana University Bloomington, and his research focuses on Medieval Studies, with a particular emphasis on the history of medicine during the Middle Ages and Renaissance and the digital humanities.

Publications

Books

Donne Resilienti. Raccolta di saggi, (Resilient Women. Collection of Essays), (co-edited with Marco Marino and Giusy Di Filippo), Holden: Quod Manet, 2023.

Translating for (and from) the Italian Screen: Dubbing and Subtitles, (co-edited with Philip Balma), New York: Bordighera Press, 2020.

Malattie e Medicina tra Letteratura, Storia e Antropologia (Illnesses and Medicine Between Literature, History and Anthropology), (co-edited with Elena Varotto), Holden: Quod Manet, 2020.

Donne del Mediterraneo. Saggi Interdisciplinari. (Women of the Mediterranean. Interdisciplinary Essays), (co-edited with Marco Marino), Firenze: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2017.

Visioni Mediterranee: Itinerari e migrazioni culturali (Mediterranean Visions: Itineraries and Cultural Migrations), (co-edited with Marco Marino), Lanciano: Carabba, 2016. 

La cronachistica toscana del Trecento: trascrivere, compilare e compendiare la storia (The Tuscan Chronicle of Trecento: Transcribing, Compiling and Synthesizing History), Alessandria: Edizioni Dell’Orso, 2014.

New Perspectives on Veneto. Literary and Cultural Itineraries, (co-edited with Simona Wright), NEMLA Italian Studies, Journal of Italian Studies, Volume 35 (2013).

L’Italia letteraria e cinematografica dal secondo Novecento ai giorni nostri (Literary and Cinematographic Italy from the Late 1900s to Our Time), (co-edited with Philip Balma), Cuneo: Nerosubianco, 2012.

Echi Oltremare. Italy, the Mediterranean and Beyond. Conference Proceedings «Echi Oltremare», Rome, 17-18 June 2011, (co-edited with Fulvio Orsitto and Sonia Massari), Narcissus.me, 2012. 

Streetwise Italian Dictionary/Thesaurus: The User-Friendly Guide to Italian to Italian Slang and Idioms, (co-edited with Nicholas Albanese, Philip Balma, Ermanno Conti), New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.

Albanese Nicholas, Giovanni Spani, Philip Balma, and Ermanno Conti, Streetwise Italian Dictionary / Thesaurus: The User-Friendly Guide to Italian to Italian Slang and Idioms. New York: McGraw-Hill (2005).

Selected Articles

“Paleopathology and Anthropology of the Renaissance: from the Morbus Dominorum to the Alleged ‘Michelangelo’s Shoes,” in Rethinking Medical Humanities: A Perspective from the Arts and the Social Sciences, R. Canalis, M. Ciavolella and V. Finucci (Eds.), De Gruyter, 2023, pp. 253-260.

“Cauliflower Ear in an Hellenistic Statue from Syracuse, Sicily (3rd Century BC): Paleopathological Identification of an Ancient Boxer”, in Malattie e Medicina tra Letteratura, Storia e Antropologia (Illnesses and Medicine Between Literature, History and Anthropology), (co-edited with Elena Varotto), Holden: Quod Manet, 2020, pp. 129-140.

“Giovanni Boccaccio’s (1313-1375) Disease and Demise: The Final Untold Tale of Liver and Heart Failure” in Homo. Journal of Comparative Human Biology, 68.4(2017), pp. 289-297.

“The Battle of Campaldino: Strategy, Tactics, and a Brief Medical History,” in Interpretation and Visual Poetics in Medieval and Early Modern Texts, B. Arduini, I. Magni and J. Todorović (Eds.), Leiden: Brill, 2021, pp. 189-203.

“A Case of Sudden-Death in Decameron IV.6: Aortic Dissection or Atrial Mixoma?” in “Circulation Research. Journal of the American Heart Association,” 119 (July 2016), pp. 187-189.

“Il vino di Boccaccio: usi e abusi in alcune novelle del Decameron” (“Boccaccio’s Wine: Use and Misuse in Several Decameron’s Tales”), in Heliotropia 8-9(2011-2012), pp. 79-98. (Reprinted in Heliotropia 700/10. A Boccaccio Anniversary Volume. Ed. M. Papio. Milano: Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto, 2013, pp. 107-121).

“Anita Garibaldi: tra mito e realtà” (“Anita Garibaldi: between Myth and Reality”), in Cinema e Risorgimento: Visioni e Re-Visioni. Da La presa di Roma a Noi credevamo. Ed. F. Orsitto. Roma: Vecchiarelli, 2012, pp. 35-54.

“‘Ohimmé! Sarei io mai Calandrino, chi’io sia sì tosto diventato un altro sanza essermene avveduto?’ Riflessioni sull’altro ne La novella del grasso legnaiuolo e ne La Calandria” (“‘Oh my! Could I be Calandrino, because I became someone else without realizing it?’ Reflections on the Other in the Story of the Fat Woodworker and in The Calandria”), in L’altro e l’altrove nella cultura italiana. Ed. F. Orsitto. Cuneo: Nerosubianco, 2011, pp. 19-29.

“Un ritorno alle immagini dantesche nella seconda metà del Cinquecento: alcune osservazioni sulla inedita stampa del ‘Lucifer’ di Galle” (“A Return to Dantesque Images in the Second Half of the 1500s: Some Observation on the Unpublished Print of ‘Lucifer’ by Galle”), in Studi Italiani 44(2010), pp. 37-51.

Research Interests

Medieval Studies, Medical Humanities and Digital Humanities