Jo Ann Cavallo

Professor Cavallo was a professor in Columbia’s Department of Italian from 1988 until 2026, when she retired as Professor Emerita. Her field of specialization is the Renaissance romance epic—primarily Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso—and its performance traditions in the Mediterranean, especially Sicilian puppet theater and the epic Maggio of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. In addition to undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in the Italian Department, she taught Literature Humanities regularly between 1993 and 2014, and the team-taught interdisciplinary colloquium Nobility and Civility: East and West from 2007 to 2024.

Research

Professor Cavallo’s most recent book is Narrazioni epiche nella cultura popolare italiana: L’Opera dei Pupi siciliana e il Maggio tosco-emiliano (Edizioni Museo Pasqualino, 2025). Her previous book, The Sicilian Puppet Theater of Agrippino Manteo (Anthem, 2023)—also published in Italian (Edizioni Museo Pasqualino, 2024)—received the American Association of Teachers of Italian Book Award for Literary, Critical Theory, and Cultural Studies, the Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize for a “scholarly contribution to our understanding of literature originally in another language,” and the UNIMA-USA Nancy Staub Publication Award for excellence in writing on the art of puppetry. She is also the author of The World beyond Europe in the Romance Epics of Boiardo and Ariosto (U of Toronto P, 2013), which received a Modern Language Association Publication Award and was likewise translated into Italian (Mondadori, 2017), The Romance Epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso: From Public Duty to Private Pleasure (U of Toronto P, 2004), and Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato: An Ethics of Desire (Associated University Presses, 1993). She is the editor of ten volumes, including Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism: Essays in Memory of Paul A. Cantor (Palgrave Macmillan 2025); World Epics and Puppet Theater (AOQU, 2023); Teaching World Epics (MLA, 2023); Teaching the Italian Renaissance Romance Epic (MLA, 2018); Speaking Truth to Power from Medieval to Modern Italy (Annali d'Italianistica 34 [2016]); and the forthcoming Routledge Companion to World Epics. Her articles focus on Italian authors from the medieval to the modern period (Marco Polo, Dante, Petrarch, Sabadino degli Arienti, Boiardo, Ariosto, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Tasso, Giordano Bruno, and Elsa Morante), folk traditions that dramatize epic narratives (Sicilian puppet theater and the epic Maggio of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines), and early Christian and gnostic literature (the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Truth). In 2002, she filmed and edited a full-length documentary about the epic Maggio tradition, Il maggio emiliano: ricordi, riflessioni, brani (DVD, 2003). She edits the book series Anthem World Epic and Romance and the Italian literature, history, and culture area of The Literary Encyclopedia (www.litencyc.com). She also maintains three websites that she created: (1) eBOIARDO (Epics of Boiardo and Other Italian Authors: a Resource Database Online) at https://edblogs.columbia.edu/eboiardo ; (2) World Epics at https://edblogs.columbia.edu/worldepics; and (3) Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism at https://libertarianliteraryandmediacriticism.wordpress.com.

Creative projects

Professor Cavallo has adapted several episodes from Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato into comedies that have been performed in various regions of Italy (2000-2006), and in English translation in New York City (Medieval Festival at Fort Tryon Park, September 2003; Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell, July 15-17, 2006). She has also written a bilingual young readers' version of Boiardo’s poem, Orlando Innamorato per ragazzi (2001), and collaborated on epic Maggio scripts performed in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. Most recently, she co-authored the epic Maggio play La Rocca Crudele that debuted in the summer of 2023 (https://edblogs.columbia.edu/eboiardo/la-rocca-crudele/).