Alessandro Giammei’s Ariosto in the Machine Age Wins Two Prizes
Giammei's book was honored by the Modern Language Association and the American Association for Italian Studies.
Alessandro Giammei, Assistant Professor of Italian Studies, has been named the winner of two prestigious prizes for his most recent book, Ariosto in the Machine Age (University of Toronto Press, 2023).
Giammei was awarded the 28th Howard R. Marraro Prize by the Modern Language Association of America. The selection committee said that Giammei’s book “brilliantly reconsiders the most influential poet of the Renaissance as an unexpected catalyst for Italian modernism” with “erudition, rigor, and eloquence.”
In Ariosto in the Machine Age, Giammei presents a new understanding of 20th century Italian culture via a novel analysis of Ludovico Ariosto’s early modern poetics and legacy.
“As a trans-lingual migrant scholar, receiving this recognition for my first book written in English is especially meaningful,” said Giammei. “I am deeply grateful to the inspiring communities of friends and colleagues who welcomed me at Princeton, NYU, Bryn Mawr College, and in my academic home, Yale, during the years in which I turned my (very Italian!) doctoral research into an Anglophone, trans-national book on chivalric epic, modernist receptions, and the challenge of reckoning with burdensome cultural legacies.”
The Howard R. Marraro Prize is awarded by the MLA every other year to an outstanding book in the field of Italian literature or comparative literature involving Italian. It was established in 1973 by the bequest of Howard R. Marraro, a professor of Italian history, literature, and culture. The prize is one of twenty-three awards that will be presented in January 2025 at the association’s annual convention.
In June 2024, Giammei’s book also won a 2023 AAIS Book Prize from the American Association for Italian Studies in the category of Literary and Cultural Studies for its “innovative exploration” of Ludovico Ariosto.