Italian Studies

Massimo Riva ​was educated in Italy (Laurea in Filosofia, University of Florence, 1979) and the United States (Ph.D. in Italian literature, Rutgers University, 1986). He is the author of four books published in Italy: on literary maladies in the 18th century (Saturno e le Grazie, Palermo, 1992), national identity in the 19th-century (Malinconie del Moderno, Ravenna, 2001), literature in the digital age (Il Futuro della Letteratura, Naples, 2011), post-humanism and the hyper-novel (Pinocchio Digitale, Milan, 2012). He is the editor and co-editor of four more books, including a fiction anthology - Italian Tales - published by Yale University Press in 2004 (reprinted in 2007) and the Cambridge University Press edition of Pico della Mirandola's Oration "On Human Dignity" (2012), the result of a collaborative digital project between Brown and the University of Bologna. His latest major publication, a digital monograph entitled Shadow Plays. Virtual Realities in an Analog World published by Stanford University Press in 2022, is the winner of a 2023 Prose Award from the Association of American Publishers in the category of e-Products and a finalist for the 2024 American Council of Learned Societies Open Access Book Prize. An expanded Italian edition of this monograph is forthcoming with Einaudi of Turin (Giochi d'Ombra. Preistoria curiosa della realtà virtuale). 

Prof. Riva is the recipient of three major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a Digital Innovation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Mellon Foundation, in support of various digital projects (Decameron Web, Pico Project, Garibaldi Panorama & the Risorgimento) now part of the Virtual Humanities Lab. A series of interactive installations of the Garibaldi moving panorama project were featured in the U.K (British Library in London), Brazil (International Council of Museums, Rio de Janeiro), and Italy (various libraries and museums including the Sala Capitolare of the Italian Senate in Rome, the Sala del Risorgimento of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena and the Biblioteca Sala Borsa in Bologna). Prof. Riva's awards and honors also include the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (with the rank of Ufficiale) for his contribution to the dissemination of Italian culture in North America. For his research-based and innovative use of technology in teaching he was nominated Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence (2014-17).

Prof. Riva is the founder and co-curator of the Cinema Ritrovato on Tour film festival, a collaboration between Brown U. and the Cineteca of Bologna.