Italian Studies

At Brown, Rala Potter Diakite focused on the medieval period in Italy, the poetry of Dante, early comic verse, Giovanni Villani and the Italian chronicle tradition of the fourteenth century (the subject of her dissertation, written under the direction of Anthony Oldcorn). She was an active member of the Virtual Humanities Lab, after its constitution, working with Matthew Sneider (Brown Ph. D. in History) on the encoding, translation into English, and annotation of a segment of a Villani's Florentine Chronicle. She is currently researching the role of women in the Chronicle.