Faculty

Robert Harrison
Professor of Italian
Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature
Chair, Department of French and Italian

121 Pigott Hall
650 723 4204
harrison@stanford.edu
Office hours:
M-W 1:30-3:00
(please make an appointment)

Professor Harrison received his doctorate in romance studies from Cornell University in 1984, with a dissertation on Dante's Vita Nuova. In 1985 he accepted a visiting assistant professorship in the Department of French and Italian at Stanford. In 1986 he joined the faculty as an assistant professor. He was granted tenure in 1992 and was promoted to full professor in 1995. In 1997 Stanford offered him the Rosina Pierotti Chair. In 2002, he was named chair of the Department of French and Italian.

Professor Harrison's first book, The Body of Beatrice, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1988. A revised and elaborated version of his dissertation, it deals with medieval Italian lyric poetry, with special emphasis on Dante's early work La Vita Nuova. The Body of Beatrice was translated into Japanese in 1994. Over the next few years Professor Harrison worked on his next book, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, which appeared in 1992 with University of Chicago Press. This book deals with the multiple and complex ways in which the Western imagination has symbolized, represented, and conceived of forests, primarily in literature, religion, and mythology. It offers a select history that begins in antiquity and ends in our own time. Forests appeared simultaneously in English, French, Italian, and German. It subsequently appeared in Japanese and Korean as well. In 1994 his book Rome, la Pluie: A Quoi Bon Littérature? appeared in France, Italy, and Germany. This book is written in the form of dialogues between two characters and deals with various topics such as art restoration, the vocation of literature, and the place of the dead in contemporary society. Professor Harrison's latest work, The Dominion of the Dead, deals with the relations the living maintain with the dead in diverse secular realms. The Dominion of the Dead will appear in 2003 with the University of Chicago Press.

Interests

The Italian Lyric; Dante; Renaissance Humanism; Michelangelo; Vico and the Baroque; Phenomenology; Literary Theory; Pirandello

Education

1984: Ph.D., Romance Studies (Dissertation: "A Phenomenology of the Vita Nuova")
Cornell University
1976: B.A., Humanities
University of Santa Clara

Current courses (Winter 2007)

IHUM 2 Epic Journeys, Modern Quests
ITALGEN/FRENGEN 263 Love Books of the Middle Ages
ITALGEN/FRENGEN 395 PRG

Recent courses