Jilian Pizzi is a Ph.D. candidate in Columbia’s Department of Italian and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Jilian received her B.A. in Italian summa cum laude and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College. As an undergraduate she received the William Pepperell Montague Prize in philosophy and the Bettina Buonocore Salvo Prize for excellence in Italian. She received her M.A. in Italian and M.Phil. in Italian from Columbia University. She studies medieval history and religion with the goal of historicizing the works of Dante. Her dissertation will focus on Dante’s treatment of Jews and Judaism primarily in the Divina Commedia.
She has taught Elementary and Intermediate Italian and has also served as teaching assistant for Professor Teodolinda Barolini’s “Dante’s Divina Commedia 2.” She has also served as Lead Teaching Fellow for the Italian Department for the 2022-2023 academic year and as the rapporteur for the Medieval Studies Seminar.
As a graduate student, she has presented her paper, “Historicizing the Deicide Charge in Paradiso VII: 46-8” at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. She also organized Columbia University’s Italian conversation group from 2021-2022 and is a member of the Dante Society of America.
