Prior to joining the faculty of James Madison University as an Assistant Professor of Italian, Giulia Cardillo taught at Gettysburg College, Farifield University, and Yale University. She holds a BA (Laurea) in English Literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza, with a major in English and a minor in German literature and language. After moving to the United States, she obtained an M.A. in Italian Studies from the University of Notre Dame. In 2015 she completed her Ph.D in Italian Language and Literature at Yale University, with a dissertation titled “The Question of Prophecy in Dante’s Commedia.”

Giulia has published articles on Tasso and Michelangelo (“«Facitor de l’imagini»: Lo spettacolo della creazione in Michelangelo e Tasso”), and on the concept of Terra Australis in the Middle Ages (“La poiesis della Terra Australis”). Two further articles are forthcoming: “Dreams of prophets, dreams of poets,” which analyzes the dream of Purgatorio 28 and the relationship between poetry and poetry in Dante’s Divine Comedy; and “Decameron 6.2: Cisti Fornaio”, an analysis of Cisti’s tale in the light of Boccaccio’s considerations on poetry in the Genealogie Deorum Gentilium.

Her research interests focus on Dante Alighieri, the question of allegory and exegesis in the Middle Ages, the Biblical influences on literary texts, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francesco Petrarca. They also include a number of subjects in the Renaissance, in particular Michelangelo, Tasso, and the relationship of literary to visual arts.