Rocco Rubini

Rocco Rubini is a Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, affiliated with the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies and the Fundamentals program. He holds a PhD from Yale University (2009). His research traces the Italian intellectual tradition from the Renaissance to modernity, focusing on humanism’s evolution and its transhistorical continuities. Key figures in his work include Petrarch, Machiavelli, Vico, De Sanctis, and Gramsci.

His scholarship includes three major works: *The Other Renaissance: Italian Humanism Between Hegel and Heidegger* (2014, award-winning), *Posterity: Inventing Tradition from Petrarch to Gramsci* (2022), and an upcoming study on Giambattista Vico’s transatlantic influence. He explores how Italian thinkers reimagined tradition through empathetic reader engagement.

Teaching focuses on Renaissance drama (*commedia dell’arte*), Vico’s *New Science*, Machiavelli, and Gramsci. Courses also address literary criticism (Auerbach’s *Mimesis*) and academic writing. Rubini’s work bridges historical analysis with contemporary philosophical debates about humanism’s relevance.

• Awards: American Association of Italian Studies Book Prize, Morris D. Forkosch Prize
• Research Areas: Italian intellectual history, cultural transmission, literary modernity
• Key Themes: Tradition reinvention, humanist legacy, transnational intellectual networks