Silvia Valisa

Silvia Valisa is an Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Florida State University's Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, part of the College of Arts and Sciences. She holds a laurea in lettere moderne from the Università di Pavia (Italy), a D.E.A in French Literature from the Sorbonne Nouvelle (France), and a Ph.D. in Italian Studies from UC Berkeley (2007). Her academic trajectory includes post-doctoral research at Brown University (2009) and a Newberry Library fellowship (2017). She is a founding faculty fellow of FSU’s Demos Institute for Humanities Data (2019-2020).

Her research focuses on the history of text technologies, digital humanities methodologies, gender theory in Italian contexts, visual studies (photography/cinema), and translation theory. She teaches courses such as 'Gender in Italian Literature' and 'Masterpieces of Italian Literature from Dante to Primo Levi.'

• Key projects include the Sonzogno Digital Catalog (2013) and digitization of the Italian newspaper Il secolo at FSU Libraries.
• Her 2014 monograph Gender, Narrative, and Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel redefines gender's role in narrative structures, while her 2021 co-edited volume La carta veloce examines 19th-century Italian journalism.
• Current work centers on the publisher Sonzogno and its role in shaping Italian print culture.

Valisa has received prestigious fellowships and her work bridges historical analysis with digital innovation, particularly in recovering marginalized voices in Italian cultural history.