Kate Driscoll

Kate Driscoll is Assistant Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University, affiliated with the Department of Romance Studies within Trinity College of Arts & Sciences since 2022. Her research focuses on early modern Italian literature with specializations in chivalric epic poetry, women's writing, and performance history.

Education:

• Ph.D., Italian Literature, University of California, Berkeley (2020)
• M.A., New York University (2013)
• B.Mus., New York University (2011)

Her current book project Tasso and Women Readers: Literary Hospitality in Early Modern Italy (under contract with Cambridge University Press) examines collaborative dynamics between Torquato Tasso and women intellectuals. Research interests span gender studies, opera studies, and Renaissance reception, with particular attention to cross-disciplinary approaches between literature and performance traditions.

Recent publications demonstrate consistent focus on Italian Renaissance authors (Ariosto, Tasso) through theoretical lenses examining emotion, gender, and cultural reception. Her scholarship exhibits methodological innovation in connecting literary analysis with performance history and musicology.

Selected Awards:

• Ragusa Foundation Grant (2025)
• NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant (2022)
• Mellon/ACLS Fellowship (2019)
• Delmas Foundation Grant (2018)

Teaches undergraduate and graduate courses including 'Gendering the Renaissance,' 'Text and Image in the Italian Tradition,' and 'Epic and Exile.' Affiliated with Duke's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, contributing to interdisciplinary research initiatives.