Laura Wittman

Laura Wittman is an Associate Professor of French and Italian at Stanford University. She holds affiliations with the Stanford Humanities Center, where she has organized conferences on topics including mysticism, the sacred in Italian culture, and interdisciplinary humanities research. Her work bridges Italian and French literary studies through a comparative lens focused on modernity's intersections with religion, embodiment, mortality, and politics.

Education: She earned her B.A. (1991) and all postgraduate degrees (M.A. 1995, MPhil 1996, Ph.D. 2001) from Yale University's Department of Italian Language and Literature. Her doctoral dissertation analyzed mysticism in modernist works by d'Annunzio and Valéry.

Research Interests: Explores how modernity reconfigures religious experience through literature and art, particularly regarding death, trauma, and collective memory. Current projects include Lazarus' Silence, examining afterlife imagery as reflections of changing attitudes toward mortality.

Publications: Award-winning monograph on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (2011), co-edited volumes on Futurism (2009) and sacred themes in Italian culture (2015), and articles on figures like Marinetti, Montale, and Merini. Her work bridges historical analysis with literary criticism.

Awards: Marraro Award (2012) for outstanding scholarship in Italian history.

Professional Service: Organized major conferences including CICIS 2019 and a 2010 symposium on Language, Literature, and Mysticism. Currently serves as conference organizer for the California Interdisciplinary Consortium for Italian Studies.