• Baroque and early modern literature in Italy
• 20th- and 21st-century popular culture
• Tabletop board games
• Military simulations

My research focuses on a range of topics from Italian culture of the Baroque period, gaming culture, and comics studies. My books include a volume on the influence of Dante’s Divine Comedy on early modern Italian literature, a book about storytelling in games, a book about superhero comics, a modern edition of the 17th-century erotic comedy “Il natal di Amore” (“The Birth of Love”) by Giulio Strozzi, and a study on Baroque religious poetry.

My teaching combines these interests with my passion for lively discussions with my students. I have taught both in Italy and in the U.S., developing courses on Renaissance and Baroque literature, 17th- and 18th-century theater, modern game design, the art of war and the art of wargaming, American and Italian comics, detectives and spies in fiction, and theories and practices of conflict and cooperation.

At the present time I am working on a book on enigmatology in the Italian Renaissance.