Teodolinda Barolini


Teodolinda Barolini is the Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University, and has twice served as Chair of the Department of Italian. She has written on the poetry of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. In 1998, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the study of Italian literature. From 1997 to 2003, she served as president of the Dante Society of America. She is the daughter of Antonio Barolini and Helen Barolini. In 2007, she won a Flaiano Prize in Italian Studies. Barolini was born December 19, 1951 in Syracuse, New York. She is married to James J. Valentini, professor of Chemistry at Columbia and the sixteenth and current Dean of Columbia College.