Joseph Luzzi received his PhD from Yale University is the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, where he also teaches courses on film and Italian Studies.

He is the author of five books, including his most recent work, Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance (Norton, 2022), a New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 and Guardian Book of the Day selection.

His other books include Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy (Yale University Press, 2008), which received the MLA’s Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies; A Cinema of Poetry: Aesthetics of the Italian Art Film (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), a finalist for the international prize “The Bridge Book” Award; My Two Italies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; and In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love (HarperCollins, 2015), which has been translated into multiple languages.

Joseph’s essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, TLS, Bookforum, and American Scholar, among others, and his scholarly writing has appeared in PMLA, Modern Language Notes, Modern Language Quarterly, Raritan, Italica, and Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century. His media appearances include a profile in the Guardian and an interview with National Public Radio. Among his honors are a Dante Society of America essay prize, Yale College teaching prize, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award, and fellowships from the National Humanities Center and Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center. The first American-born child in his Italian immigrant family, Luzzi was named Cittadino Onorario / Honorary Citizen of Acri, Calabria, in 2017.

A widely sought after speaker, he has presented worldwide on literature, art, film, and the power of the humanities. Joseph is the founder of the Virtual Book Club, an international online community devoted to exploring some of the best books ever written.