Since Patricia Lyn Richards came to Kenyon in 1987, Italian has become a permanent part of the College curriculum, staffed now with two tenure track faculty positions. Richards did her graduate work in Italian (Rutgers, MA, PhD) and undergraduate study in Art History (Reed College, Rutgers, BA). She came to Kenyon after several years teaching in the English Department at Rutgers and a year at UCLA in the Italian Department. At Kenyon she teaches all levels of language and a range of literature, culture and film courses. Her research interests in earlier Italian literature focus on the works of Giovanni Della Casa, sixteenth century humanist prelate and poet; she presented a Kenyon Presidential Lecture on "Virtue, Beauty and the Body in a Renaissance Conception of Courtesy" in 2007. She has participated in several NEH summer programs, most recently "Inquisitions and Persecutions in Early Modern Europe and the Americas," as well as in a Newberry Mellon Institute on Italian paleography. In service to the profession she has reviewed programs and advised as reader of national grant applications. Currently she is writing a study on the ethical implications of courtesy for humanists in the early Cinquecento.

Areas of Expertise

Medievel and Renaissance poetry, Italian cinema

Education

M.A., Ph.D., Rutgers University
B.A. Rutgers University

Courses Taught

ITAL 111-112 Intensive Introductory Italian
ITAL 213-214 Language and Culture
ITAL 320 Italian Cinema
ITAL 333 Introduction to Dante's Divine Comedy