University of Virginia Spanish, Italian & Portuguese

Associate Professor of Italian

Research: 17th and 18th century Italian literature and culture.

Responsibilities: Italian transfer credits; Study Abroad Advisor; Italian Minor Advisor

ADRIENNE WARD is Associate Professor of Italian. She holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame, and an MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Ward specializes in 17th- and 18th-century Italian literature and culture, and is especially interested in Venetian letters and theater. Other areas of concentration include the role and treatment of gender in Italian literary works across all centuries, Italian travel and “ethnographic” writing, and all aspects of Italian theater.

Selected publications:

“Eastern Others on Western Pages: 18th-Century Literary Orientalism.” Blackwell Publishing’s online journal Literature Compass, Eighteenth Century section, 2004.

“Approaching Two Women: De Sica’s Film from Different Angles.” Quaderni d’Italianistica 23:1 (2002): 85-104.

“The Price of Sonnets and Bonnets: How Gender Works in Luisa Bergalli’s Le avventure del poeta.” Italica 79 (2002): 168-88.

“‘Imaginary Imperialism:’ Goldoni Stages China in 18th-Century Italy.” Theatre Journal 54 (2002): 203-21.

“Tracing the Literary Evolution of Puccini’s Turandot.” Romance Languages Annual 12 (2000): 292-302.

“New Worlds and Theater: Goldoni’s Exotic Comedies.” Annali d’ Italianistica 11 (1993): 213-24.