U.VA. PROFESSOR TIBOR WLASSICS HONORED
FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO ITALIAN STUDIES 

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., April 12 -- Tibor Wlassics, professor of
Italian at the University of Virginia, has been named honorary
president of the American Association of Italian Studies. The honor is
in recognition of his lifetime achievements and contributions to
education and scholarship in Italian language and culture in the
United States. 
	Wlassics, the William R. Kenan Professor of Italian in U.Va.'s
Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, has been a member of
the faculty since 1980.  He is the author of six major volumes of
Italian literary studies, including two on Dante and a sweeping
critical work on Cesare Pavese.
	Wlassics also founded and edits Lectura Dantis, a premier
scholarly journal devoted to Dante studies, and has edited a major
volume of introductory readings related to Dante's "Divine Comedy." He
received his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
	Wlassics was honored at the 17th annual conference of the
national Italian studies association earlier this year.
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April 11, 1997
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