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Kate Driscoll

Assistant Professor of Romance Studies
Romance Studies
205 Language Center, Box 90257, Durham, NC 27708
205 Language Center, Box 90257, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Presentations & Appearances


"Epic Loss and Parental Lament in Margherita Costa’s Flora feconda," co-presenter with Jessica Goethals - Virtual Global Symposium on Pregnancy Loss · October 17, 2025 International Meeting or Conference University of Massachusetts Lowell, The Sasso Corbaro Foundation for the Medical Humanities, and the Medical Humanities Initiative at Georgetown University
"Siren Calls and Swan Songs: Margherita Costa's Epic Contests in the Mediterranean" - Theater Without Borders · June 2025 International Meeting or Conference co-presenter with Jessica Goethals, Tangier, Morocco
“Who Needs Glass Slippers When You’ve Got Combat Boots? The Wily, Weird, Queenly, Queer Genealogies of Marfisa ‘Gonzaga’” - American Association for Italian Studies · March 2025 International Meeting or Conference Philadelphia
The Performance of Procreation (roundtable) · March 2025 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America, Boston
"Decolonial Tasso: Rereading the Atlantic Utopia" - Annual Conference · March 2025 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America, Boston
"Utopia incognita: Tasso and the Decolonial Imagination" - Annual Conference · January 2025 International Meeting or Conference MLA, New Orleans
"Baroque Ariosto: Narrative-Operatic varietà in Il Palazzo incantato (Rossi-Rospigliosi, 1642)" · November 2024 International Meeting or Conference Early Modern Rome 5, Rome, Italy
"L’ospitalità letteraria: Torquato Tasso e le sue lettrici" · October 2024 Invited Talk University of Zurich - Zurigo in italiano, Zurich, Switzerland
Pedagogies of the Italian Chivalric Epic (roundtable) - American Association for Italian Studies · June 2024 International Meeting or Conference Sorrento, Italy
"Accoglienza and Renewal in Torquato Tasso’s Rome (1592–1595)" - Annual Conference · June 2024 International Meeting or Conference American Association for Italian Studies, Sorrento, Italy
"Listening for the Snatch: The Trouble with ‘Hereness’ in the Harshness of Tasso" - Annual Conference · March 2024 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America, Chicago
Conveying the Renaissance: A Tribute to Charles Ross (roundtable) · March 2024 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America, Chicago
Epic Errancy: The Renaissance Virago and her Macabre Genealogies - FHI faculty lecture series · November 2023 Lecture Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Written in Gold: Mining Women’s Poetic Labor in the Renaissance its Reception - Sixteenth Century Society Conference · October 2023 International Meeting or Conference Baltimore
The Stranger and the Star: Masking Torquato Tasso in the Diva’s Literary Imagination - Tasso Forever Conference · May 2023 International Meeting or Conference Sant'Anna Institute, Sorrento, Italy
Renaissance Intermediality across Cultures (roundtable) · March 2023 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Loss and its Reverberance: Lament and Polyvocality in Dante and Ariosto · March 2023 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico
RSA Conference Chair’s Panel: Fellowships in the U.S. and Elsewhere · March 2023 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Pedagogies of Critical Race, Diasporas, and Migrations Studies (roundtable) - American Association for Italian Studies · February 2023 Instructional Course, Workshop, or Symposium Critical Race, Diasporas, and Migrations Caucus, virtual
‘E quando è tratto, e se ne fa lavoro,/ è così ricco e bel, come l’altr’oro’: Reception at Work in Women’s Eighteenth-Century Italian Lyric · January 2023 International Meeting or Conference MLA Annual Conference, San Francisco
'Fatto servo ben vil dell’altrui glorie/argomento felice a nuove storie’: Lament as Counternarrative on the New World Stage - The Performance of Genre across Renaissance Europe and Beyond · September 2022 International Meeting or Conference UNC Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
Renaissances Elsewhere · May 2022 International Meeting or Conference American Association for Italian Studies, online conference
Captive Utopias: Plotting the Paradise-Prison on the Island Epic Stage · April 2022 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America, Dublin, Ireland
'Pour être dans les fers n’es-tu plus souveraine?’: Captive Cartographies of Race and Empire in Meyerbeer’s "Vasco de Gama" - Music and Power in the Long Nineteenth Century · December 2021 International Meeting or Conference Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena, Italy
Decolonizing Dissonance between Tenochtitlán and La Serenissima: Collective Historiography in Vivaldi’s "Motezuma" (1733), - Opera Studies Conference · June 2021 International Meeting or Conference University of Bayreuth, online conference
'Con licenza del gran padre Dante’: Puccini’s "Trittico" and the American Premiere of the Commedia in Opera, from New York to Buenos Aires - Tra liti sì lontani: Dante for the Americas · May 2021 International Meeting or Conference Dante Society of America, online conference
Thinking Race with the Early Moderns · May 2021 International Meeting or Conference American Association for Italian Studies, online conference
Curse, Wail, Hiss, Roar: What Do Furious Men Sound Like? · April 2021 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America, online conference
Cries of Conquest: Men’s Wounded Song and the Gendered Politics of Lament - Masculinities in the Premodern World: Continuities, Change, and Contradictions · November 2020 International Meeting or Conference University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Armida at the World’s Edge: Refugee Statecraft as Regal Stagecraft in Baroque Opera and Beyond - 'Qual musico gentil': Torquato Tasso and Music · April 2020 International Meeting or Conference University of Massachusetts Amherst, online conference
'La voce afflitta movendo, disse le parole estreme’: Sonic Textures and Affect Theories from Tasso to Monteverdi · January 2020 International Meeting or Conference Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Seattle, Washington
Tradurre il pensiero di Edith Simcox (1844–1901), scrittrice e femminista · June 2019 International Meeting or Conference Traduction, au carrefour de la Littérature Comparée et de la Linguistique Contrastive, Villa Finaly, Florence, Italy
Unsealed Potential: Isabella Andreini’s Lettere and the Evolution of a Genre - Society for Italian Studies UK Biennial Conference · June 2019 International Meeting or Conference University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland
‘Ecco Tarquinia viene, Amor s’appressa’: Tarquinia Molza across Tasso’s "Rime" and "Dialoghi" · March 2019 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Society of America, Toronto, Canada
Epic Patience and Exemplary Vocality in Louise-Geneviève Gillot de Sainctonge’s "Griselde" (1714) and Carlo Goldoni-Antonio Vivaldi’s "Griselda" (1735) · March 2019 International Meeting or Conference Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Washington, D.C.
Heiress to Fiction: Marfisa d’Este from Literary Texts to Macabre Fantasies · November 2018 International Meeting or Conference Sixteenth Century Society Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Envoicing Female Eloquence on the Seicento Stage: Musical-Theatrical Interpretations of Ariosto’s Alcina and Tasso’s Armida - Intersections: Between Music and Theatre in Seicento Italy · September 2018 International Meeting or Conference University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
'Fui nobil servo ed compagno’: Female Patronage and the Poet’s Liberation in Tasso’s "Alle Signore Principesse" · June 2018 International Meeting or Conference American Association for Italian Studies, Sorrento, Italy
Strategizing the Supplicant’s Voice: Torquato Tasso’s Plea for Female Patronage in "Alle Signore Principesse di Ferrara" · March 2018 International Meeting or Conference Renaissance Conference of Southern California, Pasadena, California
Marvel in the Mirror: Tasso’s Armida between Poetry and Poetic Theory · April 2016 International Meeting or Conference UC Berkeley Renaissance and Early Modern Studies Symposium, Berkeley, California
New Tunes for the Strains of Love: Veronica Franco and the Figure of the Female Orpheus · October 2015 International Meeting or Conference UC Berkeley Italian Studies Department, Berkeley, California
Il viaggio santo di Torquato Tasso: Rome in Tasso’s Late Poetry · May 2012 International Meeting or Conference NYU Florence - Italian Studies Symposium, Florence, Italy

Service to the Profession


RSA Boston, Conference Program Committee · November 2024 - March 2025 Committee Service Renaissance Society of America
RSA Chicago, Conference Program Committee · August 2023 - March 2024 Event/Organization Administration Renaissance Society of America
Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender Liaison to the Sixteenth Century Society Conference · March 2023 Event/Organization Administration
Associate Editor - Italian Studies Channel · September 2022 Event/Organization Administration New Books Network
RSA San Juan, Conference Program Committee · 2022 Committee Service Renaissance Society of America
Managing Editor · June 2021 - December 2022 Editorial Activities I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance
Co-Director - Critical Race, Diasporas and Migration Caucus · May 2021 Committee Service American Association for Italian Studies
Executive Committee Member of the “Opera and Musical Performance” Forum · January 2021 Committee Service Modern Language Association
Advisory Board Member · 2020 Committee Service Tasso in Music Project: Digital Editions of the Settings of Torquato Tasso’s Poetry, c. 1570–1640, https://www.tassomusic.org/