Mary DeCoste

Education

 2000 Ph.D. Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University

1993 B.A. (summa cum laude) Department of Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Publications

Books:

Europe in Its Own Eyes, Europe in the Eyes of the Other. Co-edited with David MacDonald. Waterloo ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014.

Hopeless Love: Boiardo, Ariosto, and Narratives of Queer Female Desire.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Chapters in Books:

"Italian Food on Foreign Tables: Giacomo Castelvetro's Exile." Europe in Its Own Eyes, Europe in the Eyes of the Other. Ed. David MacDonald and Mary-Michelle DeCoste. Waterloo ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014 (245-251).

"Performing Masculinity in the Land of the Man-Killing Women.”  Early Modern Masculinities.  Ed. Gerry Milligan and Jane Tylus.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010 (169-184). 

“Knots of Desire: Female Homoeroticism in Orlando Furioso XXV.” Queer Italia.  Ed. Gary Cestaro. New York: Palgrave, 2004 (55-69).

Articles

"Fables and Faith: Favoleggiare in the Commedia." Quaderni d’italianistica, Official Journal of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies 38: 1 (2017): 217-222.

“Reading Dante’s Vita Nuova.”  Quaderni d’italianistica, Official Journal of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies 25: 2 (2004): 3-19.

“Filomena, Dioneo, and an Ass.”  Heliotropia 2:1 (2004) 
Read the article from Mary DeCoste

Reviews

Pucci, Antonio.  Cantari della Reina d’Oriente.  Ed. Attilio Motta and William Robins.  Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 2007.  Appearing in: University of Toronto Quarterly 78.1 (Winter 2008/2009) (233-234).

Creative Writing

"Lilacs" (this poem was selected as the "Editor's Choice" of this issue) and "To My Mother" The Road Not Taken, (Spring 2020). "About My Son," "The cleaner," "Homecoming" Shot Glass Journal, Issue #30 (January 2020). "Is That All There Is?" and "Mistaken Identity" Mezzo Cammin, Vol. 14, issue #2 (Winter, 2019). "The Stingy Carver" The Lyric, Vol. 96, number 4 (Fall 2016). "The Bathroom Door" The Lyric Vol. 94, number 4 (Fall 2014).

Presentations

"Renaissance Lovers and Fools." Paper delivered at the annual conference of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies, St. Catharines, May 25, 2014. "Agricultural and Intellectual Labour in the Italian Renaissance." Paper delivered at the annual conference of the American Association for Italian Studies, Charleston, South Carolina, May 4, 2012.

“Food and Italian Renaissance Identity.”  Paper delivered at the annual Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque Interdisciplinary Symposium, Miami, Florida, February 18, 2011. 

“Agricultural Poetry and Agricultural Knowledge in Renaissance Italy”  Paper delivered at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America, Venice, Italy, April 8, 2010.  (I presented this paper as part of a panel I organized called “Genre as an Instrument of Scientific Inquiry.”) 

“Botanical Gastronomy in Sixteenth-Century Italy”  Paper delivered at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America, Los Angeles CA, March 21, 2009.  (I presented this paper as part of a panel I organized called “Writing about Food in Renaissance Italy.")

“Se io avessi villa . . .: Alberti’s Giannozzo and His Country Estate”  Paper delivered at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, Illinois, April 4, 2008.

“Deconstructing Masculinity in the Land of the Femine Omicide.”  Paper delivered at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America, Miami, Florida, March 22, 2007.

“‘Troppo Dishonesto’: A Venetian Woman Executed in Rome, 1501.”  Paper delivered at the annual Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque Interdisciplinary Symposium, Miami, Florida, February 24, 2006.

“Boiardo’s Last Words.”  Paper delivered at the annual conference of the Northeast Modern Language Association, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 1, 2005.

“Fantastical Nursing Bodies.” Paper delivered at the annual conference of the American Association of Italian Studies, Ottawa, April 30, 2004.

“Italian Food on Foreign Tables: Giacomo Castelvetro’s Exile.”  Paper delivered at the annual conference of the American Association of Italian Studies, Washington D.C., March 14, 2003.

“Bradamante and Fiordispina: Three Conclusions to Boiardo’s Unfinished Tale.”  Paper delivered in the division of Medieval and Renaissance Italian literature session at the annual conference of the Modern Language Association, San Francisco CA, December 28, 1998.

“Dioneo’s Nature in Decameron V, 10.”  Paper delivered at the annual conference of the American Association of Italian Studies, Winston-Salem NC, February 22, 1997.

“The Reader as Witness in Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo.”  Paper delivered at the annual conference of the American Association of Teachers of Italian, Philadelphia PA, November 24, 1996.

“Knots of Desire: Female Homoeroticism in Orlando Furioso XXV.”  Paper delivered at the annual conference of the American Association of Italian Studies, St. Louis MO, April 12, 1996. 

Awards

Craig Hugh Smyth Visiting Fellowship, Villa I Tatti (Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence, Italy), January-March 2010

Visiting Scholar Position

American Academy in Rome, October 7 - October 28, 2019.