Gandolfo Cascio is assistant professor of Italian literature and Translation studies.

He read Classics at the University of Palermo, received an MA in Italian studies with a specialization in literary translation (>< Dutch) from the University of Amsterdam, and holds a PhD in Comparative literature awarded by Utrecht University.

His research focuses on the aesthetics and philology of reception. In this area, he is interested in the relationships among writers, particularly the creative dynamics of stylistic appropriation and the practice of poet-translators.
Moreover, he is engaged in the field of digital literary archives.

On these matters, Cascio authored the monographs Michelangelo in Parnaso. La ricezione delle “Rime” tra gli scrittori (Marsilio 2019, English translation: Brill 2022); Dolci detti. Dante, la letteratura e i poeti (Marsilio 2021, Nino Martoglio Prize for non-fiction); and published articles in leading journals (“Paragone Letteratura”, “Nuovi Argomenti”, “Rivista di letteratura italiana”, “Contemporanea”, “Mythos”, “I Tatti. Studies in the Italian Renaissance”, “Forum Italicum”, “Letteratura & Arte”, “Studi novecenteschi”), some of which have been collected in the volume Le ore del meriggio. Saggi critici (Il Convivio 2020, G.A. Borgese Award).
Furthermore, of Silvana Grasso’s œuvre he set up the first edition of Me pudet. Poesie 1994-2017 (Edizioni ETS 2019, Napoli Cultural Classic Prize for the critical apparatus), and re-edited for the Feltrinelli paperbacks La pupa di zucchero (2019), and La ddraunàra. I racconti (2020).

Dr. Cascio’s teaching, academic work and community engagement find a synthesis in the project Observatory on Dante Studies, which he founded in 2016 and leads.
It carries out critical analysis from an interdisciplinary and transmedia perspective which offers an up-to-date, plural and transnational view of Dantean reception and readership.

He also serves as editor in chief of the series Literary Reception & Art Reception, and i quaderni di poesia, as co-editor of the Archivio Silvana Grasso, and coordinates the poetry translation section of “Letteratura e Pensiero”.

At present - combining his expertise as a reception historian, Dante scholar and translator - he is engaged in an annotated version into Italian of the essays on the Divine Comedy that Giuseppe Antonio Borgese wrote during his American years.