Teodolinda Barolini is the Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Medieval Academy of America. From 1997 to 2003, Professor Barolini served as fifteenth president of the Dante Society of America. Teodolinda Barolini received her B.A. in classics in 1972 from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. in Italian and Ph.D. in comparative literature from Columbia in 1973 and 1978. Professor Barolini taught at the University of California at Berkeley and New York University before returning to Columbia University in 1992 as Chair of the Department of Italian, serving in that capacity until 2004, and again from 2011-2014. She was named Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor in 1999. Barolini's research focuses on thirteenth- and fourteenth- century Italian literary culture, its relation to classical antiquity, and its reception through the centuries to our own day.