Simone Testa

Course Taught at the Institute
Florence: The Story of the City

Credentials
Royal Holloway University of London, Ph.D.

University of Edinburgh, MSc

University of Bologna, BA

Relevant Projects/Publications

Graphic Novel: Project creator and writer of the texts and co-author of Introduction of Vita di Niccolò Machiavelli cittadino fiorentino (Bologna: Minerva edizioni, forthcoming in February 2019).

Monograph: Italian Academies and their Networks (1525-1700). From Local to Global, in Italian and Italian American Studies series, ed. by Stanislao Pugliese (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), 304pp.

Critical Edition: Scipione di Castro e il suo trattato politico. Testo critico e traduzione inglese inedita del Seicento, in Cinquecento series (Manziana [Rome]: Vecchiarelli, 2012), 203pp.

Reviews

Machiavelli. Enciclopedia machiavelliana, 3 vols, ed. by Gennaro Sasso e Giorgio Inglese (Rome: Istituto dell’enciclopedia, 2014), in Modern Language Review, 112 (2017), pp. 156-59

Gli Incogniti e l’Europa, ed. Davide Conrieri (Bologna: I libri di Emil, 2011), in Modern Language Review, 108 (2013), pp. 311-12

Storie inglesi. L’Inghilterra vista dall’Italia tra storia e romanzo. Con l’edizione del Cappuccino Scozzese di Giovan Battista Rinuccini (1644) e del Cromuele di Girolamo Graziani (1671), ed. Clizia Carminati and Stefano Villani (Pisa, Edizioni della Normale, 2011), in Modern Language Review, 107 (2012), pp. 1271-72

The first translations of Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’. From the sixteenth to the first half of the nineteenth Century, ed. Roberto De Pol (Amsterdam–New York: Rodopi, 2010); Alessandra Petrina, Machiavelli in the British Isles: two early modern translations of ‘The Prince’ (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), in Modern Language Review, 107 (2012), pp. 634-36

Guido Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love. Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), in Italian Studies, 65, 3 (2010).

Teaching Philosophy

I try to convey the idea that to speak about the past is a way of speaking about the present, and also that “history is a foreign country”. I also aim to make students aware how much their experience in Florence is part of an ancient tradition, to which they bring new life and emphasis by looking at the past with the eyes of their generation.

Most Rewarding Moment

I love when students participate in the class with questions and doubts, and when they realize the direct link between the past and the present.

Favorite Quote

“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn” (John Cotton Dana)