Overview
Marilyn Migiel '75 is professor of Romance Studies in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell. Migiel received her A.B. in Medieval Studies (as an independent major) from Cornell University in 1975 and her Ph.D. in Italian Language and Literature from Yale University in 1981.
While Migiel teaches and works on a wide array of texts and authors from the Italian Middle Ages to the present day, she is known primarily for her feminist readings of medieval and Renaissance Italian literature and for her studies of Giovanni Boccaccio鈥檚 work, especially the Decameron.
Having benefited immensely from her undergraduate study with Cornell faculty who were outstanding teachers, scholars, and writers, Migiel is deeply committed to undergraduate education and to the teaching of writing.
Research Focus
- Italian literature and culture (especially 1200-1600)
- Feminist criticism
Publications
Books
- (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022), recipient of the MLA鈥檚 2021 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Prize for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies
- (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), recipient of the MLA鈥檚 2016 Howard R. Marraro Prize for outstanding scholarship in Italian.
- (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), recipient of the MLA鈥檚 2004 Howard R. Marraro Prize for outstanding scholarship in Italian.
- Gender and Genealogy in Tasso鈥檚 鈥淕erusalemme Liberata鈥 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993).
Edited volume
- Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, eds. Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
Essays
- 鈥淲hat Can a Maidservant Do for You? Answers from the Men and Women of Boccaccio鈥檚 Decameron.鈥 Rivista di Letteratura Tardogotica e Quattrocentesca 5 (January 2023): 139-51.
- "In Boccaccio We Trust?" MLN 134 (January 2019): 1-21.
- Heliotropia 15 (2018): 253-66.
- "Reading the Decameron with Matteo Bandello: Novella 2.24." Spunti e ricerche 32 (2017): 141-51.
- in The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio, eds. Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels, and Stephen J. Milner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 171-84.
- Heliotropia 7:1-2 (2010): 5-30.
- 鈥淭he Untidy Business of Gender Studies: Or, Why It鈥檚 Almost Useless to Ask if the Decameron is Feminist,鈥 in Boccaccio and Feminist Criticism, eds. Thomas C. Stillinger and F. Regina Psaki (Chapel Hill: Annali d鈥橧talianistica, 2006), 217-33.
