Elena

Daniele
Department of French and Italian
311 Newcomb Hall - Tulane University
1229 Broadway Street
New Orleans, LA, 70116
Phone: 857-756-3154
edaniele@tulane.edu
On-line teaching portfolio: http://edaniele.weebly.com



EDUCATION


PhD - Italian Studies, 2014
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Dissertation title: First Representations of New World Cannibals (1493-1497)
Dissertation Committee: Caroline Castiglione, Brown University (Advisor)
Jorge Flores, European University Institute Ronald Martinez, Brown University

MA - Didattica dell'Italiano Lingua Non Materna, 2006
Universit per Stranieri, Perugia
Fields: Italian Teaching Methodologies, Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition
Studies

Laurea - Lettere con indirizzo demo-etno-antropologico, 2005
Universit La Sapienza, Facolt di Lettere e Scienze Umanistiche, Roma
Fields: Ethnology, Anthropology, Literature, Linguistics, History, History of Religions


RESEARCH INTERESTS

Italian, Travel Literature, Early Modern Europe, History of the Americas, Anthropology,
Ethnography

DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

My dissertation analyses the discursive trope of cannibalism as a recurrent mode of
representation of New World indigenous peoples in early modern travel accounts and other
documents related to the first stages of the exploration and colonization of the Americas
(1493-97). Drawing on the original documents of the Columbian enterprise, I discuss the
indebtedness of the discourse around New World cannibalism to pre-existent classical and
medieval literary traditions on monsters and man-eaters, as well as its adaptation to the
contingencies of the Columbian expedition. I mostly take into account problems inherent to
the practices of ethnographic observation and description, as well as questions of
authorship and readership of the texts.

Secondly, I analyze the corpus of literary materials that were quickly produced and
circulated throughout Europe as news of the New World spread, mostly within the Italian
diplomatic and mercantile milieu. Special attention is given to the ways in which mediated
interpretations and erudite re-workings of first-hand reports, in conjunction with the
demands of the public, further contributed to the creation and consolidation of a
stereotyped European discourse around the cannibalistic practices of New World
populations.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE



Visiting Assistant Professor
Tulane University - Department of French and Italian, 2013 - present
ITAL1010 Elementary Italian I
ITAL1020 Elementary Italian II
ITAL3130 Advanced Conversation and Composition
ITAL4020 Topics in 15th and 16th-Century Italian Literature: Italian Explorers of the New
World

Instructor
Brown University, 2008-2012
IT100: Elementary Italian I
IT200: Elementary Italian II
IT300: Intermediate Italian I
IT400: Intermediate Italian II

Brown in Rome Summer Program, 2011 - http://sssrome.it/summerprogram.php
St. Stephens School, Rome - Elementary Italian I, Intensive Summer Course

Universit per Stranieri di Perugia, 2006-2010
Elementary Italian
Intermediate Italian
Advanced Italian
Phonetics

Universit Pontificia Salesiana, Rome, Summer 2006
Elementary Italian I - Intensive Summer Course

AWARDS

2014 Leab Award The Rare Books and Manuscript Section, Association of College
and Research Libraries - The American Library Association.
Electronic Exhibition: Sugar and the Visual Imagination in the Atlantic World, circa 1600-
1850, The John Carter Brown Library.



Elena Daniele - Curriculum vitae

Graduate Student Travel Grant - American Association of Italian Studies

AAIS Conference, Eugene OR 2013

J. M. Stuart Fellowship - John Carter Brown Library, Academic Year 2012-13
The J. M. Stuart Fellowship is awarded yearly to a Brown Ph.D. student in the Humanities
whose dissertation topic relates to the early history and culture of the Americas.

CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS

Connecting Spanish and Portuguese Empires through Italian Reactions to the Exploration and
Colonization of the Americas, 14931522
Modern Language Association Conference, Vancouver 2015

New World Cannibalism in the European Imagination: Travel Fact and Travel Fiction
Sixteenth Century Society Conference, New Orleans 2014

Amazons, Cannibals, Men with a Tail and Other Wonders in the First Reports of the New World
New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Sarasota, FL 2014

Early Representations of New World People: the Italian Contribution
Sixteenth Century Society Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico 2013

Cannibals and Giants in Antonio Pigafettas Account of the First Voyage around the World
American Association of Italian Studies Conference, Eugene, OR 2013

From Anthropophagi to Cannibals: a Brief History of the Origin of the American Cannibal
Renaissance Society of America Conference, San Diego 2013

News of the New World between Spain and Italy
North East Modern Language Association Conference, Boston 2013

New World Cannibalism and the European Imagination
The John Carter Brown Library Fellows Lunch Talk, 2013

Interviews with Savages in Renaissance Italian Writings
Modern Language Association Conference, Boston 2013

Columbus Meets the Cannibals: the Literary Trope of Cannibalism between Ethnography and
Myth
Graduate Colloquium Series in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, Brown University,
2012

Early Modern European Disgust with American Cannibalism
American Comparative Literatures Association Conference, Providence, RI 2012

Early Italian Reports of American Cannibalism
North East Modern Language Association Conference, Rochester, NY 2012


Elena Daniele - Curriculum vitae

PUBLICATIONS

Article. Il re cannibale a Padova, Padova e il suo territorio (forthcoming).

Book Review. Nel laboratorio della storia. Una guida alle fonti dell'et moderna by Maria Pia
Paoli (ed), Sixteenth Century Journal (forthcoming).

Conference Proceedings. Note sullimmagine del selvaggio dell'Amazzonia, XXVIII
International Congress of Americanist Anthropology (Perugia, 2006). Quaderni di Thule. Atti
del XXVIII Convegno Internazionale di Americanistica, Centro Studi Americanistici Circolo
Amerindiano.

Translation. Intervista a Paulo Goias, in Bamonte G., Il problema dei marginali fra gli
indigeni dell'Amazzonia, Bulzoni, Roma, 2004.




OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND ACADEMIC SERVICE


Curatorial Assistant - The John Carter Brown Librarys Fall 2013 Exhibition
Curator: K. Dian Kriz (History of Art and Architecture, Brown)
The exhibition was in conjunction with the conference entitled "Sugar and Beyond
(October 2013), and focused on sugar in the early modern period, especially its
bibliographical and visual legacies.

Panel Organizer and Chair
The Americas Between History and Myth, 1492-1700
Renaissance Society of America Conference, New York, 2014

Renaissance Letters
Renaissance Society of America Conference, San Diego, 2013

The Western Fascination with Cannibalism
North East Modern Language Association Conference, Boston, 2013

Brown-Harvard Italian Studies Chiasmi Graduate Student Conference
Brown University - Harvard University, 2010-12

Research Associate The Garibaldi Panorama: Visualizing the Risorgimento
Brown University Library Center for Digital Scholarship 2007 and 2008
Collaborator in the digital project The Garibaldi Panorama: Visualizing the
Risorgimento
The G aribaldi/Risorgimento d igital a rchive s eeks to p rovide a c omprehensive r esource
for the interdisciplinary s tudy a nd teaching o f the life a nd d eeds o f the p rotagonist o f
the Italian u nification p rocess (1807-1882), a gainst t he h istorical b ackdrop o f 1 9th-
century E urope, r econstructed w ith the h elp o f m aterials from s pecial c ollections a t the
Brown U niversity libraries.

Elena Daniele - Curriculum vitae

Curatorial Assistant of the John Carter Brown Library Spring 2009 Exhibition
Atlantic Materia Medica
http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/materia%20medica/in
dex1.html
Curators: Ken Ward (John Carter Brown) and Adrin Lpez-Denis (History, Brown U).
The e xhibit focused o n the c ontribution o f t ransoceanic c irculation t o t he d evelopment
of s ome o f the h ealing p ractices, p ublic h ealth initiatives, a nd s cientific p rinciples t hat
lie a t the c ore o f m odern W estern m edicine.

Cultural Attach - Internship
Italian Consulate, Porto Alegre, Brazil April 2005 October 2005
Assistant in the organization of the Consulate's participation in the 2005 edition of the
Porto Alegre Book Fair.

LANGUAGES
Spanish (near native)
Portuguese (near native)
French (intermediate)
Catalan (intermediate)
German (intermediate)
Latin and ancient Greek (reading competence)

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP

Renaissance Society of America
Sixteenth Century Society
American Association for Italian Studies
Northeast Modern Language Association

REFERENCES

Caroline Castiglione, Associate Professor of Italian Studies - Brown University.
Caroline_Castiglione@brown.edu

Jorge Flores, Vasco Da Gama Professor of History of European Colonial and Post-Colonial
Systems -European University Institute.
Jorge.Flores@eui.eu

Ronald Martinez, Professor of Italian Studies - Brown University.
Ronald_Martinez@brown.edu

Cristina Abbona-Sneider, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies - Brown University.
Cristina_Abbona@brown.edu

Michael Syrimis, Associate Professor of Italian and Departmental Chair, Tulane University.
msyrimis@tulane.edu

Elena Daniele - Curriculum vitae