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Dr Bryan Brazeau

Dr Bryan Brazeau

Associate Professor (Liberal Arts)

Head of Liberal Arts

Director of Undergraduate Studies
Venice Academic Lead
Departmental Study Abroad Coordinator
and International Partnerships Manager


Email: B dot Brazeau at warwick dot ac dot uk

Phone: +44 (0) 24 765 22764

Room: R3.31, Ramphal Building

Qualifications

  • Ph.D.: Italian Studies (New York University, 2015)
  • M.A.: Italian Studies (New York University, 2010)
  • B.A.: Western Society and Culture: Liberal Arts College (Concordia University, Montreal, 2008)
  • Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)
  • Fellow of the Warwick International Higher Education Academy (WIHEA)

About

I have been passionate about interdisciplinary Liberal Arts education since my undergraduate degree at the Liberal Arts College of Concordia University in Montréal, Canada, where I was born and raised. During the course of this degree, I developed an interest in early modern Spanish and Italian literatures. In 2008, I moved to New York where I studied Italian at New York University, obtaining my M.A. in 2010 and my Ph.D. in 2015 with a dissertation project on changing definitions of heroism in sixteenth-century Latin and vernacular Christian epics written in Italy.

I joined Warwick in 2015 as Research Fellow in Italian Studies on the project Aristotelianism in the Italian Vernacular, funded by the European Research Council. Along with a wide range of interdisciplinary modules, I have taught all levels of Italian language and culture from the middle ages to present day, along with classical Greco-Roman epic poetry, medieval and renaissance French literature, early modern English epic, and renaissance Latin. I have also designed an introductory course to the Digital Humanities.

I joined the School for Cross-faculty Studies in September 2017. Since then, I have occupied a range of leadership positions in the department and the School, building and expanding our Study Abroad and international partnerships, while also launching the SCFS Venice programme as part of the Warwick International Intensive Summer Programme. I teach a wide range of interdisciplinary modules that employ problem-based and place-based learning, and strongly believe in the importance of student support. In 2022, I won the Warwick Award for Personal Tutoring Excellence, and in 2023, I won the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence.

My research focusses primarily on late medieval and early modern Italian literature (Torquato Tasso, and Lucrezia Marinella), renaissance philosophy, classical reception, and poetic theory. I also work on Dante and medieval philosophy, book history, the intersections of Spanish and Italian early modern literary cultures (Cervantes) and the visual reception of renaissance art in the early twentieth century. My current book project—Belonging to Genre: Lucrezia Marinella and Narrative Selfhood in Counter-Reformation Italy—explores the narrative oeuvre of Lucrezia Marinella with a particular focus on her epics to discuss how she frames her multiple senses of identity (Venetian, Catholic, and as an early modern feminist).

In 2020, I published an edited collection of essays on new perspectives in the study of early modern poetics—The Reception of Aristotle's Poetics in the Italian Renaissance and Beyondwhich emerges from a conference and graduate workshop that I organized at the Newberry Library in March 2017. I am a member of the editorial board of Italian StudiesLink opens in a new window and a series editor for Sources in Early Poetics (Brill). I am also a co-organiser of the multi-year Processing the PandemicLink opens in a new window series—a collaboration between the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at Warwick, the Newberry Library's D'Arcy McNickle Centre for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and the Newberry's Center for Renaissance Studies.


Teaching and research interests

  • Italian renaissance epic (Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, Marinella)
  • Christian epic
  • Early modern poetics
  • Literary criticism
  • Counter-Reformation culture
  • History of emotions and affect theory
  • Intersections of Early Modern literary cultures in Southern Europe (Spain and Italy)
  • Dante and medieval philosophy
  • Transhistorical approaches to sustainability
  • Early modern reception of Dante and Petrarch (in Italy, France, England, and Spain)
  • Digital humanities
  • Tourism studies
  • Translation studies (particularly early modern English translations of Italian works)
  • Language and literature pedagogy
  • Problem-based learning
  • Transviciniar learning

Selected publications

Edited collections

Peer-reviewed articles and chapters

Working Papers

  • Internationalisation of the Curriculum: Insights and Reflections.
    (Co-Lead Author; Internal Document Produced by the WIHEA Internationalisation Learning Circle currently being revised for publication)

Online publications and podcasts


Fellowships, awards, and grants

Teaching fellowships

  • July 2020 — Liberal Arts Digital Bridging Materials For Rising Second-Year Students. Warwick International Higher Education Academy (WIHEA) Project Grant.
  • June 2020 — with Rebecca Stone, Student Perceptions of Digital Assessment in the Faculty of Arts. Warwick International Higher Education Academy (WIHEA) Project Grant.
  • January-May 2019—A Sustainable Serenissima: Water, Fire, and the Future of Venice. Warwick Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) Strategic Project Grant.

Research fellowships

  • September 2019—Warwick-Newberry Early Career Fellowship
    For research at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
  • August 2016—Warwick-Newberry Transatlantic Fellowship
    For research at the Newberry Library in Chicago
  • June 2016—Warwick Humanities Research Centre Summer Fellowship
    For archival research in Florence and Milan, Italy
  • June 2015—FRQSC* Postdoctoral Research Startup Grant
    *Fonds de Recherche du Québec, Société et la Culture 


Event-related fellowships

  • June 2022– Warwick Humanities Research Centre; Funding to organize 'Processing the Pandemic III: Hope' symposium (April 2023)
  • September 2016—Warwick Humanities Research Fund; The Bibliographic Society
    Funding to organize ‘Contexts of Early Modern Literary Criticism’ symposium (March 2017).


Editorial and Review Activity

  • I am a series editor responsible for Italian Renaissance submissions as part of the Brill series, Sources in Early Poetics.
  • I am a member of the Editorial Board of Italian Studies.

I have served as a reviewer for the following journals/presses:

  • Italian Culture
  • Italian Studies
  • The Italianist
  • Philological Quarterly
  • Renaissance Quarterly
  • Bristol University Press

External Examining / Promotion Review

I am currently the external examiner for Durham University's Liberal Arts and Joint Honours Arts Programmes.

I am currently the external examiner for Oxford Brookes' Liberal Arts Programme.

I have served as a Higher Education Expert / external promotions reviewer for LSE's Education Career Track.

Student advice and feedback hours

During Term 3 (2023-2024) my office hours are bookable by clicking HERELink opens in a new window.

    Teaching (AY 23-24)

    These modules will be offered as intensive two-week modules in June/July 2024 as part of the Warwick International Intensive Study Programme (WIISP)Link opens in a new window.

    These modules are offered in alternating academic years (2019-2020, 2021-2022, 2023-2024, 2025-2026).

    These modules are offered in alternating academic years (2020-2021, 2022-2023, 2024-2025, 2026-2027).

    This is a core module for first-year Liberal Arts students and is not open to external students.

    Recent and upcoming talks


    "'More Than a Feeling': Epic Catharsis in Torquato Tasso’s Narrative Theory," to be presented at Classics and the Bible in Early Modern European Tragedy conference organised by Angelica Vedelago—Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Munich, Germany (June 2024)

    "Non credute e non credibil cose": Toruato Tasso and the Nightmare of Modernity," presented at the 75th annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, IL (March, 2024).

    "Torquato Tasso and Lucrezia Marinella: New Origins for the Modern Novel?,’ presented at “Tasso Forever” conference organised by Laura Benedetti – Sant’Anna Institute, Sorrento, Italy (May, 2023)."

    Roundtable Discussant, The Global RenaissanceLink opens in a new window. (Wednesday, 16 November, 2022.) Virtual Roundtable organised by the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies (CRRS) at the University of Toronto.

    Welcome remarks, collection presentation, conclusions, presented at Processing the Pandemic I: Loss, the Newberry Library, Chicago (April 2022). Conference organised by Rose Miron, Bryan Brazeau, and Christopher Fletcher.

    "Highway to Heaven? Dissimulating Christian Leadership in Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata," presented at The Prince and the Condottiero in Italian Humanism and Renaissance: Literature, History, Political Theory and Art, The University of Warwick (June, 2021).

    "Sustainability in Paradise? An Ecocritical Approach to Paradise Spaces in Italian Renaissance Epic," Keynote lecture, presented at "Changing the Cultural Climate with Ecocriticism and Ecolinguistics" (May, 2021).

    "The Gaze of Empire Between East and West: Re-Imagining Global Encounters in Italian Baroque Epics by Women," Public lecture, presented at the University of Toronto's Italian Studies Department (April, 2021).

    "Games Without Frontiers: Multilingualism and Interdisciplinarity in Problem-Based Learning," presented at Warwick-Monash MITN (Migration, Identity, and Translation Network) (June, 2020).

    "Field-Based Teaching at Warwick in Venice: Challenges and Opportunities," presented at Warwick Education Forum, University of Warwick (July, 2019)

    Engagement

    Key Texts in the Renaissance: Love, Friendship, and Connection. Community Reading Group Organiser (2020-2021).

    Foundational Texts for the Renaissance, Reading Group Convenor (2019-2020): Saint Augustine, City of God.

    Student Perception of Digital Assessment in the Faculty of Arts, Co-Director (2020).


    Media appearances

    Two must reads for people curious about Liberal Arts

    Paradise found: Dr Bryan Brazeau on the immeasurable value of a Liberal Arts degree

    The Dispatchist: Episode 29 - Infernovember 3, Violence and Deceit

    Where RA Now? Episode 52: Bryan Brazeau, GSAS '15 PhD Italian Studies

    LDCU Warwick: Talking Online Learning with Becca Stone and Bryan Brazeau