Headshot of Dr.Anthony Russell

Dr. Anthony Russell

Associate Professor of English and Italian Studies
Coordinator, Italian Studies Program
Curriculum Vitae

  • Profile
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    • Grants and Fellowships

      FRC Summer Fellowship, University of Richmond, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2016, 2015

      NEA Shakespeare in America Grant for Quill Theatre (co-written), 2014-2015

      UR Downtown Community Project Grant & UR Downtown Faculty Fellow (UR Center for Civic Engagement), 2014-2015

      Curriculum Internationalization Grant, University of Richmond, 2004

      National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers ($30,000), 1999-2000

      Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, 1990-91

      Yale University Fellowship, 1988-1990

      Sterling Prize Fellow, Yale University, 1988-1990

      Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, 1986-1988

    • Awards

      Outstanding Teacher Award, South Atlantic Association of Departments of English, 2004

      Distinguished Educator Award, University of Richmond, 2002

      Nominated for John Addison Porter Prize for outstanding dissertation, Yale University, 1994

       Sterling Prize Fellow, Yale University, 1988-1990

      Outstanding Teacher Award, South Atlantic Association of Departments of English, 2004

      Distinguished Educator Award, University of Richmond, 2002

    • Presentations

      Selected Presentations

      • Invited lecture (Nov. 30, 2021): “The Rewards of Virtù and the Religion of Art in Vasari’s Lives: The Case of Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi.” Medici Archive Project webinar series (Florence).
      • “The Last shall be First: Vasari’s ‘O’ and the Word Made Flesh in the Life of Giotto.” Paper presented at the Spring 2022 Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America in Dublin.
      • “’Faceva agl’occhi compassione nel vedere’: Vasari on carne and Incarnation.” Paper presented at the Spring 2021 Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America.
      • “’Newly performed by that rare Italian master’: Miracles in Winter’s Tale and Vasari’s ” Paper presented at the Spring 2019 Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America.
      • “’La forza della virtù’: Vasari on Skill and Holiness.”  Paper presented at the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium: On the Peripheries of the Reformation (October 2017)
      • Presentation of play, “Shakepseare in Love,” for the Virginia Repertory Theatre. Part of an ongoing series entitled “Four Questions” conceived together with Susan Davenport from Virginia Rep. (Fall 2017)
      • “From Beatrice to Mona Lisa: Love and Grace in Vasari’s Vite.” Paper presented at the Spring 2016 Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America.
      • “Equivocation and equivocation.” Talk delivered October 12, 2014, for Four Thoughts Series sponsored by University of Richmond and Virginia Rep.

    • Institutional Service

      • Coordinator, Italian Studies Section, LLC (2017- present)

      • Arts & Sciences Steering Committee (2023- present)

      • Faculty Research Committee (2023- present)

      • University of Richmond Finance Committee (2021-2023)

      • Faculty Senate (Division 1) (2019-2022)

      • Chair and member, Committee on Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (UR, 2017-2021)

      • President, Board of Directors of Richmond city’s Quill Theatre (2014-2020)

      • Cultural Affairs Committee (UR, 2017-2019)

      • Faculty Fellow and Director of UR Fulbright Program and CLAC (UR, 2016-2018)

      • Associate Dean, Office of International Education (UR, 2016-17)

      • Ad Hoc Committee on Promotion and Reviews (UR, 2015-17)

      • General Education Committee (UR, 2013-15)

      • Chair, English Department Assessment Committee (UR, 2007-2009)

      • Coordinator, English Department Graduate Program (UR, 1997-2006)

      • Member of Steering and Curriculum Committees for the Task Force on Undergraduate Education (UR, 2003-2006)

      • Founded Italian program and Italian Studies Major & Minor and was Coordinator of both (1996-2006).

      • Initiated and helped to oversee exchange program with Universitá di Ferrara, Università di Verona, & abroad Program at Umbra in Perugia and at the Scuola Palazzo Malvisi in Ravenna.

      • Advisor for Study Abroad students (Italy), undeclared students, Master’s students, and Majors

      • Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Concentration in Medieval & Renaissance Studies

      • Coordinator, Comparative Literature Concentration

      • Coordinator, National Endowment of the Humanities Seminar & Lecture Series, 1994

      • Member of the Faculty Research Committee (2002-2005)

  • Selected Publications
    Books
    William Shakespeare & 21st Century Culture, Politics, and Leadership: Bard Bites. Co-edited with Kristen Bezio (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Press, April 2021). 261 pages.
    Journal Articles

    Review of Eugenio Refini, Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy. Forthcoming in Renaissance Quarterly.

    Under double-blind review at Word & Image: “’Eccovi il disegno’: Vasari’s ‘O’ and the life of Giotto” (submitted August 2023). This is the top journal on language and art. Asked to revise and resubmit in March 2024. 

    “‘But Angels Don’t Have Wings’: Art, Religion, and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in Gilio’s Dialogue on the Errors and Abuses of Painters.” Special issue of the journal Religions, entitled Ritual, Spectacle, and Drama in the Medieval & Early Modern World, ed. Kristin Bezio and Samantha Dressell 14(12) (2023), 19 pages.

    "Literature, Pandemic, and the Insufficiency of Survival: Boccaccio's Decameron and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven." Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies 1 (2022) pp. 32-49.

    “Portia Goes to Washington: Shakespeare and Judge Kavanaugh,” Forum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies, 53:2 (August 2019): 602-606.(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0014585819831682)

    “‘La forza della virtù’: Vasari on Skill and Holiness in the Lives of Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 23:1 (Spring 2020): 101-124.

    “Student Interest,” in South Atlantic Association of Departments of English Newsletter (Fall 2005): 10-13.

    “‘Thou seest mee strive for life’: Magic, Virtue, and the Poetic Imagination in Donne's Anniversaries.” Studies in Philology, 95:4 (Fall, 1998): 374-410.

    “Dante's ‘forte imaginazione’ and Beatrice's ‘occulta virtù’: Lovesickness and the Supernatural in the Vita Nuova.” Mediaevalia, vol. 22, no. 1 (Fall 1998): 1-33.

    "Romantic Agonies: Human Suffering and the Ethical Sublime." Co-authored with Terryl Givens. In Romanticism Across the Disciplines, edited by Prof. Larry Peer (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998), 231-253.

    "Epic Agon and the Strategy of Reform in Folengo and Rabelais." Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 34, no. 2 (1997): 119-148.

    Book Chapters

    “Introduction. ‘I that please some, try all’: Shakespeare this Time.” Co-written with Kristin Bezio. In William Shakespeare & 21st Century Culture, Politics, and Leadership: Bard Bites (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Press, April 2021) pp. 1-9.

    “’Lies like truth’: Macbeth and the American Dream.”In William Shakespeare & 21st Century Culture, Politics, and Leadership: Bard Bites(Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Press, April 2021) pp. 67-89.

    “’Sans artifice est ma simplicité’: Sincerité et Vertu dans les Regrets et Astrophil and Stella,” in Pascale Chiron & Lidia Radi (eds.), La Valeur des Lettres à la Renaissance. Débats et Réflexions autour de la Vertu de la Littérature (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016), pp. 169-190.

    “Spirits, Vitality, and Creation in the Poetics of Tommaso Campanella and John Donne,” in J. Fleming (ed.), The Invention of Discovery, 1500-1700 (Surrey, UK: Ashgate Press, 2012), pp. 79-92.

    Reviews

    Review of Stephen Clucas, ed., John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought. Renaissance Quarterly 60:3, (Fall 2007): 1003-1005.

    Review of Chiara Crisciani, Il papa e l’alchimista. Renaissance Quarterly 57:1 (2004)

    Review of Håkan Håkansson, Seeing the Word: John Dee and Renaissance Occultism. Renaissance Quarterly 56:1 (2003)