Ravarino Family Director of Italian and Dante Studies

Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. is the Albert J. and Helen M. Ravarino Family Director of the Center for Italian Studies and Director of the Devers Family Program in Dante Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

He specializes in Italian Medieval and Renaissance literature, in particular Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, the history of the Italian language, and the literature and history of travel. He earned his B.A. from Northwestern University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

He has authored, edited, or co-edited several books, including Le isole fortunate; appunti di storia letteraria italiana (1994); Pigafetta’s First Voyage Around the World (1995; 2nd revised edition, 2007); Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies (1995); Petrarch’s Guide to the Holy Land (2002), Le culture di Dante (2004), Dante and Petrarch: Anti-dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition (2009), as well as essays and book chapters in Annali d'Italianistica, Belfagor, California Italian Studies, Intersezioni, The History of Cartography, Modern Language Notes, Schede umanistiche, and Rivista di letteratura italiana.

He is founder and co-editor (with Zygmunt G. Baranski  and Christian Moevs) of the William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies, and serves on the editorial boards of Letteratura Italiana Antica (Rome), Nuova Rivista di Letteratura Italiana (Pisa), Dante Studies, Italica: Journal of the American Association of Italian Studies (AATI), and Italian Studies: The Journal of the American Association for Italian Culture (AAIS).