CHRISTOPHER NISSEN

 

Christopher Nissen received his Ph. D. in Italian from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987. Since 1988 he has been Assistant, than Associate Professor of Italian at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb.

His published articles include studies of Boccaccio, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Poggio Bracciolini, Simone Prodenzani, Gentile Sermini, and D’Annunzio.

His book Ethics of Retribution in the Decameron and the Late Medieval Italian Novella: Beyond the Circle was published by Mellen in 1993.

In the summer of 1996 he rediscovered the works of the forgotten sixteenth-century autohr Giulia Bigolina, the first Italian woman to have gained renown as a writer of prose fiction. He has published two articles on Bigolina: Subjects, Objects, Authors: The Portaiture of Women in Giulia Bigolina’s Urania in Italian Culture 18.2(2000), 15-31; and The Motif of the Woman in Male Disguise from Boccaccio to Bigolina in The Italian Novella, ed. Gloria Allaire, New York : Routledge, 2003, 201-217.

His critical edition of Bigolina’s two known surviving works, including both the Italian texts and English translations, is currently being published by Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (MRTS).