Tessa Gurney

Tessa Gurney received her B.A. in Italian and International Studies from The Ohio State University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2016).  Her scholarship places Italian theater in the larger Mediterranean context, and she is particularly interested in the representation of the Turkish Other in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian comedy. She has additional interests in Translation Studies, Migration and Multiculturalism in Italian Literature and Cinema, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.  Professor Gurney is enthusiastic about creative pedagogical methods and teaches Italian language courses at all levels, employing a collaborative, project-based approach. She believes passionately in the transformative power of language and cultural study paired with experiential learning abroad, and has developed and taught several faculty-led study abroad trips to Sicily in which students examine the Sicilian palimpsest.