Teodolinda Barolini

Barolini was born December 19, 1951, in Syracuse, New York. She is the daughter of Antonio Barolini^[1] and Helen Barolini.

In 1998, Barolini was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the study of Italian literature.^[2] From 1997 to 2003, she served as president of the Dante Society of America.^[1] She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2002.^[3] In 2007, she won a Flaiano Prize in Italian Studies.^[4] She is currently the editor-in-chief of Columbia University's Digital Dante website.^[5]

She has written on the poetry of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.^[1]

Barolini is married to James J. Valentini, professor of Chemistry at Columbia and the sixteenth Dean of Columbia College.^[6] She was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1951. She comes from a highly literary Italian-American family: Her father was Antonio Barolini, an Italian novelist, poet, and journalist. Her mother was Helen Barolini, a well-known Italian-American author and literary editor. She grew up in an intellectually rich environment connected to Italian culture, literature, and publishing. Her father died when she was around 19 years old, which has been mentioned in biographical notes about the family. She is married to James J. Valentini, a chemistry professor and former Dean of Columbia College at Columbia University. She has maintained a strong connection to Italian heritage and Italian intellectual traditions throughout her life, influenced heavily by both parents.