Toni Veneri
Toni Veneri studied in Trieste, where he earned a Ph.D. in Italian Literature and was appointed “cultore della materia” in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. He also received the archivist qualification. From 2013 to 2016 he was Director of the Istituto Gramsci del Friuli Venezia Giulia. Additionally, he was working as a high school instructor (Literature, History, and Latin) in Venice. He completed post-doctoral research at the University of Haifa, Israel, and at the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Sofia, Bulgaria. At the UNC Chapel Hill, he earned a doctorate in Romance Languages and Literatures. He taught Italian and French at the elementary and intermediate level. He also organized multiple cultural activities to engage the students in the study of Italian culture and language. At UNC, he designed and taught classes on the Italian Renaissance, Italian-American Literature and Film, and Italian Cinema.
Currently, Toni is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Program of Italian Studies at Wake Forest. His areas of research overlap: they include the literary and scientific construction of space in late Medieval and early modern times; seascapes and maritime imagination in literature and art; travel literature and the history of cartography at the crossroads of humanism, print, governance, and diplomacy; Renaissance Venice as a geographical workshop; and contemporary rewritings of past travel accounts. He has investigated and published essays on Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Marco Polo, Leo Africanus, the Venetian ambassadors and mapmakers, Alberto Fortis, Umberto Eco, Paolo Rumiz, and the books of islands (isolari).
- ITA 111 Elementary Italian
- ITA 113 Intensive Elementary Italian