Maria Teresa De Luca

Maria Teresa is currently completing a Ph.D. in Italian Studies at Rutgers University. Her dissertation examines the reception of Greek tragedies by Italian authors of the inter- and post-war periods (Curzio Malaparte, Elsa Morante, Pier Paolo Pasolini). Drawing on reception studies, classical reception, genre theory, and cultural studies, her research explores the tension between the vitality of tragedy as a conceptual framework for expressing irreconcilable systems of values and its status as a literary genre that remains central to theories of genre and to the construction of Western cultural identity.

She has also published research on ms. Ash. 956, one of the very few southern Italian vernacularizations of the Liber abaci by Leonardo Pisano. Her work has appeared in publications of the Societé de Linguistique Romane (Éditions de Linguistique et de Philologie) and in the peer-reviewed volume Cultures of Exchanges (University of Toronto Press, 2026).

Maria Teresa has extensive experience working on the main etymological and historical dictionaries: LEI (Lessico Etimologico Italiano), DI (Deonomasticon Italicum), and TLIO (Tesoro della Lingua italiana delle Origini). She also holds a Ph.D in Italian Linguistics from Saarland University (Germany). Her dissertation, titled La terminologia linguistica in ‘Lingua nostra,’ has been awarded the Premio Nencioni from the Accademia della Crusca.

Before joining Chapman, Maria Teresa taught Italian language and linguistics at Saarland University, Michigan State University, Rutgers University, and Columbia University.