Margherita Heyer-Caput
Margherita Heyer-Cáput is Professor Emerita of Italian Studies at the University of California, Davis, and the founder and director of the UC Davis Quarter Abroad Program in Florence, for which she received the inaugural Excellence in the Teaching of Study Abroad Award in 2019. She completed her education in Italy (Laurea in Filosofia, University of Torino) and the United States (Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University), and taught for several years at the University of Berne, Switzerland.
Her research and teaching areas cover modern and contemporary Italian literature, with particular attention to philosophical approaches to literature, women writers, literature and film, Italian, and Italian American cinema. Her book, Grazia Deledda’s Dance of Modernity[/em>, was awarded the prestigious Ennio Flaiano International Prize for Italian Studies for its innovative interpretation of the 1926 Nobel Prize laureate's opus in the context of philosophical modernity, with particular attention to Deledda’s original reception of Nietzsche’s and Schopenhauer’s theories.
Heyer-Cáput’s previous monographs, Ragione ed esistenza nell’opera di Franz Kafka [Existence and Reason in Franz Kafka’s Work] and Per una letteratura della riflessione: elementi filosofico-scientifici nell’opera di Luigi Malerba [For a Literature of Reflection: Philosophical and Scientific Aspects of Luigi Malerba’s Work] explore the interplay between philosophy, science, and literature in the narratives of two authors extremely different from each other, yet equally groundbreaking in their experimental approach to writing. She has published on a number of authors --from Giovanni Boccaccio to Dacia Maraini-- and film makers --from Martin Scorsese to Ferzan Ozpetek-- and is currently working on Sardinian women writers “beyond the margins.” In 2018, the A.A.T.I., the oldest North-American organization devoted to advancing Italian Studies in a multi-disciplinary and global perspective, bestowed its Honorary Membership upon Margherita Heyer-Cáput “for her indelible contributions to the field of Italian Studies in North America."
