Dr. Jason Houston is Dean and Associate Professor of Italian at Gonzaga University in Florence, where he teaches Dante and leads the Gonzaga in Florence campus. From 2003 to 2016, he was Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Italian at the...
Ph.D., Italian Language and Literature, Yale University
M.Phil., Medieval Studies, Yale University
M.Phil., Italian Language and Literature, Yale University
B.A. cum laude with Honors in Humanities and Italian, University of Oregon
Dr. Jason Houston is Dean and Associate Professor of Italian at Gonzaga University in Florence, where he teaches Dante and leads the Gonzaga in Florence campus. From 2003 to 2016, he was Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Oklahoma, where he created a new BA program in Italian, developed a new study center for OU in Arezzo Italy, and managed a public/private partnership between OU/ENEL Green Power/Capitoline Museums of Rome. His research focuses on Giovanni Boccaccio and his complicated relationships with other key Trecento Italian authors: Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, and Zanobi da Strada. His publications include numerous articles, edited volumes, and review articles in journals such as MLN, Dante Studies, Studi Sul Boccaccio, Renaissance Quarterly, and Speculum. His monograph Building a Monument to Dante: Boccaccio as Dantista (UToronto Press, 2011) underscored Boccaccio’s strong influence in the development of Dante Studies. He will soon publish (with Sam Huskey) Boccaccio’s Shorter Latin Works in Harvard University’s I Tatti Renaissance Library series, which bring many of Boccaccio’s Latin texts into English for the first time. Currently, he is working on Dante’s representation in Renaissance art, among other subjects.