Alejandro Cuadrado

Visiting Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures

Alejandro Cuadrado’s research focuses on history, politics, and religion in medieval Italian literature, with a focus on Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He is currently finishing his first book, The Corruption of the Church and Dante’s Philosophy of History, an analysis of how Dante’s Commedia articulates a history of institutions. He is also working on a project that explores the ways in which medieval writers thought about urban topography. With Akash Kumar (UC-Berkeley) and Alberto Gelmi (Vassar), Cuadrado is one of the organizers and editors of Old Texts, New Questions: Critical Approaches to Medieval Italian Literature, an MLA working group that will publish its new perspectives on Italian literature in the 2026 Italian issue of MLN. Cuadrado is a regular contributor to the Settimana di Studi Danteschi in Palermo, an annual weeklong conference which aims to share scholarly and artistic approaches to Dante’s work with hundreds of high school students from across Sicily. He is an Assistant Editor of Digital Dante, a public-facing website for original research and ideas on Dante.

Before coming to Bowdoin College in 2024, Professor Cuadrado taught in the Italian Studies Department at Yale University. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and holds a PhD in Italian and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, where he was the recipient of the Campbell Award, the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize, the Brittan Family Fellowship, and the Provost’s Diversity Fellowship.

At Bowdoin, Professor Cuadrado teaches all levels of Italian language, as well as courses on Italian literature and culture ranging from Dante’s Divine Comedy to the critical study of modern tourism. Students who would like to know more about the Italian program, studying abroad in Italy, or conducting an independent research project are encouraged to reach out or stop by his office hours.

Alejandro Cuadrado headshot

Education

  • PhD, Columbia University
  • MA, Columbia University
  • AB, Princeton University