Giacomo Loi
Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow - Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of Haifa
Visiting scholar - Department of Literary Studies, UGent (Belgium) (October-November 2025)
Visiting scholar - Département de Littérature Générale et Comparée (LGC), Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6387-5901
Educated between Europe and the US, I am an Italian, Israel-based literary scholar and cultural historian. I have a keen interest in exploring the intersection of Greco-Roman classics and of European literature with Jewish and Hebrew literature. Engaged in an ongoing dialogue and translation among languages, cultures, and eras, my extensive language proficiency—from Ancient Greek and Latin to Italian, English, French, German, and Modern Hebrew—enables me to unveil hidden connections between diverse cultures and times, bringing these connections to the fore and to life. I enjoy starting intellectual conversations not only with my colleagues and colleagues beyond my field, but also with the broader public, through both my writing and public presentations.
Education:
• Ph.D., Classics, Johns Hopkins University, 2023
• M.A., Classics, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, 2017
• B.A., Classics and Italian, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, 2015
Fellowships and Awards:
• Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellowship (post-doc, 2023-)
• Columbia University New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Kingdon Award (2023)
• Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris (pre-doc, 2021-22)
Research Interests:
• Exile as a Jewish state of being and European literature (Dante)
• Classical Reception and Reception Theory
• Modern Hebrew and Jewish literature
• Archaeology, Nationalism, and Colonialism
• World literature and Jewish literature, 'universal' and 'particular'
• Classicism and Modernism as co-implicated projects
Recent Projects:
• "Our Quarrel Is Of Old: Classical Reception in Modern Hebrew Literature" (PhD dissertation)
• "There Is No Analogy Within History: Classical Myth and Holocaust Literature (fellowship project, Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris)
• "Gentile Antiquity: The Reception of Antiquity in Modern Italian Jewish Culture" (co-edited with Martina Piperno, Roma Sapienza, and Guido Furci, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris - forthcoming FUP 2024)
• In the style of Lucian of Samosata: Voltaire, Giacomo Leopardi, and a new avenue of philosophical critique (forthcoming CUP 2024)
Ongoing projects:
• Greco-Roman Antiquity and Hebrew Modernity: A History and Theory of Jewish Classical Reception (book project in progress)
• Jewish Archaeology and Hebrew Literature (book project in progress)
• Music as a Literary Symbol: Thomas Mann and A.B. Yehoshua (in progress)
• Locating the Underworld: Classical Antiquity and the Jewish Imaginary of the Underworld (Furio Jesi, Lea Goldberg, Louise Glück)
Contact:
[email protected]
Visiting scholar - Department of Literary Studies, UGent (Belgium) (October-November 2025)
Visiting scholar - Département de Littérature Générale et Comparée (LGC), Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6387-5901
Educated between Europe and the US, I am an Italian, Israel-based literary scholar and cultural historian. I have a keen interest in exploring the intersection of Greco-Roman classics and of European literature with Jewish and Hebrew literature. Engaged in an ongoing dialogue and translation among languages, cultures, and eras, my extensive language proficiency—from Ancient Greek and Latin to Italian, English, French, German, and Modern Hebrew—enables me to unveil hidden connections between diverse cultures and times, bringing these connections to the fore and to life. I enjoy starting intellectual conversations not only with my colleagues and colleagues beyond my field, but also with the broader public, through both my writing and public presentations.
Education:
• Ph.D., Classics, Johns Hopkins University, 2023
• M.A., Classics, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, 2017
• B.A., Classics and Italian, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, 2015
Fellowships and Awards:
• Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellowship (post-doc, 2023-)
• Columbia University New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Kingdon Award (2023)
• Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris (pre-doc, 2021-22)
Research Interests:
• Exile as a Jewish state of being and European literature (Dante)
• Classical Reception and Reception Theory
• Modern Hebrew and Jewish literature
• Archaeology, Nationalism, and Colonialism
• World literature and Jewish literature, 'universal' and 'particular'
• Classicism and Modernism as co-implicated projects
Recent Projects:
• "Our Quarrel Is Of Old: Classical Reception in Modern Hebrew Literature" (PhD dissertation)
• "There Is No Analogy Within History: Classical Myth and Holocaust Literature (fellowship project, Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris)
• "Gentile Antiquity: The Reception of Antiquity in Modern Italian Jewish Culture" (co-edited with Martina Piperno, Roma Sapienza, and Guido Furci, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris - forthcoming FUP 2024)
• In the style of Lucian of Samosata: Voltaire, Giacomo Leopardi, and a new avenue of philosophical critique (forthcoming CUP 2024)
Ongoing projects:
• Greco-Roman Antiquity and Hebrew Modernity: A History and Theory of Jewish Classical Reception (book project in progress)
• Jewish Archaeology and Hebrew Literature (book project in progress)
• Music as a Literary Symbol: Thomas Mann and A.B. Yehoshua (in progress)
• Locating the Underworld: Classical Antiquity and the Jewish Imaginary of the Underworld (Furio Jesi, Lea Goldberg, Louise Glück)
Contact:
[email protected]
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Conference Program by Giacomo Loi
PhD Dissertation by Giacomo Loi
Articles by Giacomo Loi
Holocaust-themed short stories by Aharon Appelfeld and Michal Govrin, allowing the writers to grapple with the unrepresentable horror of the Shoah. Examining Aharon Appelfeld’s Odyssean reference in the short story ‘Bertha’ and Michal Govrin’s Aeschylean inspiration in the story ‘The End of the Pythia,’ the paper argues that the use of myth provides an analogical framework, bypassing the limitations of realism and the taboo of the incomparability of the Holocaust. Special attention is given to the
generational difference of the writers, their relationship to the Holocaust, their narrative choices, and different modes of engagement with myth itself. Furthermore, the article addresses the complex relationship between classical culture and Jewish culture in the post-Holocaust era, acknowledging both the appropriation of classics by Nazi and fascist regimes and the writers’ reclamation, however troubled, of this cultural patrimony.
Now published in S. Costa - F. Gallo (ed.), Miscellanea Graecolatina, Rome - Milan 2017, 439-465
CFP by Giacomo Loi
Book Reviews by Giacomo Loi
Online Essays by Giacomo Loi
https://classicalstudies.org/node/35471
Available at:
https://sites.unimi.it/latinoamilano/racine-virgilio-co/?fbclid=IwAR3ZBxmi8Bf-E5U_9UIqK7PZ1a6W9ILDQLXxjb7XMROFy8V7-sP-yaN98GU
Papers by Giacomo Loi
Conference Presentations by Giacomo Loi
Archaeology has long been central to the nation-state discourse. In Israel, the recovery of the distant past answered not only the need for evidence of ancient Jewish life in Palestine but also for ideal models of political independence and resistance, as archaeologist Yigael Yadin’s accounts of his excavations at the Bar Kochba Caves attest. As such, Yadin’s accounts are paradigmatic of Zionism’s engagement with the Roman past and a necessary point of reference for Israeli encounters with the classical past in the 20th century.
Even though space and place have been understood as central issues in the poetry of Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000), his multiple references to Roman archaeological sites have been overlooked. In this paper, while I bring together Amichai’s poetry, short and long prose, I focus particularly on his short stories Nina from Ashkelon and The Times My Father Died (from In This Terrible Wind, 1961). Both stories center around two Roman archaeological sites located in (culturally) opposite areas of the Mediterranean: on one hand, the painted ‘tomb of the Nymphs’ in Ashkelon, Israel; on the other, the Via Appia, just outside of Rome. In Nina from Ashkelon, in which Amichai openly attacks the Zionist manipulation of the past, the Roman tomb points out the decadence of the Land of Israel – constantly appropriated, exploited and killed, symbolized by Nina herself; in The Times My Father Died, instead, the Via Appia, the cemetery of a dead civilization, turns into an imaginary Underworld, inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid 6, where the protagonist, a Jewish Aeneas, can meet his dead father. I argue that, in contrast to the Zionist narrative of Rome as the adversarial Other, Amichai’s richly metaphorical stories engage with these sites as symbolic places that allow trans-historical encounters beyond the boundaries of Jewish culture.
The fragmentary Pro Scauro (54 BCE) was regarded as one of the greatest accomplishments of Cicero (Cic. Ad Quintum 3.8.4). The extant paragraphs received attention mainly in relation to the political turmoil in Rome in the 50s (Ghiselli 1969, Grimal 1976, Narducci 2009). Yet, the few fragments allow to identify Cicero’s strategy of othering of the Sardinian adversaries, defined as ‘Africans’ and therefore ‘Phoenicians’: on the ethical and legal level, untrustworthy.
In this paper I concentrate on three aspects. First, I follow Cicero’s suggestion to contrast his conduct with the Sicilians in the Verrines against the opponents’ failed on-field investigation: his Sicilian inquiry had allowed Cicero to highlight the Sicilians’ Trojan origin, and therefore their natural pact of faith with Rome. Instead, in this case, the Trojan legend of Sardinia (Sall. Historiae II fr. 2, Paus. X 17,6) is ignored, while the otherness of the Sardinians is underscored.
Secondly, I investigate how Cicero’s stereotype of the unfaithful Africans rests on Carthaginian/Phoenician stereotypes. Cicero draws on the stereotype of the piratesque Phoenicians to paint the portrait of the Sardinians as their descendants. I put Cicero’s remarks in the broader context of the earliest occurrence of an anti-Phoenician stigma in Greek (the Odyssey) and of its earliest Roman reception (early epic, Cato). The orator, while denying the Sardinians an identity of their own, constructs a derivative identity based on a long-standing tradition and enmity.
Thirdly, I will highlight the narrativization of the Phoenician stigma. Cicero’s ability to weave a noir subplot, like in his Pro Caelio, serves the purpose of creating an aura of moral decadence: in this case, he dramatizes the homicide within Bostares of Nora’s family, where the names themselves, which confirm the Sardinians as descendants of the Phoenicians, provide a means to establish the dangerous otherness of the islanders.