Giovanna Ceserani

Giovanna Ceserani (Stanford Humanities Center class of 2007-2008 and 2017-2018) is Associate Professor of Classics and, by courtesy, of History, and the Director of the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) at Stanford University. She works on the classical tradition with an emphasis on the intellectual history of classical scholarship and archaeology from the eighteenth century onwards. A recipient of the New Directions Mellon Fellowship and an alumna of the Princeton Society of Fellows, she is the author of Italy’s Lost Greece: Magna Graecia and the Making of Modern Archaeology (Oxford University Press, 2012). Her two current book projects concern the emergence of modern histories of ancient Greece, and manuscript accounts of travels to Italy in the eighteenth century. Her interest in these travels is engaging new digital approaches: she was a founding member of the Stanford digital project Mapping the Republic of Letters, and is director of the Stanford digital project The Grand Tour Project.

As Director of CESTA, Ceserani serves ex-officio on the Humanities Center’s Advisory Council.