Dr. Lidia Radi

Dr. Lidia Radi is a scholar of Early Modern French Studies and Contemporary Italian Literature. She earned her Laurea from the Università degli Studi di Verona (Italy) and her Maîtrise en Lettres Modernes from the Université Stendhal-Grenoble III (France) in 2000, the same year she began her doctoral studies at Rutgers University. In 2003–2004, she was awarded a fellowship as pensionnaire étrangère at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. She completed a dual doctorate in 2006 through a joint program between Rutgers University and the Université Stendhal-Grenoble III, with a primary concentration in French Renaissance literature and a secondary specialization in Italian Studies.

IDr. Radi’s research in French Early Modern Studies explores the intricate interplay between politics and religion, the relationship between virtue and education, and the moral and philosophical dimensions of literature. She is the author of the critical edition Le Penser de Royal Mémoire by Guillaume Michel, dit de Tours (Classiques Garnier, 2012), and co-editor of Valeur des lettres à la Renaissance. Débats et réflexions autour de la vertu de la littérature (Classiques Garnier, 2016) and Representing Heresy in Early Modern France (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2017). Her scholarly articles have been published in journals and edited volumes across Europe and North America.

In Italian Studies, Dr. Radi’s research explores authorship, identity, and linguistic transition in the works of women writers from the Albanian diaspora who compose in Italian. Her scholarship examines how these authors—most notably Elvira Dones, Anilda Ibrahimi, and Ornela Vorpsi—engage with the cultural legacy of Albania and the experience of migration, while also addressing the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of writing across national and linguistic boundaries. Her book project, Vivere tra due mondi. La narrazione (al) femminile della diaspora albanese in italiano: Dones, Ibrahimi e Vorpsi (Living-in-between: Female Representation in the Italian Works of the Albanian Diaspora Writers: Dones, Ibrahimi, and Vorpsi), investigates the literary representation of cultural dislocation, historical rupture, and the challenges of memory and belonging in the context of post-communist Albania and its transnational trajectories.

Her articles have appeared in Diasporic Italy, Comparatismi, and Critical Multilingualism Studies, as well as in edited volumes such as Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives (ed. Graziella Parati, Marie Orton, and Ron Kubati; Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2021). A forthcoming chapter, “Occupation, In-Betweenness, and Resilience in Albania: A Transnational Women Writers’ Perspective,” will appear in Women Representing Women: A Transnational Perspective (Vernon Press, 2025), a volume she is co-editing with Professor Simona Wright.

Through her interdisciplinary work in Literary Studies, Dr. Radi investigates how literature reflects and shapes interactions between cultures over time. Her research focuses on the mechanisms of cultural exchange, the transmission of ideas across linguistic and national boundaries, and the role of narrative in articulating experiences of displacement, identity, and historical transformation. By examining these dynamics, she contributes to a deeper understanding of transnational literary traditions and the complex relationships between language, history, and cultural memory.