Valentina is an Assistant Professor of French Literature (17th and 18th century) at the Department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State University. Her fields of interest are: Italian and French Literature (15th – 18th century), Queer and Gender Studies, Narratology, Relation between fiction and reality, Querelle des femmes. Her first book Les mille et un visages de la virago. Marfisa et Bradamante entre continuation et variation (Garnier Classique, 2016) analyzes the evolution of the representation of the woman warrior in French and Italian literatures from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment by taking into consideration the political and historical context of this evolution and the symbolic value of the woman warrior in each specific time period. She is currently working on the Marquis de Sade and his influence on popular culture. She is also the recipient of the Humanities Without Walls grant for her project “Legacies of the Enlightenment” http://enlightenmentlegacies.org/ that she is co-directing with Tracy Rutler (Pennsylvania State University)
