
Heather Webb (PhD Stanford 2004) specialises in medieval Italian literature and culture with a particular interest in poetry, theology, philosophy, and visual culture. She is the author ofThe Medieval Heart(Yale, 2010),Dante’s Persons: An Ethics of the Transhuman(Oxford University Press, 2016), and Dante, Artist of Gesture (Oxford University Press, September 2022). With George Corbett, she is editor ofVertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, 3 vols (Open Book Publishers, 2015, 2016, 2017). With Pierpaolo Antonello, she is editor of Mimesis, Desire, and the Novel: René Girard and Literary Criticism (Michigan State Press, 2015).She is Senior Editor of Italian Studies for pre-1700 material.
- Dante Studies
- Catherine of Siena
- Medieval Women Religious
- Boccaccio Studies
- Early Italian Lyric Poetry
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Illustrations of theComedy
- Medieval prayer manuals and preachers’ manuals
- History of Emotions/Affects
- Visual cultures in conversation with textual cultures
- Bodies and embodiment; gestures and kinesis
- Transcultural responses to Dante and the Italian Middle Ages
- Dante's Vita nova: A Collaborative Reading (co-edited volume)
- Affect/Sensation/Emotion in Medieval France and Italy (research group)
Selected published works
Dante, Artist of Gesture (Oxford University Press, September 2022)
Dante's Persons: An Ethics of the Transhuman(Oxford University Press, 2016)
The Medieval Heart(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 241 pp. ISBN: 978-0-300-15393- 4.
Vertical Readings in Dante’sComedy, ed. with George Corbett (in three volumes) (Ƶ: Open Book Publishers, 2015, 2016, 2017).
Mimesis, Desire, and the Novel: René Girard and Literary Criticism, ed. with Pierpaolo Antonello(East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015).
‘Pluralità, azione e diletto in Dante e Arendt’, in Rivista di letteratura italiana, xxxix, 3, 2021, pp. 33-43.
‘La gestualità della richiesta in Purgatorio V e VI: Coreografie classiche e cristiane a confronto’ Italianistica «Italianistica. Rivista di letteratura italiana», 1, (2021), 169-183.
‘Corporealities in Italian Studies’, with Derek Duncan, Italian Studies, 75:2, (2020), 176-193.
‘Botticelli’s Illustrations of Dante’sParadiso: The Construction of Conjoined Vision,’ I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 22, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 187-208.
‘Il rossore profetico’ inDante e il profetismo, Giuseppe Ledda, ed. (Ravenna: Centro Dantesco dei Frati Minori Conventuali) 2019, 69-83.
‘Postures of Penitence in Dante’sPurgatorio’,Dante StudiesCXXXI (2013), 219-236.
‘Three Paths in One Journey’, with George Corbett,L’Alighieri, 41 (2013), 63-81.
‘Power Differentials, Unreliable Models, and Homoerotic Desire in the Commedia’,Italian Studies, 68.1 (2013), 17-35.
‘Inferno from a Purgatorial (and Paradisiacal) Perspective’,Dante’s Inferno, ed. by Patrick Hunt (Pasadena: Salem Press, 2012), 49-62.
‘Dante’s Definition of Life’,Dante Studies, 129 (2011), 47-62.
‘Deceit, Desire, and Conversion in Girard and Dante’,Religion and Literature. Special issue: ‘Deceit, Desire and the Novel 50 Years Later: The Religious Dimension’, ed. by Ann W. Astell and Justin Jackson, 43.3 (2011), 200-207.
‘“Lacrime cordiali”: Catherine of Siena and the Value of Tears’,A Companion to Catherine of Siena, ed. by George Ferzoco, Beverly Kienzle, Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2011) 99-112.
‘Catherine of Siena’s Heart’,Speculum, 80.3 (2005), 802-817.Reprinted inClassical and Medieval Literature Criticism, vol. 116, (Farmington Hills: Cengage Gale, 2010).