Irene Eibenstein-Alvisi is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Romance Studies where she teaches writing. Her expertise is in Medieval and Renaissance Italian literature with an emphasis on women writers and gender issues. After having taught Italian language and literature for 20 years at The University of Texas at Austin, in 2016 she returned back to Cornell where she did her graduate work and earned a Ph.D. in Italian Studies. She loves opera and cooking, modern art and walking, and she shouldn’t be asked where to travel in Italy if one hopes for a reasonably brief response.