Francesco Erspamer is professor of Italian studies and Romance languages and literatures at Harvard University.  He is interested in aesthetics, history of ideas, politics, and cultural change. He has worked extensively on the Renaissance, the 19^th  and 20^th century, and contemporary issues. His most recent books are The Creation of the Past: On Cultural Modernity and Fear of Change: Crisis and Criticism of the Concept of Culture. He is presently writing a book on cultural design with Pier Luigi Sacco. Email: erspamer@fas.harvard.edu.

Pier Luigi Sacco is professor of Cultural Economics at IULM University, Milan, director of the IRVAPP Center of Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, and the special adviser to the European Commission in the field of cultural heritage. His research is focused on the economy of culture in postindustrial times. He claims that investing in intangible goods must become a part of a new economic policy and that it is a way to include art in the building of our prosperity. Sacco has authored numerous publications on modern economics. Email: pierluigi_sacco@fas.harvard.edu.

Amelia Linsky is a Ph.D. student in Italian Studies at Harvard. She has taught English language courses in Italy and Italian language courses at Harvard. While studying at Middlebury College and the Università degli studi di Ferrara, she wrote an undergraduate thesis on natural philosophy and providentialism in treatises on the 1570s earthquakes. She is currently working on the various intersections of poetry, music, and court cultures in Renaissance Italy. Email: alinsky@g.harvard.edu.

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Corrado Confalonieri is a Ph.D. candidate in Italian Studies at Harvard. He has taught Italian courses as a Teaching Fellow, including Dante, soccer, and popular culture. Previously he studied at the University of Parma and at the University of Padua, where he received a dottorato defending a dissertation on theories of the epic. His main fields of interest are the Renaissance, 20^th-century poetry, intertextuality, and literary theory. He is currently working on a dissertation project concerning the relation between poetics and architecture in the 16^th century. Email: confalonieri@g.harvard.edu.

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