Massimo Riva has taught at Brown University since 1990. He is Professor of Italian Studies and a member of the graduate faculty of the Modern Culture and Media Department. In recent years, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Bologna and the IULM of Milan, Italy, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma in Mexico City. Among his recent publications: Pinocchio Digitale. Post-umanesimo e Iper-romanzo (Milan, 2012), and Il futuro della letteratura. L'opera letteraria nell'epoca della sua (ri)producibilità digitale (Naples, 2011). He also recently co-edited two books: Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man. A New Translation and Commentary (Cambridge, 2012) and Renato Poggioli: An Intellectual Biography (Florence, 2012). He is currently at work on a collection of essays, tentatively entitled: Italian Shadows. Casanova's Polemoscope and Other Tales of Imaginary Media, focused on the intersection of literary texts and optical devices in 18th- and 19th-century culture.
