Jo Ann Cavallo

Jo Ann Cavallo (PhD, Yale, 1987) is Professor Emerita of Italian at Columbia University, where she taught from 1988 to 2026. She has brought a libertarian perspective to Italian studies through publications on Marco Polo, Machiavelli, Renaissance fiction, chivalric epic, and Sicilian puppet theater. Her latest book, Narrazioni epiche nella cultura popolare italiana, was recently published by Edizioni Museo Pasqualino. Her two previous books, The World beyond Europe in the Romance Epics of Boiardo and Ariosto and The Sicilian Puppet Theater of Agrippino Manteo (1884–1947): The Paladins of France in America, received multiple awards and were also published in Italian. Among her edited volumes are Speaking Truth to Power from Medieval to Modern Italy (co-edited with Carlo Lottieri), Libertarian Autobiographies: Moving toward Freedom in Today’s World (co-edited with Walter Block), and, most recently, Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism: Essays in Memory of Paul A. Cantor. Among the websites she created is Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism. She has been an Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute since 2012.