Gerard Passannante

Gerard Passannante specializes in Renaissance literature and intellectual history. His first book, The Lucretian Renaissance, was awarded the 2014 Harry Levin Prize by the American Comparative Literature Association. The book argues that, long before it took on its familiar shape during the Scientific Revolution, the ancient philosophy of atoms and the void reemerged in the Renaissance as a story about reading and letters. He is currently at work on a second book project, Earthquakes of the Mind, a history of the disastrous imagination in literature and philosophy. His work has been generously supported by the American Academy in Rome, the National Humanities Center, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.