Comparative Literature

Leonard Barkan is the Class of 1943 University Professor and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature. He has been a professor of English and of Art History at universities including Northwestern, Michigan, and N.Y.U. Among his books are The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism, Transuming Passion:  Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism, and Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture, which won prizes from the Modern Language Association, the College Art Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, Phi Beta Kappa, and the PEN America Center. He is the winner of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been an actor and a director; he is also a regular contributor to publications in both the U.S. and Italy, where he writes on the subject of food and wine. He has recently published Satyr Square, which is an account of art, literature, food, wine, Italy, and himself. His current projects include a scholarly study of the relations among words, images, and pleasure from Plato to the Renaissance, and a book on Michelangelo's drawings and writings.  At Princeton, he has taught courses on subjects including Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Narcissus, Word and Image, and Comedy.

To see a recent article about Michelangelo's cuisine, go to http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i03/03b01401.htm