Fonds 92 - Olga Pugliese fonds

Olga Zorzi Pugliese was a professor and scholar of Italian and Renaissance Studies. She was born in Toronto in 1941 to Giosuè Zorzi and Anna Cressatti, the youngest of four children. She attended West Preparatory School and Forest Hill Junior High and graduated from Northview Heights Collegiate in 1959. That same year, she enrolled at the University of Toronto, becoming one of the first women of Italian heritage to attend, and graduated in 1963 with a B.A. in Modern Languages and Literature. She received her M.A. in 1964 and her Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures in 1969 from the University of Toronto. In 1969, she married Guido Pugliese, a fellow teacher and academic whom she met while working as a graduate student in the 1960s.

While still a graduate student at the University of Toronto, Pugliese was hired as a Teaching Assistant (1964-1965) and then a Lecturer (1967-1969), teaching undergraduate courses in Italian language and literature. After completing her doctorate in 1969, she was promoted to Assistant Professor. In 1973, she became the first undergraduate coordinator at UofT’s Department of Italian Studies, eventually serving as Graduate Coordinator from 1984-1988. In 1995, she became a Full Professor and served as Chair of the Department of Italian Studies and Goggio Chair from 1997-2002. While a faculty member in the Italian Studies Department, she was cross-appointed a Fellow of Victoria College, where she taught interdisciplinary courses in Italian Renaissance Culture. From 2005-2009, she was Director of the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies. In 2012, Pugliese retired from the University of Toronto after 45 years of teaching.

Pugliese was a member of several associations in the wider Italian and Renaissance academic community including the Modern Language Association of America, the Northeast Modern Language Association, the Renaissance Society of America, the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies, and the Canadian Society for the Study of Architecture. She was a founding member of the Canadian Association for Italian Studies where she served as president from 2005-2008 and served as a Board Member for the Italian Canadian Archive Project from 2013-2018. In 1976, she was a founding member of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies/Société canadienne d’études de la Renaissance (CSRS/SCÉR) and was its first Secretary-Treasurer from 1976-1978. For her contributions to the Society and the field of Renaissance Studies, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the CSRS in 2008.

Pugliese served on a number of editorial boards including Quarderni d’italianistica, the official journal of the Canadian Association for Italian Studies, Italica, the official journal of the American Association of Teachers of Italian, as well as Spunti e Ricerche, Studi rinascimentali: Rivista internazionale di letteratura italiana and Campi immaginabili: rivista quadrimestrale di cultura. In addition to articles, editions and translations, she is the author of Il discorso del dialogo rinascimentale (1995), Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier (Il libro del cortegiano): A Classic in the Making (2018) and Rekindling Faded Memories: The Founding of the Famee Furlane of Toronto and Its First Years (1996), co-written with Angelo Principe.

Olga Pugliese died in Toronto in 2025.