Rate My Professor Gianluca Caputo

Dr. Gianluca Caputo serves as Casual Academic Staff in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University, contributing to Social Science education and research. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies from La Trobe University, completed in 2013, with a thesis analyzing the literary and historical forms taken by Japanese otherness in late medieval and early Renaissance Italian culture. His academic background includes a Master of Arts from the University of Connecticut in 2006, a Bachelor’s degree in Modern Italian Literature from Università degli Studi di Verona in 2004 awarded 110/110 summa cum laude, and a Graduate Diploma in Education (Secondary) with distinction from RMIT University in 2014.

Caputo has delivered Italian language instruction from beginner to advanced levels, as well as courses in Medieval Italian Literature, Renaissance Italy, and Intercultural Communication at RMIT University during 2013–2015 semesters, La Trobe University, and the University of Melbourne. He has served as a Specialist Vetter and Panel Co-Chair for VCE Italian exams and co-led study-abroad programs. His research interests include Renaissance Studies, Japanese Studies, Japanese History, Medieval Italian Literature, History of the Book, Second Language Acquisition, History and Historiography with a focus on Renaissance and Medieval Europe, Italian-Japanese historical interactions, and transcultural exchanges. Key publications feature the monograph L’aurora del Giappone tra mito e storiografia: Nascita ed evoluzione dell’alterità nipponica nella cultura italiana, 1300-1600 (Olschki, 2016), which presents a literary and cartographic itinerary of Japan’s image in Italian tradition involving figures such as Marco Polo, Ludovico Ariosto, Pietro Bembo, Giovan Battista Ramusio, and San Francesco Saverio, and the journal article L’approdo al segno ed il commiato della funzione: l’analisi metamitologica di Cipangu nelle Alcine dell’Orlando Furioso (2024). As a Lecturer in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, he was an associate member of RMIT’s Centre for Global Research, where his monograph was launched in November 2016.