Ramie Targoff is the American Academy in Rome Scholar in Residence and Professor of English at Brandeis University.
What part of the United States did you come from?
I was born and raised in New York, but I have lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the past fifteen years.
Describe a particularly inspiring moment or location you've experienced in Rome thus far.
There are so many—it’s very hard to isolate a single one—but in terms of my work, my first visit to the Villa Giulia National Museum where I encountered “The Bride and Bridegroom of Cerveteri” was particularly thrilling. Part of the book I’m completing during my time here is about the tombs erected for lovers or spouses, and this Etruscan tomb from more than 2,500 years ago took my breath away.
To what extent, if any, has your work changed since your arrival?
My work itself has not changed, but the rhythms of my day have changed immensely—for the better. After my son Harry goes to school, I walk over every morning to the beautiful library at the AAR, and I have hours of quiet without interruption, and I am able to think, and write, in a manner that I rarely manage at home.
Have you had any "eureka!" moments or unanticipated breakthroughs in the course of your work here?
Not yet! But I look forward to having some of these moments when I start my new project next month (see answer to question below).
What aspect of your work are you most looking forward to?
When I finish the book I am writing (Posthumous Love: Eros and the Afterlife in Renaissance England) sometime in the next few weeks—I will be starting a new project on the early sixteenth-century Italian poet Vittoria Colonna, who was an intimate friend of Michelangelo. She was an incredible person—in addition to writing beautiful Neoplatonic sonnets, she was a humanist and a patron and possibly even a crypto-Protestant—and I am really excited to explore Rome and the environs through her eyes.
What's surprised you most about living in Rome?
I think the lack of a metro that takes you to the places you might actually want to go is one of the most surprising, and surprisingly rewarding, things to me about the city. At first this seems unmanageable, because in major cities one is accustomed to traveling great distances underground, but in fact, I love the gift of wandering it gives you—one sees so much more by virtue of having to walk distances that one would never consider walking at home, because along the way you are lured by one small but incredible discovery after another—a fountain or column or square that you have never seen before—and before you know it, you have arrived where you were planning to arrive several hours earlier but the walk turns out to have been more interesting than the major site you were heading to in the first place.
How have you managed the balance between your work (time in the studio/study) and engagement with Rome and Italy (travel, sightseeing, interactions with locals)?
In general I always try to work in the hours leading up to lunch, which is the most productive time of day for me, and then explore in the afternoons and evening. We have rented a car for the time we are here so on the weekends we have been doing a lot of local traveling around Lazio to places difficult to get to by public transportation (some of my favorites: the monastery at Subiaco, Palestrina, or the Villa di Orazio, where Horace probably wrote some of my favorite poems in the world). Almost none of the places we’ve visited would have been part of our itinerary when spending just a few days in Rome, and they are usually completely devoid of tourists—Lazio in general is a very underrated part of Italy and will no doubt be “discovered” by Fodors or the like sometime soon.
What is your favorite spot at the Academy? or in Rome?
My favorite spot in the Academy is the first desk on the left when you first enter the main reading room of the library. It looks out onto the garden, and it might be my favorite place to work in the world. In Rome, there are too many to name, but the Piazza Farnese at night, with the gorgeous basins taken from the Terme di Caracalla, and the walk to that piazza down the Via Giulia after crossing the Ponte Sisto is certainly near the very top of the list.