This project is on the expatriate lesbian gardens of fin-de-siècle Italy. Focusing on the garden of the Villa Gamberaia during the time it was owned by Princess Ghyka and her American lover, Florence Blood, I will analyze the architecture of this garden, theorizing its physicality in relationship to lesbian subjectivity. The American Academy itself houses archival material essential to this research, and a residency in Rome would also put me within reach of the Villa Gamberaia and& other important archives at I Tatti, Il Palmerino, and Le Pietra. Professionally, this project allows me to turn my literary study to the material and botanical, a gesture newly understood in my field as attention to “vibrant matter”—but it is a turn already taken more than a century ago by the authors I study, and these authors understood that turn to be enabled specifically by the culture of Italy. During a residency I could complete both a stand-alone article and a book proposal for an edited volume.