German & Slavic Studies

Elio Brancaforte | e-mail
Newcomb 303 D | 504-862-3092

Chair of German & Slavic Studies and Associate Professor of German

Elio Brancaforte received his Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, specializing in early modern German literature, with minors in French and English. He also did graduate work at the Universität Tübingen, the École Normale Supérieure and at the Johns Hopkins University (M.A. in French) after receiving his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Scholarship:

Brancaforte’s scholarly interests include travel literature, translation, cultural exchange, German baroque drama, and the history of cartography. The relationship between word and image is an underlying theme in much of his research and informs his current book project on representations of Safavid Iran in early modern European travel accounts.

His first book, Visions of Persia, Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius (Harvard, 2003), examined how a German baroque scholar constructed an image of Iran for a mid-17th-century European public. Brancaforte has published articles on other European travelers to Iran such as Engelbert Kaempfer and Pietro Della Valle; he also contributed a chapter on German cartographic depictions of the Persian Gulf in the Atlas Historique du Golfe Persique (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) / Historical Atlas of the Persian Gulf (16th to 18th Centuries), (Brepols, 2006). 

In 2008 he co-curated two exhibits with Sonja Brentjes, University of Seville: “From Rhubarb to Rubies: European Travelers to Safavid Iran, 1550-1700” and “The Lands of the Sophi: Iran in Early Modern European Maps, 1550-1700.”  They were held at the Houghton Library and the Map Collection at Harvard University. An exhibition catalogue is forthcoming as a special double issue of the Harvard Library Bulletin.

Brancaforte has also worked on the role of emblems in Calderón’s El príncipe constante; and is currently translating the play Canace by the Italian Renaissance scholar Sperone Speroni into English.
He has lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad, including Bangor (Wales), Oxford, Lisbon, Paris, Munich, Berlin, Brest (Belarus), St. Petersburg, and Tehran.

Awards:

Brancaforte has received several fellowships to conduct research in the U.S. and abroad (e.g. Fulbright, DAAD, Iran Heritage Foundation, Bogliasco Award, J.B. Harley Fellowship in the History of Cartography), and in 2009 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies. In Summer 2010 he attended an NEH summer seminar on “Re-Mapping the Renaissance: Exchange between Early Modern Islam and Europe.”   

Service:

At Tulane University, besides serving as undergraduate advisor to the ca. 45 German majors and minors, Brancaforte has directed Honors theses, and been a member of Ph.D. committees and several search committees. He has served on a number of Undergraduate Committees on Academic Requirements (Liberal Arts, Newcomb-Tulane), on the Promotion and Tenure Committee, and chaired the Tulane Senate Committee on Libraries. From 2006-2008 he was Director of the Tulane University Medieval and Early Modern Studies Group (MEMS).

He was Chair of the MLA Division Executive Committee of German Literature to 1700 from 2010-2011; and is currently Vice President of SGRABL, the Society for German Renaissance and Baroque Literature.  

Teaching:

Brancaforte teaches a wide range of classes on language, literature and culture in the German studies program, including GERM 326 and GERM 480/680 (“Reisen ins Fremde”). He also teaches courses in English, such as “GERM 366: Love, Death, and Sexuality from the Middle Ages to the Baroque” and “GERM 367: Grimm Reckonings” (on the development of the fairy tale). In Spring 2010 he was chosen as a “Favorite Faculty Member” (Newcomb College Institute).

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Professor Brancaforte was contacted for his expert opinion on two new TV series "Grimm" and "Once Upon a Time", series based on fairy tales and folklore, in a Times Picayune article from October 23, 2011:

'Once Upon a Time' and 'Grimm' bring fairy-tale characters to prime time.

Tulane's Elio Brancaforte studies fairy-tale references in popular culture