Catherine Bloomer is the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Premodern Disability Studies in the departments of Classical & Early Mediterranean Studies and English at Brandeis University. She holds a PhD, MPhil, and MA in Italian and Comparative Literature & Society from Columbia University, as well as a certificate from the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, & Sexuality. Her research interests include the body and gender in medieval and Renaissance literature and the historical conception of disability. She is also pursuing research in comparative literature and feminist scholarship with special regard to disease and violence. She is currently working on her first book project that focuses on disability in Dante Alighieri’s works and times.
She received her MFA in fiction from The New School in 2016, where she taught literature and worked as a research assistant while writing a critical thesis on women’s voices and, as her creative thesis, a novel that examines the intersections of disability and marginalized cultures. Catherine was the pilot teacher for the arts education program WriteOn NYC. She currently serves as their Associate Director. Her experiences outside academia include work at the nonprofits American Academy in Rome and the National Book Foundation.
She graduated cum laude from Barnard College in 2013, with a BA in Italian and English literature and a concentration in Creative Writing. At Barnard, Catherine received departmental honors in English and Italian, the Speranza Prize in Italian, and the Lenore Marshall Prize for poetry. As part of her undergraduate career, she studied at the Università di Bologna in 2011.