James Taylor

Currently on leave (Fall ‘26)

James Taylor (he/they) is the first student at Yale to pursue a combined Ph.D. between the department of Italian Studies and the program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). Combining transfeminist and queer methodologies with rigorous philological and literary analysis, James’ research demonstrates how queerness and transness are revelatory lenses through which to view even the most thoroughly-studied, canonical of texts.

James’ research touches on numerous genres and historical periods. Beginning with his undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton University, titled “‘Coming out’ of Sanremo: La rappresentazione queer nella musica italiana”, James has demonstrated a sustained commitment to exploring queerness and transness in texts and performances. In his proposal of a gendered model of vision in Petrarch’s Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta (aka the Canzoniere), which he explored in various presentations and papers (i.e. Yale Medieval Lunch ’24, MARGIN Symposium ’24, AAIS Annual Conference ’24), James applied the insights of disability studies and queer theory to Medieval lyric poetry. Most recently, James has been at work on a research project centered on a 2018, posthumously-published short story by the seminal feminist and queer thinker Michela Murgia, for which he was awarded both the Graduate Student Travel Award by the American Association for Italian Studies and the 2026 Annual Conference Paper Award by the Women’s Studies Caucus of the AAIS.

At Yale, James is a co-organizer of the Other(ed) Italies Working Group, a graduate assistant at the Office of Fellowships, research assistant to Alessandro Giammei, and a co-convener of the monthly Queer Italian Pasta event held at the LGBTQ Center, which brings them great joy.