Jo Ann Cavallo

Biography

Jo Ann Cavallo (PhD, Yale, 1987) is Professor of Italian in the Italian Department of Columbia University, where she has taught since 1988. She has brought Austrian economics and libertarian philosophy to Italian studies through her scholarship on Marco Polo, Machiavelli, Renaissance fiction, chivalric epic, and Sicilian puppet theater. Her two latest books—The World beyond Europe in the Romance Epics of Boiardo and Ariosto and The Sicilian Puppet Theater of Agrippino Manteo (1884–1947): The Paladins of France in America—received multiple awards and were also published in Italian. Among her edited volumes are Speaking Truth to Power from Medieval to Modern Italy (co-​edited with Carlo Lottieri), Libertarian Autobiographies: Moving toward Freedom in Today’s World (co-​edited with Walter Block), and, most recently, Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism: Essays in Memory of Paul A. Cantor.

Articles
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Cavallo - Entrepreneurial Vision and Consumer Sovereignty in Enrico Piaggio – Un sogno italiano
Maria Giménez Cavallo and Jo Ann Cavallo
Entrepreneurial Vision and Consumer Sovereignty in Enrico Piaggio – Un sogno italiano

Maria and Jo Ann Cavallo explore the challenges, complexities, and triumph of entrepreneurship in an Italian film about the invention of the legendary Vespa.

The Market, Ethics, and Self-Determination in Amir Naderi’s The Runner
Maria Giménez Cavallo and Jo Ann Cavallo
The Market, Ethics, and Self-​Determination in Amir Naderi’s The Runner

Maria and Jo Ann Cavallo review Amir Naderi’s film The Runner, which explores themes of self-​resilience, innovation, and voluntary exchange through the story of eleven-​year-​old Iranian orphan Amiro.