# Jo Ann Cavallo **URL:** --- Jo Ann Cavallo (PhD, Yale, 1987) is professor emerita at Columbia University, where she taught in the Department of Italian from 1988 to 2026. She has brought Austrian economics and libertarian philosophy to Italian studies through her scholarship on Marco Polo, Machiavelli, Renaissance fiction, chivalric epic, Sicilian puppet theater, and contemporary film. 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_.