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Tell us about your academic path.
If we leave out my studies at Bloomington High School South in Indiana, where I distinguished myself as 'valedictorian’, I studied at a university in the desolate Iowa plains. After that, I got my PhD at Harvard and became a professor -- assistant, associate and then full professor -- at Oakland University, near Detroit. Then, four years ago, I arrived at Ca' Foscari.

What has given you the greatest satisfaction in your career?
Understanding, if only for a moment, Giacomo Zabarella's theory of the soul.

What are you most passionate about in your research?
I don't think passion is the right feeling for research. You always have to be coolheaded. Perhaps curiosity is more useful.

Have you always known that this was going to be your path?
Yes, ever since I read Cicero's "De divinatione".

Can you offer any advice to researchers in the early stages of their career?
Try to immerse yourself in the past instead of investigating the past only to find the present.