Robert Pogue Harrison (Smirne, 1954) is a professor of Literature at Stanford University in the Department of French & Italian. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2007. Harrison began his academic career as a Dante scholar, in particular focused on the Vita Nova. His work quickly focused on the human place in Nature and what he calls the humic foundations of human culture. His studies of symbols and images in Western Literature are expressed in Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (University of Chicago Press, 1992), a wide-ranging history of the religious, mythological, literary, and philosophical role of forests in the Western imagination. Forest , the book that made him known globally, was published in Italy by Garzanti in 1995. His other works are: The Body of Beatrice and The Dominion of the Dead, Gardens: An Essay on the human condition both published by the University of Chicago Press. Juvenescence, winner of the Book Award The Bridge for Non Fiction, has been published in Italy by Donzelli.