Darren Kusar

Darren Kusar received his PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago in 2024. In his dissertation, “Text, Voice, Image: Staging the Diabolical in Early Modern Italian Musical Theater,” Darren investigated how belief embeds itself in physical experience and penetrates the rational mind, thereby distorting senses of reality. His analysis focused on the interplay between spectacle, particularly within the sonic domain, and the demonic during the Italian Counter-Reformation. He examined the intricate interplay among textual, sonic, and visual representations of the diabolical by scrutinizing depictions of sound-based spectacle through the prism of Renaissance demonological understandings of perception and audition. Darren’s research interests include early modern poetry, opera, voice studies, Renaissance demonology, phenomenology, and wonder tales. Darren is also a classically trained tenor who frequently performs solo and in ensembles in the Chicago area.