Justin Steinberg’s scholarship focuses on medieval Italian literature, especially on Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, the early lyric, manuscript culture, and literary historiography. His interests include the intersection of legal and literary culture and the history of the book. His 2007 book Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy, won the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Manuscript in Italian Studies awarded by the Modern Language Association (MLA). He has also published articles on the Compiuta Donzella (the first female poet of Italian literature), Dante's dreams in the Vita Nuova, and Petrarch's uncollected poems. He is currently writing a book about Dante and the law.