Dooley credits his experience in Florence with influencing his method of relating art and the aesthetic to history in his classroom.

After a stint at Notre Dame, he went back to Italy for another two years on a Fulbright scholarship.

Then he went to Princeton's famed Institute for Advanced Study, where he engaged in pure research, which was followed by a "bit of a shock": a teaching appointment at Cleveland State, where he taught a large Western civilization classes.

At Cleveland, Dooley taught nine courses a year, a load which he says shut out the opportunity for any research.

"There were no sections, so all the work of the course was on the instructor," he says.

But it wasn't all bad, Dooley says.

"It was actually a bit of a power-trip, to get to tell students what the low-down is in the 13th century," he says. "Although it was a shock, it was a good experience. I think my first lectures were a little rough, but the students were very tolerant."

Dooley has been at Harvard for the past five years, spending the last year abroad in Rome in the American Academy.

When asked about whether he enjoys the academic life, he says he is reminded of a page he read in a job manual a long time ago.

"It said, if you are an academic and you want a career change, you are crazy," he says.

"Academics are private contractors of our research funds and of our disciplines," he says. "In some ways it is like we each are the private manager of our own university. And the academic life is very unstructured, which is exactly what the creative process needs."