Areas
19th-20th Century Italian Literature, Cultural Studies and Literary Theory
Interests and Current Work
My primary field of study is nineteenth and twentieth century Italian literature. I am concerned
with analyzing the dynamics among Italian intellectuals working between the dominant culture and
so-called 'sub-dominant' cultures in the years crucial to the Italian definition of a national
identity: that is to say, the Romantic period, the Risorgimento and the second postwar period.
I recently became intrigued with notions of 'space' and 'communities' and their relationship
to State-formations in a frame of time going beyond the immediate postwar period and covering
instead a wider historical and geographical frame.
I am also working on two other projects. The first will investigate the problematic concept of
"resistance" in literature and society. One starting point for this developing interest
is already contained in my article "The Myth of the Resistance or the resistance to the Myth?
For a (re)reading of The House on the Hill by Cesare Pavese."
The second project is concerned with analyzing and rethinking the
political movements and uprisings of the 1970s, a period of Italian history which had a
profound resonance and impact not only in Italy but also in Europe, and deeply affected the lives
of many people involved in those events as well as the way of thinking and imagining
Italian national identity.
Recent and Selected Publications
Città nomadi:Esodo e autonomia nella metropoli contemporanea. Verona: Ombre corte, 2008
Cesare Pavese: Una vita imperfetta. La crisi dell'intellettuale nell'Italia del dopoguerra.
(Cesare Pavese: an imperfect life. The crisis of the intellectual in postwar Italy.)
Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1998.
"Between Romanticism and Realism: The Poetics of Engagement and the romanzo sociale during
in the Italian Risorgimento." Forum for Modern Language Studies, Oxford University
Press 38 (2002): 2.
"Identità nazionale e mito resistenziale: per una (ri)lettura de La casa in collina
di Cesare Pavese." Narrativa, Université Paris X 22 (2002)
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