Giorgio Bertellini, Associate Professor, Screen Arts & Cultures, Department of Romance Languages and Literature, University of Michigan

Michigan Society of Fellows (2001-2004),
PhD and MA (NYU 2001; Cinema Studies);
BA (Universita' Cattolica, Milan, Italy 1991; Philosophy)

As a visual historian, Bertellini is interested in film aesthetics in the context of the dense artistic and cultural exchanges across the Atlantic. In his first book in English, Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque (2009), he followed the historical and geographic journeys of an aesthetic form, the picturesque, from 17th century paintings and 18th century prints to turn-of-the-20th-century films, and from the Italian to the North American racial culture. In the process, he also followed the picturesque’s original subjects, Southern Italians, as both protagonists and consumers of picturesque works. In the end, his research sought to recast established time-centered notions of cinematic modernity by mobilizing pressingly modern notions of geographic variance, racial difference, and migration.

In the next project he is focusing on a historically narrower type of Atlantic exchange, the 1920s American popularity of Hollywood star Rudolph Valentino and dictator Benito Mussolini. Based again on a wide variety of sources and documents, Divo/Duce seeks to unearth the historical convergences of celebrity culture, charismatic leadership and national sovereignty and in the process identify the relationships between star studies and political science. While the bulk of the research relates to the North American scene, for comparative purposes a substantial portion will also be devoted to the repercussions of the Divo/Duce’s transnational fame in Italy and Argentina—two Latin, predominantly Catholic, cultural settings.

Over the years, Bertellini has published essays in such scholarly journals as Cinema Journal, Film Quarterly, Film History, The Velvet Light Trap, Urban History, The Journal of Urban History, Agalma: Rivista di Cultura ed Estetica; Italian American Review; Italica; Kintop; Comunicazioni Sociali, and NEMLA Italian Studies. He also edited volumes for both pedagogical and scholarly use, from Emir Kusturica (Rome, 1995), The Cinema of Italy (London: 2004; 2007), and Early Cinema and the National (London, 2008; with Richard Abel and Rob King) to the forthcoming Silent Italian Cinema: A Reader. Finding it difficult to stop writing in Italian, he has contributed articles and essays to daily newspapers and academic periodicals. More recently he has revised and expanded his 1996 monograph on Emir Kusturica, published in the series Il Castoro Cinema (Milan, 2011).

Publications:

Emir Kusturica (Milan: Il Castoro, 2011)

Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Language, and the Picturesque (Indiana University Press, 2010)

Winner, 2010 American Association of Italian Studies Book Award
Winner, 2010 Robert K. Martin Prize for Best Book (Canadian Association for American Studies)
Finalist, 2010 American Studies Association/Lora Romero Book Prize
Finalist, 2010 Modernist Studies Association Book Prize

Interviews: rorotoko.com; America Oggi

Reviews: 
Alias/Il Manifesto (Rome), Europa Quotidiano (Rome), Fra Noi (Chicago), Screening the Past (Melbourne, Australia), Film History (UK), Italica (US), Il Mestiere di Storico (Italy), Altreitalie (Italy), Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television (US/UK), Times Literary Supplement (London)

Curriculum Vitae

Graduate Courses:

SAC 600 Introduction to Screen Studies; SAC 601 Screen Historiography: Race in Silent American Cinema; SAC 632 Stardom

Undergraduate courses

SAC 351 Silent Film History; SAC 366/ITA359 Italian American Cinema; ITA 468 New Italian Media; SAC 441/ITA315 Italian Cinema; ITA 467 Screening Italian Fascism