My research focuses on 19th and 20th-century Italian literature and cinema, with specific interests in theories of modernity, psychoanalytic approaches to sexuality, and materialist theories of history. My first book project, Rome and the Margins of Modernism, explores 19th and 20th-century Rome as a site of modernity and modernism, focusing on the relationship between aesthetics and space. While Rome's ancient cityscape has long provided the semantics for political narratives of European history, the book examines Rome’s transformation into a site of modernity, showing how philosophers, writers, and filmmakers such as Gramsci, Pasolini, Fellini, and Carlo Levi expanded Rome’s imagery to account for the city’s expanding subaltern margins. My second book project takes up the role of the gaze in Italian cinema, reading art films from the 1950s to the 1970s through the lens of feminist film theory and psychoanalysis.
My work has appeared in journals such as Screen, Psychoanalysis & History, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Modern Language Review, and The Journal of Romance Studies, among others. I also served as an editor for a special issue of “GLQ titled “The Ontology of the Couple,” co-edited with S. Pearl Brilmyer and Zairong Xiang. With Dom Holdaway, I am the editor of the book Rome: Postmodern Narratives of a Cityscape (Routledge, 2016).
Before joining the faculty of Francophone, Italian and Germanic Studies (FIGS) at the University of Pennsylvania in 2017, I worked as a visiting assistant professor of Italian at the Ohio State University (2015-16), as a postdoctoral fellow in at the ICI Berlin Institute of Cultural Inquiry (2013-15), and as an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Penn (2016-17). I received my Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of Warwick in 2013.
Ph.D. in Italian Studies, University of Warwick (2013)
M.A. in Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College
B.A. in Comparative Literature, La Sapienza University of Rome
20th-century Italian literature and cinema, film studies, critical theory, sexuality studies
Books
Rome and the Margins of Modernism: Literature, Cinema, Archeopolitics (Forthcoming)
Rome, Postmodern Narratives of a Cityscape, co-edited with Dom Holdaway, co-author of “Introduction,” Pickering & Chatto, 2013 (1st edition, hardcover); Routledge, 2016 (2nd edition, paperback).
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“The Queer Underside of La dolce vita: Towards an Anal Theory of Looking” Screen, vol. 61, no. 4, 2020, pp. 545-67.
“Toward an Inessential Theory of Form: Ruskin, Warburg, Focillon” with S. Pearl Brilmyer. Criticism, vol. 61, no. 4, 2019, pp. 481-508.
“The Ontology of the Couple; or What Queer Theory Knows about Numbers,” co-authored with S. Pearl Brilmyer and Zairong Xiang. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 2019, pp. 223-255.
“The Dystopian City: Entropic Aesthetics in Fellini’s Roma and Pasolini’s Petrolio.” Forum Italicum, vol. 50, no. 1, 2016, pp. 222-43.
“Pasolini’s Anti-Futurity: Porcile and the Negative Turn in Queer Theory.” LaRivista. Études culturelles italiennes Sorbonne Universités. Vol. 4, 2016.
“Allegoria e anacronismo: crisi del linguaggio e materialismo storico in Benjamin e Pasolini.” LoSguardo. Rivista di filosofia, vol. 17, no. 2., 2015, online.
“Roman Fever: Anarchiving Eternal Rome, from Roman Holiday to Petrolio,” co-authored with Dom Holdaway. Journal of Romance Studies, vol. 14, no. 3., 2014, pp. 5-22.
“Organizing Pessimism: Enigmatic Correlations Between Walter Benjamin and Pier Paolo Pasolini.” Modern Language Review, vol. 108, no. 4, 2013, pp. 1021-41.
Book Chapters
“Aesthetics of Contingency: Clark, Deleuze and Rome’s Post-war Modernism.” Rome: Modernity, Postmodernity and Beyond, edited by Lesley Caldwell and Fabio Camilletti, Legenda, 2018, pp. 53-70.
“Aby Warburg’s Ghost: Notes on the Afterlife of the Atlas in Contemporary Literary Criticism.” De-constituting Wholes, edited by Manuele Gragnolati and Christoph Holzhey, Verlag Turia + Kant, 2016, pp. 101-29.
“Marcus Aurelius and the Ara Pacis. Notes on the Notion of Origin in Contemporary Rome.” Rome, Postmodern Narratives of a Cityscape, co-edited with Dom Holdaway, Routledge, 2016, pp. 101-17.
Editorial Work
“Anal and Sexual” by Lou Andreas Salomé, a special issue of Psychoanalysis & History, co-edited with S. Pearl Brilmyer. Co-author of “Introduction: The Genesis of “‘Anal’ and ‘Sexual.’” Vol 24, no. 1, 2022.
The Ontology of the Couple, special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, co-edited with S. Pearl Brilmyer and Zairong Xiang. Co-author of “Introduction: The Ontology of the Couple.” vol. 25, no. 2, 2019, pp. 217-221.
Have Fireflies Disappeared? Cultural Legacies and Apocalyptic Imaginary in Contemporary Representations of Rome, special issue of Forum Italicum, co-edited with Fabio Camilletti. Co-author of “Introduction.” vol. 50, no. 1, 2016, pp. 162-165.
“L’orologio di Carlo Levi,” special issue of Poetiche, co-edited with Fabio Camilletti, co-author of “Introduction” vol. 17, no. 2, 2015, pp. 3-12.