Resume
Academic Experiences
University of Toronto 2024–2025
Postdoctoral Fellow in Italian Studies
Wonderful Witches (WoW): American Models of Girlhood from Archie Comics to Disney Italia​
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University of Warwick 2023–2024
MHRA Research Scholarship in the Modern European Languages.
Italian Gothic Poetry: Excess, Abjection, and Dantean Legacy (1789-1816)
Transforming PhD thesis into monograph.
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University of Reading 2023
Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing Visiting Research Fellow. Girls’ Empowerment
in British and Italian Popular Culture:Magazines, Comics and Strips from the 1950s to Today
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University of Leeds 2023
Jeffs Postdoctoral Fellow. Exploring Transnational Girlhood in Mary Cowden Clarke’s
Children’s and Young Adults’ Literary Production (Brotherton Library).
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University of London (Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies) 2023
Visiting Research Fellow. Charming Witches: Role Models for Girls in Children’s Literature and Teen Comics in Contemporary Italy (Centre for Contemporary Women’s Writing).
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Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick 2022 – 2023
Early Career Research Fellow
Education
2018 - 2023
PhD Candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
University of Warwick
The title of my thesis is From Flesh to Soul. The Dichotomy of the Body in Alfonso Varano, Salomone Fiorentino, and Giacomo Leopardi.
In this work I advocate the existence of a sub-cluster in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Italian poetry, often imperfectly labelled as ‘sepulchral’, focusing on the co-existence between the physicality of death, as explored by coeval science, and the religious longing for eternal life.
By dynamically relying on Dante’s model, I sustain, these texts explore the tension between belief and secularisation characterising the Enlightenment age, embodied by the corpse as an object of supreme ‘abjection’ (see Kristeva) and, at the same time, of devotional contemplation.
I then hypothesise the existence of a direct literary lineage running from the works of Alfonso Varano (particularly Visioni sacre e morali, 1789) and Salomone Fiorentino (Elegie di S. F. in morte di Laura sua moglie, 1790) to Giacomo Leopardi’s early poetic experiments, and particularly to his youthful, Dante-inspired poem Appressamento della morte (1816), three works which can be defined as 'writings of excess' (see Botting). As a consequence, I detect a so-far under-investigated strain in Italy’s literary history, enabling me to provide a different assessment of Leopardi’s sources in composing this poem, beyond its overt Dantean inspiration.
Ultimately, such a cluster of Italian literary works can be understood as prone to, rather than alien to, the surrounding European Gothic taste.
2015 - 2018
Università "La Sapienza"
MA
Rome
I took my MA in 'Filologia Moderna' with a thesis on belonging and domestic intimacy in Luigi Pirandello's Novelle per un anno.
2012 - 2015
Università degli studi di Urbino "Carlo Bo"
BA
Urbino
I have been awarded my BA in 'Scienze umanistiche: discipline letterarie, artistiche e filosofiche' with a thesis on Carlo Levi's intermediality in his novel Cristo si è fermato a Eboli.
Work Experiences
2022 - Present
General Editor
Notes in Italian Studies
2020 - 2021
Section Editor
Notes in Italian Studies
2018
Reading Group Tutor and Language Tutor, face-to-face and online teaching.
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School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Italian Studies
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University of Warwick
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IT101 Italian for Beginners - oral class
(Term 1/2/3, 2018/2019)
IT115 The History of Modern Italy - reading group
(Term 1/2, 2018/2019)
IT212 Italian for Historians - oral class
(Term 1/2/3, 2018/2019)
IT317 Introducing Dante's Hell - reading group
(Term 1, 2019)
IT301 Modern Italian Language III
(Term 1/2/3, 2019/2020; Term 1/2/3, 2020/2021; Term 1/2/3, 2021/22)
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IT101 Grammar, Translation, Writing, Oral (Term 2, 2021/22)
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Online conversation classes for year abroad students (Term 3 2020)
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Extra oral activities in person based on a series of Podcast in Italian that I fashioned "2 Passi 4 Chiacchiere" (Term 3 2021)
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Awards
Postgraduate Award in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education - University of Warwick; 2021.
WATE PGR winner - Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence; 2021 and 2023.
Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy; 23rd October 2020.
HRC Doctoral Fellowship Competition; 2020/21.
Award from the Warwick Researcher Development Programme to organise student-led SMLC Symposium at
Warwick; 2020.
HRC research award to take part in HRC Workshop on Passion; 2018/2019.
HRF Travel Grant; 2018 and 2019.
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Memberships
AAIS, American Association for Italian Studies.
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CAIS, Canadian Association for Italian Studies.
AIPI, Associazione Internazionale Professori di Italiano.
SIS, Society for Italian Studies.
ADI, Associazione degli Italianisti.
Society for Pirandello Studies.
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Languages
Italian (native)
English (proficient)
German (elementary)