Laurea, PhD (University of Bologna)

I was awarded my PhD in Film Studies from the University of Bologna in 2009. Before joining the Institute for Collaborative Humanities I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the universities of Bologna (2009-2010) and Limoges (2010-2011), as well as a visiting scholar at King’s College London (January-December 2012).

My work is inherently interdisciplinary and focuses on the transnational circulation of film, comics, and popular literature, as well as on their connection with modern urban culture. As a postdoctoral researcher at the university of Bologna I coordinated an international and interdisciplinary project entitled EPOP: Popular Roots of European Culture through Film, Comics and Serial Literature (1850-1930), which was funded by the European Commission’s Culture Programme between 2008 and 2010. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Limoges I was a member of a research team formed by film and literary scholars, historians and researchers in geomatics and contributed to the foundation of the international association LPCM: Popular Literature and Media Culture, connecting scholars active in a large number of disciplines in more than 15 countries.

Research
My research project at the Institute deals with the transnational circulation of popular culture in Europe between 1905 and 1955. It aims to contribute to an international programme to carry out a wider research on this topic, adopting innovative digital tools to combine qualitative and quantitative methods.

My individual research will focus on some key aspects of the cultural exchanges between Italy, France and the United Kingdom in the fields of cinema and comics during the first half of the twentieth century. It will examine a series of case studies to be chosen after a preliminary quantitative survey in relation to three crucial historical moments (1905-1914; 1930-1939; 1946-1955). It will investigate how Italian, French and British films and comics were translated, adapted and distributed in these three countries. It will explore the relationships between Italian, French and British film and comics industries as well as their different reactions to the increasing influence of American popular culture. It will finally analyse the way in which these phenomena were affected by historical and political events such as the two World Wars and Fascism.

This project is only a section of a wider initiative on the history of the transnational circulation of European popular culture, which necessarily involves a collaborative, international and interdisciplinary work. This larger programme will be developed in collaboration with the Popular Literature and Media Culture association (LPCM) and, in particular, with researchers at the universities of Belfast, Limoges, Bologna, Milan, Paris X, Louvain, and Debrecen.

The main output of my individual work will be the publication of a book-length monograph as well as articles in peer-review journals. With the goal of carrying out the research on a larger scale, I will work at the same time on establishing an international network involving researchers in film, literature, comics and media studies, as well as libraries, film and comics archives. This consortium will then permit the submission of grant applications to the European Commission’s Culture Programme and to the AHRC (Priority theme: “Translating Cultures”).

Select Publications

Monograph

• 2010: Grattacieli e superuomini. L’immagine della metropoli tra cinema e città [Skyscrapers and Superman: The Image of the City in Film and Comics], Recco (Genoa): Le Mani. 256 pages.

Articles in refereed journals

• Forthcoming 2013: “From Frank Miller to Zack Snyder, and Return: Contemporary Superhero Comics and Post-Classical Hollywood,” in Miranda, special issue “New Adaptations, New Interactions,” Toulouse: Université de Toulouse II-Le Mirail  (ISSN 2108-6559).
• Forthcoming Spring 2013: “The Transnational Circulation and International Influence of Feuillade’s Fantômas,” in Belphégor: Popular Literature and Media Culture, Halifax: Dalhousie University (ISSN 1499-7185).
• 2013: “A.J. Raffles and Arsène Lupin in Literature, Theatre, and Film: On The Transnational Circulation of Popular Fiction (1905-1930),” Adaptation, Oxford: Oxford University Press (ISSN 1755-0645), doi: 10.1093/adaption/apt002.
• 2013: “Cannibale, Frigidaire, and the Multitude: Post-1977 Italian Comics through Radical Theory,” Studies in Comics, vol 3, no. 2, December 2012, Bristol: Intellect (ISSN 2040-3232), pp. 231-251.
• 2012: “L’origine infinita nel film supereroico” [The Never Ending Origin in the Superhero Film], in Fata Morgana, Cosenza: Pellegrini (ISSN 19705786), no. 16, July.
• 2011: “Space as History: Watchmen and the Urban Imagery of Superhero Comics,” in Cinema & Cie: International Film Studies Journal, Rome: Carocci (ISSN 20355270), vol. X, no. 14-15, Spring-Fall.

Book chapters

• Forthcoming Autumn 2013: “Notes sur la circulation transnationale et transmédiatique des fictions criminels européens (1900-1940),” in Jean-Louis Tilleuil, Olivier Odeart (eds), Les racines populaires de la culture européenne, Brussels: Peter Lang.
• 2012: “Sandokan e il Corsaro Nero tra parola e immagine: gli adattamenti fumettistici dell’universo salgariano” [Sandokan and the Black Corsair between Word and Image: The Comics Adaptations of the Salgari’s Universe], in Shaping an Identity: Adapting, Rewriting and Remaking Italian Literature, Ottawa: Legas (ISBN 1897493355).
• 2009: “A Spider-Man in New York. Fumetto, cinema, metropoli” [A Spider-Man in New York: Comics, Film and the City], in Leonardo Quaresima, Laura Sangalli, Federico Zecca, (eds.). Cinema e fumetto/Cinema and Comics, Udine: Forum (ISBN 8884205425), 527-537.

Edited Exhibition Catalogue

• 2010: EPOP: Popular Roots of European Culture, through Film, Comics and Serial Literature, Pescara, Italy: EPOP Project. 272 pages (in English, French and Italian).

Review essays and reviews

• “The Lord of the Rings as Global Phenomenon: a Review of The Frodo Franchise, Watching the Lord of the Rings and Studying the Event Film” (review essay), in New Review for Film and Television Studies, Abingdon: Routledge (ISSN 1740-7923), vol. 8, no. 2, June, 233- 245.
• 2010: “Olaf Möller and Giovanni Spagnoletti”s Oltre il muro. Il cinema tedesco contemporaneo,” in Storicamente, Bologna: Archetipo (ISSN 1825-411X), no. 6, February.