As we begin the semester, we're highlighting Bryn Mawr's newest faculty members. The College supports faculty excellence in both research and teaching.
Assistant Professor of Italian and Italian Studies Alessandro Giammei
I work on trans-historical and interdisciplinary topics at the crossway of textual and visual studies, Modernity and the Renaissance, classicism and experimentalism. I was trained as a literary historian in Rome, and my doctoral and postdoctoral research (at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and at Princeton University) involved work in art history and film studies, classics, gender and sexuality studies, and race and ethnicity studies. My current book project shows how the multimedia legacy of a Renaissance poem, the
Orlando furioso, shaped modern Italian literature, painting, cinema, and politics in the age of fascism, colonialism, and the World Wars. My first book,
Nell'officina del nonsense di Toti Scialoja (Milan, 2014) won the Harvard edition of the Edinburgh Gadda Prize in 2015. My scholarship has appeared in journals such as
Modernism/modernity,
Modern Language Notes,
Italian Poetry Review,
Engramma, il verri, Studi Novecenteschi, and
Contemporanea; and my criticism appeared in Italian newspapers and magazines such as
Flash Art,
il Manifesto,
Pagina99,
Nuovi Argomenti, and
Alfabeta2. My first book of creative non-fiction (a collection of 26 personal essays on contemporary America, on Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby, on what is fiction and why we need it) will be published by Marsilio in September 2018.
Bryn Mawr's Department of Italian and Italian Studies emphasizes a holistic approach to the study of Italian culture. From language and literature to history and culture, we offer an interdisciplinary course of study that brings together interests in the works of the great Italian authors and more popular genres of literature as well as politics, gender and sexuality, philosophy, history, film, and the visual arts.
Department of Italian and Italian Studies
