My academic background focuses on modern and contemporary Italian studies. My research encompasses popular culture, media industry studies, and publishing studies, as well as digital humanities, visual culture, and translation studies. Specifically, my most recent projects dealt with comics, their positioning in the publishing industry, and their impact on Italian society. I am also interested in exploring original pedagogical applications of comics, especially in the field of translation. As a growing interdisciplinary field, comics studies presents numerous areas of untapped research potential and is suited for collaborative research projects that can promote intellectual interaction with colleagues from other programs as well as undergraduate students.
My dissertation, titled “Auteur comics magazines in Italy: the case of Orient Express (1982-1985)”, explored the auteur comics culture in Italy (1960s-1980s), and specifically the phenomenon of auteur comics magazines, which were aimed at comics connoisseurs and mainly published Anglo-Saxon, Franco-Belgian, and Hispanic works in translation. These magazines featured only a minority of Italian “masters”, while most Italian authors were working with popular-format comics. However, in the early 1980s, the magazine Orient Express decidedly reversed this trend, showcasing writers and artists who had been neglected access to “prestige” venues. In my dissertation, I offered a comprehensive overview of the period, in terms of comics formats, genres, authors, and main debates about the medium. I also illustrated the elements that are present in each of Orient Express’ issues and designed ways to analyze this content from a statistical point of view, through the adoption of digital methods of data collection and data visualization. Finally, I expanded the scope of my research into the field of comics readership with the textual analysis of the published letters to Orient Express, to offer a preliminary profile of the auteur comics magazine’s reader. In sum, I proposed a method to study comics magazines that can be applied effectively to other forms of periodical products.
Research Interests
Modern and Contemporary Italian Studies; Comics Studies, Popular Culture, Periodical Studies, Media Industry Studies, Publishing Studies, Fan Studies; Digital Humanities; Translation and Adaptation Studies; Second Language Pedagogy.
Courses taken during PhD
Medieval and Renaissance Italian
Italian classics: from manuscripts to print (FA15): H. Wayne Storey; final paper: “Gli incunaboli e le edizioni a stampa del Decameron (1470-1557): progressi, innovazioni ectendenze nell’arte tipografica dell’Italia settentrionale”.
Forms of Civility in the Italian Renaissance (SP16): Massimo Scalabrini; final paper: “Ma come mangi? Le buone maniere a tavola nel De civilitate morum puerilium, nel Galateo e nel Nuovo Galateo“.
Modern and Contemporary Italian
Letteratura e cultura barocca in Italia (FA15): Marco Arnaudo; final paper: “Gli orologi di Ciro di Pers : sentimento del tempo e ineluttabilità della morte”
Neo-Baroque Lit & Culture (FA16): Marco Arnaudo – auditor
Art History
The graphic novel (SP16): Andrei Molotiu; final paper: “Black Hole and its forerunners: analysis of Burns’ evolution”.
Comics and the Art World (FA16): Andrei Molotiu; final paper: “Comics at the crossroad of neo-baroque and figurative art: Art Spiegelman’s “The Malpractice Suite”and Stefano Tamburini’s Snake Agent“.
American Art 1865-1945 (SP17): Melody Deusner; final paper: “Early Krazy Kat: birth, adaptations and critical reception of a comic strip”.
Courses taken during MA
Medieval and Renaissance Italian
Boccaccio and Petrarch (SP14) – H. Wayne Storey; final paper: “Visual poetics: questioni di stabilità e mobilità nel confronto tra i MSS Chigiano L V 176 e Vaticano Latino 3195”
Dante, Vita Nova (FA14) – H. Wayne Storey; final paper: “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’Amore e lo studio del genere canzone: modelli, materialità e disseminazione nel confronto tra la Vita Nova, il De Vulgari Eloquentia e la Commedia di Dante”
Renaissance Anticlassicism (SP15) – Massimo Scalabrini; final paper: “La massera da bé e le altre- erotismo e masserizia nell’ottica ‘anti-classicista’”
Modern and Contemporary Italian
The Italian novel: detective fiction (FA13) – Marco Arnaudo; final paper: “Arrivederci amore, ciao: gli abissi fisici e morali del male”
Contemporary Italian culture (SP14) – Andrea Ciccarelli; creative project (short story)
Modern Italian Lit: Italian Comics (FA14) – Marco Arnaudo; final paper: “Sclavi prima di Sclavi”
Contemporary Theater: Pirandello and De Filippo (SP15) – Andrea Ciccarelli; final paper: “Dalla novella alla pièce: metateatralità e contrasto autore/regista in “Questa sera si recita a soggetto” di Pirandello”
Cinema
Revisiting Italian Fascism in cinema (FA13): Antonio Vitti; final paper: “Uomo e virilità durante il fascismo: i casi di Wertmüller, Scola e Bertolucci
“Postwar Italian Cinema (FA14): ““Why neorealism failed”: Ma il Neorealismo è davvero fallito? Forse è tutta una questione di termini”
Pedagogy
Italian teaching Practicum (FA13): Karolina Serafin
Methods of Language Teaching (SP14): Colleen Ryan
Sara Dallavalle, PhD 