Professor Stephen Gundle

Professor of Film & Television Studies

s.gundle@warwick.ac.uk
Tel: +44 2476 528435
Room A1.28, Faculty of Arts Building

About

I am a Professor in Film and Television Studies. As a specialist in film and media and cultural and political history, my work tends to focus on cinema as a social practice and as an industry, as well as on film as entertainment and propaganda.

I have written mostly about the relations between cinema and television, politics and consumption in Italy from the Fascist period to the present, as well as the Italian and European star system, and the concept of glamour.

In recent years, I have been principal investigator on three large AHRC research projects. The first of these was concerned with the personality cult of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. The second, run in partnership with the Cineteca di Bologna, dealt with the role of producers and production practices in the history of the Italian film industry. Read more about this project here. My current project explores the role of women workers in the Italian film industry between the 1940s and the 1980s. This is also in partnership with the Cineteca di Bologna. Here is a link to the project website: Women in Italian Film Production

I have been a visiting professor at Sapienza University in Rome. Sciences-Po in Paris and the Université de Paris II and X. I was Chair of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy from 2009-14 and 2015-16.

Currently, I am co-editor of Storia e problemi contemporanei, an associate editor of the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies and a member of the editorial committee of several journals, including Modern Italy.

Research interests

I have published ten books, three edited books, several journal special issues and many articles and book chapters. These focus on areas such as mass culture and Italian Fascism, the Italian Communist Party and its cultural policies, the Italian film industry, the history and theory of glamour, Hollywood’s impact in Europe, feminine beauty and national identity, representing Mussolini in cinema and television, the aesthetics and politics of Silvio Berlusconi, and cinematic Rome with special reference to Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Peer-reviewed articles have appeared in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Modern Italy and other journals. Four of my books have also been published in Italian and two in other languages.

My most recent research has focused on Italian film stars. In two books, Mussolini’s Dream Factory and Fame amid the Ruins, I explore the star system of the Fascist period and in the immediate postwar years when neorealism was on the ascendancy. I discuss the specificities of Italian stars, the political and industrial context in which they operated and their impact on the public.

I am currently working on an edited book about the Italian film industry and the role of producers like Dino De Laurentiis and Franco Cristaldi and another edited volume about women in Italian television. My latest single-authored volume about the the posthumous life of Mussolini was published by Oxford University Press in August 2026.

Teaching

I teach a range of modules including Film History: Italian Cinema and Biopics.

PhD Supervision

I have supervised projects on the Italian magazine industry and the cinematic imaginary, Italian silent cinema, Visconti’s politics and aesthetics, Italian film stardom, and ruralism and modernity in Italian cinema.

I am happy to receive proposals on most aspects of Italian cinema, on the history of film promotion and advertising, on glamour, and on cinema and dictatorships.

Selected Publications

Books

Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-91 Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2000
Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War Indiana University Press, Bloomington Indiana, 2007; With David Forgacs
The Glamour System Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, With Clino T. Castelli
Bellissima: Feminine Beauty and the Idea of Italy Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007
Glamour: A History Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008
Death and the Dolce Vita: The Dark Side of Rome in the 1950s Canongate, London, 2011
The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians Manchester University Press, Manchester 2013. with Christopher Duggan, Giuliana Pieri, Simona Storchi and others
Mussolini’s Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2013
Fame amid the Ruins: Italian Film Stardom in the Age of Neorealism Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2020
Mussolini's Ghost: The Afterlife of a Dictator Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2026

Recent Edited Collections

The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2013, co-edited with Christopher Duggan and Giuliana Pieri
‘The Cult of Mussolini in 20th Century Italy’, special issue of Modern Italy, 18:1, 2013 co-edited with Christopher Duggan and Giuliana Pieri
‘Rome Open City: Rupture and Return’ special issue of Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, 6:3, 2017 co-edited with Louis Bayman and Karl Schoonover
‘Practices and Contexts of the Italian Film Industry’, special issue of Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40:1, 2020, co-edited with Karl Schoonover and Stefano Baschiera
'Divismo e cultura visuale nella prima meta' del Novecento', monographic issue of Storia e problemi contemporanei 88 (2021), co-edited with Barbara Montesi
Paul Ginsborg and the Historiography of Modern Italy, Palgrave, London 2024, co-edited with john Foot
'Cinema, pubblico e modelli di genere in Italia (1936-45)', monographic issue of Storia e problemi contemporanei 99 (2025), co-edited with Barbara Montesi

Recent Refereed Articles and Book Chapters

‘“We Have Everything to Learn from the Americans”: Film Promotion, Product Placement and Consumer Culture in Italy, 1945-1965’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40:1, 2020
‘Alessandro Blasetti and the Rise of the Italian Film Industry, 1929-1959’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40:1, 2020 (with Michela Zegna)
'Mussolini between Hero-Worship and De-Mystification: Exemplary Anecdotes, Petite Histoire and the Problem of Humanization', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 64;1 (2022)
'English Rose for the Masses: Gladys Cooper, Beauty Ideals and Popular Visual Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Britain', Storia e problemi contemporanei, 88, 2020
'Monica Vitti: Style and Glamour', L'Avventura, 8:1, 2023
'Doris Duranti, fascino and Fascism: Function and Contradictions of the femme fatale of Italian Cinema, 1936-43', Storia e problemi contemporanei, 99, 2026
'The Queen of Italy' in Reuel Golden (ed.), Sophia Loren: Photograhs by Alfred Eisenstadt, New York, Taschen, 2026

A fuller list of publications and conference papers can be found here.

Selected papers are available for download here.

Administrative roles

Study Abroad Coordinator

National roles and professional associations

Chair, Association for the Study of Modern Italy, 2009-2014, 2015-16
Editor (with Anna Tonelli), Storia e problemi contemporanei, 2026-.
Member of scientific committee ATRIUM (Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes in Urban Memory), 2020-

Teaching

Undergraduate modules

FI106 Film History

FI212 Italian Cinema

FI359 Biopics

Postgraduate modules

FI937 Biopics