Research interests

• Italian cinema and media
• Postcolonial cinema
• Transnational cultural practices
• Italian cultural and intellectual history
• Industrial and sponsored cinema
• Cinema and history
• Mediterranean studies
• Jewish Italian Culture

Publications

Monographs

• Beyond The Battle of Algiers. Fiction, non-fiction, and militant cinema between Algeria and Italy in the 1960s, in progress
• Un dio nero un diavolo bianco. Storia di un film non fatto tra Algeria, Eni e Sartre, Venice, Marsilio, 2023

Edited books

• Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022 (co-edited with Paola Scarnati)
• Pier Paolo Pasolini, Framed and Unframed: A Thinker for the Twenty-First Century, London and New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018 (paperback: 2020) (co-edited with Karen T. Raizen)
• Immagini di piombo. Cinema, storia e terrorismi in Europa, Milan, Postmediabooks, 2014 (co-edited with Vanessa Roghi)

Edited issues

• “Postcolonial Italian Cinema”, Cinema e Storia. Rivista di studi interdisciplinari, forthcoming 1/2024 (with Luca Caminati, Valeria Deplano, and Damiano Garofalo)
• “Media-Enterprise Discourses and Practices of Cinema and the Media in Corporate Culture”, Cinema e Storia. Rivista di studi interdisciplinari, 1/2022 (with Diego Cavallotti, Simone Dotto, and Jennifer Malvezzi)
• “Cinema and Social Conflicts”, Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict, Volume 6 (2020) (co-edited with Daniel Fairfax and André Keiji Kunigami).
• Dossier “The Legacy of Pier Paolo Pasolini”, Senses of Cinema, Issue 77, December 2015 (co-edited with Daniel Fairfax)

Journal articles

• “Algerians in Rome, Italians in Algiers: before and after The Battle of Algiers”, Film History, accepted for publication,forthcoming (9790 words)
• “‘Where Everything Seems to Begin: Antonioni and Branca in the United States circa 1968”, The Italianist: Film Issue, 43:2, special cluster on Transnational Screens, pp. 198-211
• “Build to Last? Material Legacies of Italian Colonialism. A roundtable”, Interventions: International journal of postcolonial studies, special issue on Postcolonial Italy, edited by Sebastian Depretto and Markus Wurzer.
• “‘Purché ne salvi lo spirito’. Tempo di uccidere, made and unmade films”, in Annali d'Italianistica 2023 – Fascism in Italian Culture: 1945-2022, pp. 269-286
• “La battaglia d’Algeri di Gillo Pontecorvo, rifiuti e ‘censure’”, special issue “Tra mito, storia e attualità: i sessant’anni della Rivoluzione algerina”, Il Ponte, 5-2022, pp. 68-76.
• “Italian screen studies alla conferenza annuale dell’American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS)”, La Valle dell’Eden. Semestrale di cinema e audiovisivi, special issue on “Italian Cinema and Media Studies Beyond Italy”, n. 37/2021, pp. 71-82*
• “Non-Theatrical Circulation Circuits of Italian Films in the American Midwest. A Case Study”, L’avventura. International Journal of Italian Film and Media, 1, 2021, pp. 23-40 (with Damiano Garofalo)*
• “Timira, romanzo meticcio e stratificato,, Forum Italicum, Volume 55, issue 1, 2021, pp. 68-84 (with Michela Bertossa, Lawrence Gianangeli, and, Enrico Zammarchi)*
• “«Ciak, azione!». Alcune note su cinema e conflitto”, Zapruder. Rivista di storia della conflittualità sociale, 52 (2020), pp. 168-175
• “Between auteurism and sponsored cinema: Joris Ivens, Bernardo Bertolucci and ENI’, Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, 7:2 (2019), pp. 199–215*
• “Unfinished projects, unmade films, unfilmed objects: the difficult relationship between cinema and the Italian anni di piombo”, in The Italianist: Film Issue, 38:2 (2018), pp. 189-203*
• “Gramsci, no longer a communist”, in Historical Materialism 25.3 (2017), pp. 191-209 (Review Article)*
• “Before The Battle of Algiers: Sartre, Colonialism, Industrial Cinema, and an Unmade Film”, in Senses of Cinema, Issue 84, September 2017 (online, 5987 words)*
• “Parodie sul web. Gli effetti di <em>Gomorra</em> La serie sulla gente”, in Arabeschi. Rivista di studi su letteratura e visualità, n. 9/2017, online
• “The diplomatic promotion of Italian cinema in English-speaking countries”, in Comunicazioni Sociali 2016 – 3. Italian Quality Cinema: institutions, legitimation, taste, edited by Claudio Bisoni, Danielle Hipkins, and Paolo Noto, pp. 398-411 (with Paolo Noto)*
• “La nostra fratellanza nel dolore. The Jewish Community of Rome and the &lsquo;other&rsquo; genocides” in Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC, special issue on multidiretional memories, edited by Robert Gordon and Emilano Perra (2016, online, 9063 words)*
• “Occasioni mancate, il cinema italiano e gli anni di piombo” in Jean Gili (ed.), Storie del Bel Paese. L'Italia attraverso il cinema dal Risorgimento ad oggi (1861-2011), “Quaderni del CSCI» 2011/7, Barcelona, 2011, pp. 130-133
• “Paolo Benvenuti e Segreti di stato: un incontro tra cinema e storia”, in Storiografia, rivista annuale di storiografia, Fabrizio Serra Editore, 13, 2010, pp. 171-204

(* peer reviewed)

Book Chapters

• “Elio Germano: Not Just an Actor”, in Italian Contemporary Screen Performers. Training, Production, Prestige, edited by Luca Barra, Cristina Formenti, Mariapaola Pierini and Francesco Pitassio, Palgrave MacMillan (forthcoming, 2800 words)
• “’There exists no life more daring and adventuresome than that of an oil drigger’. ENI’s geologists-filmmakers in Iran”, in Films That Work Harder: The Circulation of Industrial Film. edited by Vinzenz Hediger, Yvonne Zimmermann, with S. Anthony, Amsterdam University Press, 2024, pp. 581-609*
• “I confini negli USA: evoluzioni, emergenze e margini”, in Sui confini d’Europa. Storie di frontiere e di resistenze, edited by Gabriele Proglio, Il Manifesto libri, 2023
• “Prima di Pontecorvo e Lorenzini: solidarietà militante e nascita del cinema algerino”, in Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, edited by Luca Peretti and Paola Scarnati, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022, pp. 99-111
• “La prima grande produzione cinematografica algerina”, Les Mains libres dal 1964 al 2022” in Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, edited by Luca Peretti and Paola Scarnati, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022, pp. 227-237
• “Scambi, memorie, incontri: Zineb Sedira al padiglione francese alla Biennale d’Arte 2022, in Con le mani libere. Il cinema italiano e la liberazione dell’Algeria, Annale AAMOD 22, edited by Luca Peretti and Paola Scarnati, Rome, Effigi edizioni, 2022, pp. 265-271
• “Portella della Ginestra e il cinema, film fatti e non fatti”, in La strage di Portella della Ginestra tra storia e memoria, edited by Tommaso Baris and Manoela Patti, Istituto Poligrafico Europeo, 2022, pp. 211-232
• “Italians the world over. The glorification of Italian labor abroad”, in Italian Industrial Literature and Film: Perspectives on the Representation of Postwar Labor, edited by Carlo Baghetti, Jim Carter, and Lorenzo Marmo, Peter Lang Press, 2021, pp. 449-458
• “Propaganda Live, la TV come comunità intermedia”, in Luca Barra and Fabio Guarnaccia (ed.), SuperTele. Come guardare la televisione, Minimum Fax, 2021 pp. 160-172 (with Damiano Garofalo)
• “Al cinema col PCI. La critica cinematografica sulla stampa non specializzata (1945-1956)”, in Michele Guerra and Sara Martin (ed.), Culture del film. Il cinema e il pensiero critico italiano, Il Mulino, 2020, pp. 197-217 (with Marco Zilioli)
• “Mafia, Mobility, and Capitalism in Italy circa 1960” in Companion to the Gangster Film, edited by George S. Larke-Walsh, Hoboken [NJ], Wiley Blackwell, 2018, pp. 244-261*
• “Compromessi e difficoltà. Note a proposito di alcuni film non fatti sugli anni di piombo”, in Luca Peretti e Vanessa Roghi (ed.), Immagini di piombo. Cinema, storia e terrorismi in Europa, Milan, Postmediabooks, 2014, pp. 75-84
• “Caratteri dell'antigiudaismo a Roma nei primi dell'Ottocento in due film italiani: Il Marchese del Grillo (1981) e Nell'anno del signore”, in Giuseppe Capriotti (ed.), Antigiudiasmo, antisemitismo e memoria. Un approccio pluridisciplinare, Macerata, Eum (University of Macerata Press), 2009, pp. 93-126

Other non-peer reviewed essays, articles, and interviews (selected)

• “Algerian Film Was Born in the Struggle Against French Colonialism”, in Jacobin, 21 January 2023
• “Zervò, Aspromonte, Italia”, in Il Tascabile, 21 December 2021
• “Italian Filmmakers and the Algerian Question”, in French Pavilion catalogue 3/3, Venice Biennale (2022)
• “Pasolini at 100”, in Tribune, Winter 2022
• “Del Boca, partigiano e storico del colonialismo italiano”, in DINAMOpress, 18 July 2021
• “Roberto Benigni Is Getting a Golden Lion for Not Being Funny Anymore”, in Jacobin, 28 June 2021
• “Il caso della Banda Mario. Per una Resistenza internazionalista e multietnica” in DINAMOpress, 25 April 2021
• “Che memoria per il Giorno del Ricordo”, in DINAMOpress, 10 February 2021
• “La crescente instabilità del Maghreb”, in DINAMOpress, 21 December 2020 (with Cosimo Pica)
• “Italian-Americans, it’s time to forget Columbus”, in Il Manifesto, 2 September 2020
• “Problemi dell’homo zoomaticus”, in il lavoro culturale, 24 April 2020
• “Il fascismo dentro di noi”, in il lavoro culturale, 5 January 2020
• “Incarcerazioni di massa negli Stati Uniti”, in Gli Stati Generali, 1 September 2019
• “The Death of a Class” (On Bernardo Bertolucci), in Jacobin, 5 December 2018
• “Remembering Pier Paolo Pasolini”, in Jacobin, 1 June 2018
• “Studiare la televisione”, interviews with Francesco Casetti and Mario Morcellini, in Damiano Garofalo and Vanessa Roghi (ed.), Televisione. Storia, memoria, immaginario, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2015 pp. 245-265 (with Damiano Garofalo)
• Essay-review of Giorgio Bertellini (ed.), Italian Silent Cinema. A Reader, John Libbery Publishing, 2013, in Screening the Past, Issue 39, 2015
• “Report on the 2014 AAIS Annual Conference: Panels and Papers on Italian Film and Television”, in The Italianist, 35:2, 2015, pp. 304–308
• “Il cinepanettone e la società. Dibattito intorno a una fenomenologia, ai consumi culturali e su come studiare il cinema italiano”, dialogue on Italian Holiday-films, with Alan O’Leary, CinemaItaliano, http://www.cinemaitaliano.info/news/26725/il-cinepanettone-e-la-societa--un-testo-esclusivo.html, November 17^th, 2014
• “Il film che non ci volevano far fare. Intervista a Gianfranco Pannone, regista de Il sol dell’avvenire” in Luca Peretti e Vanessa Roghi (ed.), Immagini di piombo. Cinema, storia e terrorismi in Europa, Milan, Postmedia Books, 2014, pp. 139-148
• “Cinepanettone and Society”, in ReadingItaly, 2013
• Dossier dedicated to the cinepanettone, in ReadingItaly, 2013
• “Paper e panel sul cinema alla conferenza annuale della American Association of Italian Studies (AAIS) del 2012” in The Italianist, 33:2, 2013, pp. 336–343 (with Riccardo Antonangeli)

Qualifications

PhD, MPhil and MA, Yale University, Film and Media Studies Program - Department of Italian (2011-2018)

MA, University College of London, Film Studies (2008-2009)

BA, La Sapienza (Rome), Modern History (2004-2008)