Skip to main content Skip to navigation

School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Dr Marina Spunta

PlaceholderTeaching Fellow in Italian Studies

Tel: +44 (0)24 765 74790

Email: Marina dot Spunta at warwick dot ac dot uk

Office 4.45, Faculty of Arts Building, University Road
University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL

Office Hours: Tuesday 3-4pm; Thursday 11-12noon or by appointment

About

I specialise in Contemporary Italian literature and Photography, particularly their intersection with Place and Landscape; Environmental Humanities; Ecocriticism; Critical Plant Studies; Orality and Vocality.

I was educated at Bologna University (BA/MA in Modern Languages and Literatures), Exeter University (MA and MPhil in Applied Linguistics) and Birmingham University (PhD in Italian Studies).

I lectured in Italian at the University of Exeter University and at the University of Leicester, before joining the University of Warwick in 2026. I was Visiting Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam in 2018.

I have acted as external examiner in Italian at the Universities of Nottingham Trent, Liverpool, Salford and Leeds.

Research interests

  • 20th/21st Century Italian literature
  • Postwar Italian Photography; Photography and Literature
  • Cultural & Visual Studies
  • Environmental Humanities; Ecocriticism; Critical Plant Studies
  • Space/Place/Landscape/Garden studies
  • Literary Orality and Vocality

I have published extensively on the above subjects and on leading writer and intellectual Gianni Celati and leading photographer Luigi Ghirri. My publications include two monographs, Voicing the Word: Writing Orality in Contemporary Italian Fiction (2004) and Claudio Piersanti (2009), eight co-edited volumes of scholarly essays on various aspects of Modern Italian Culture, and several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on a range of issues. I was Principal Investigator for the British Academy / Leverhulme Trust research grant ‘Viewing and writing Italian landscape. Luigi Ghirri and his legacy in photography and literature’, which resulted in two international conferences (Rome and Leicester) and in the co-edited volume (with J. Benci) Luigi Ghirri and the Photography of Place. Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2017).

Teaching and supervision

Teaching

I currently teach the following modules:

  • IT201 Modern Italian Language II Writing
  • IT401 Modern Italian Language IV Writing
  • IT401 Modern Italian Language IV Oral
  • IT316 Present Futures
  • LL2B4 Italian Intermediate Accelerated
  • LL2B4 Italian Intermediate Accelerated for Finalists

I have taught and convened a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules in Italian, Modern Languages, Film Studies and Translation, including modules on contemporary Italian culture, literature, cinema, photography, language and linguistics.

Supervision

I have extensive experience of PGT and PGR supervision.

PhD students supervised to successful completion at previous Institutions:

Visiting PhD/MA students at previous Institutions

  • Camilla Pinto, University of Bologna, ‘Gli anni di formazione di Gianni Celati: analisi e ricostruzione dalle carte del Fondo’ (Sept-Dec 2024)
  • Marta Guerzoni, University of Milan (Cattolica), MA on ‘Geografie d’affezione. Spazi, luoghi, paesaggi nell’opera di Gianni Celati’ (Jan-April 2024)

Current Administrative Roles

  • Subject Leader Italian, Language Centre
  • Year Abroad Coordinator, Italian

Publications

Selected Publications

Books (authored)

  • Spunta, Claudio Piersanti, Florence: Cadmo, 2009
  • Spunta, Voicing the Word: Writing Orality in Contemporary Italian Fiction, Oxford/Bern: Peter Lang, 2004

Special Journal Issues

ReCHERches, n. 24, 2020, https://journals.openedition.org/cher/624

Books (co-edited)

  • Spunta and C. Dellacasa (eds), ‘Verdi brillanti’: Riposizionare piante, giardini e foreste nella letteratura e nel cinema dell’Antropocene (Florence: Cesati, 2026)
  • Spunta and S. Ross (eds), Tra ecologia letteraria ed ecocritica: narrare la crisi ambientale nella letteratura e nel cinema italiani (Florence: Cesati, 2022)
  • Jansen, I. Lanslots and M. Spunta (eds), Viaggi minimi e luoghi qualsiasi. In cammino tra cinema, letteratura e arti visive nell’Italia contemporanea (Florence: Cesati, 2020)
  • Spunta and J. Benci (eds), Luigi Ghirri and the Photography of Place. Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2017)
  • Storchi, M. Spunta and M. Morelli (eds), Women and the Public Sphere in Modern and Contemporary Italy. Essays for Sharon Wood (Leicester: Troubador, 2017)
  • Rorato and M. Spunta (eds), Letteratura come fantasticazione. In conversazione con Gianni Celati (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009)
  • Caesar and M. Spunta (eds), Orality and literacy in modern Italian culture (Oxford: Legenda, 2006)
  • Dente, G. Ferzoco, M. Gill, M. Spunta, (eds), Proteus - The language of metamorphosis (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)

 Selected Peer Reviewed Articles

  • M. Spunta, ‘Viaggio in Italia: perdersi come «l’inquieto inizio di un viaggio verso l’ignoto»’, Arabeschi, 2026
  • ‘Pia Pera’s Poetics of the Planetary Garden’, Italian Studies, 78: 1 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2022.2148190
  • Spunta, “Far sentire la voce dell’altro”: traduzione come risonanza nella poetica di Gianni Celati, in M. Belpoliti, G. Gimmelli, M. Spunta (eds), Gianni Celati e l'arte della traduzione, Elephant & Castle, 29 (2023), pp. 14-29
  • ‘Gianni Celati, Hartmut Rosa e la risonanza’, in E. Morra and G. Raccis (eds), Prisma Testi, Contesti, Immagini, Ricordi (Milan: Mimesis, 2023), pp. 117-135
  • ‘Gianni Celati, una questione di meraviglia’, Bollettino ‘900, Electronic Journal of '900 Italian Literature, 1-2, I-II semester 2022, https://www.boll900.it/numeri/2022-i/
  • Spunta, ‘Gianni Celati e la fotografia come «pratico pensare per immagini» - in dialogo con Ghirri e Gajani’, in M. Martelli and M. Spunta (eds), La scrittura dello sguardo. Gianni Celati e le arti visive, ReCHERches, n. 24, 2020, pp. 97-112, https://journals.openedition.org/cher/714
  • ‘‘Dentro la città”: Gabriele Basilico’s Photography and the Embodied “Experience of Place”, Annali d’Italianistica, 37 (2019), Urban Space and the Body, 79-107
  • ‘‘‘A magical balance of opposites’. Reading Luigi Ghirri’s photography through Walter Benjamin’, Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, vol. 2:2, May 2014, 215-235
  • ‘Zur Geschichte des Foto-Text-Bandes in Italien’, Zeitschrift für Italienische Kultur der Gegenwart; Fotographie in Italien, ed. by T. Bremer and T. Heydenreich, n. 55, Spring 2013, pp. 77-88
  • ‘Pensar com imagens’ (Thinking through images), ZUM, 3, 2012, 58-63
  • ‘Fossati’s and Messori’s Viaggio in un paesaggio terrestre – an imaginative journey through writing, photography, landscape and painting’, Italian Studies, vol. 66, n. 1, March 2011, 93-111
  • ‘Sense of home and ‘exile’ in Giorgio Messori’s narrative fiction’, Romance Studies, 29, n. 4, November 2011, pp. 285-98
  • ‘Esplorazioni sulla via Emilia e dintorni – la fotografia italiana degli anni ’80 in dialogo con la scrittura di paesaggio’, in The modern Image, Intersections of Photography, Cinema and Literature in Italian Culture, special issue of L’anello che non tiene. Journal of Modern Italian Literature, ed. G. Minghelli, XX-XXI, 1-2, Spring-Fall 2008-2009, pp. 158-87
  • ‘Il profilo delle nuvole: Ghirri’s photography and the new Italian landscape’, Italian Studies, 61: 1, Spring 2006, 114-36
  • ‘Lo spazio delle pianure come “territorio di racconti” - verso la foce con Gianni Celati’, Spunti e Ricerche, 18, 2003, pp. 5-28
  • Il narrare semplice, naturale di Gianni Celati e i suoi progetti editoriali’, Rassegna Europea di Letteratura Italiana, 22, 2003, pp. 53-72

 Selected Book Chapters

  • ‘Gianni Celati, Hartmut Rosa e la risonanza’, in E. Morra and G. Raccis (eds), Prisma Celati. Testi, Contesti, Immagini, Ricordi (Milan: Mimesis, 2022), pp. 119-138
  • ‘Guido Guidi e la fotografia della ‘qualsiasità’, in Spunta co-ed (2020), Viaggi minimi e luoghi qualsiasi, 149-159
  • ‘Gianni Celati e la fotografia come “pratico pensare per immagini” – in dialogo con Ghirri e Gajani’, in Spunta co-ed (2020), La scrittura dello sguardo, 97-121
  • ‘Verso la foce: The Experience of Place between Writing and Photography’, in P. Barron (ed), Towards the River’s Mouth by Gianni Celati (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019), 77-88
  • ‘Gianni Celati and the allure of the voice: from “Voci da terra” to “Notizie ai naviganti”’, in M. Ronchi Stefanati (ed), Gianni Celati. Traduzione, Tradizione e Riscrittura (Rome: Aracne, 2019), 49-68
  • ‘Narrating the experience of place: Luigi Ghirri and literature’, in Spunta co-ed (2017), Luigi Ghirri and the Photography of Place, 199-224
  • ‘Interfaces of photography, writing and landscape – the landscape photobook from Ghirri to Fossati and Messori’, in G. Minghelli, S. Hill (eds), Stillness in motion. Italy, Photography and the Meaning of Modernity (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2014), 288-313
  • ‘Il paesaggio e l’estetica: considerazioni sulla teoria recente’, in P. Chirumbolo, L. Pocci (eds), Bel Paese? The Representation of Landscape in Contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013), 21-51

 Media engagement

 Invited talks / Public Engagement

  • ‘Homage to Gianni Celati’, Italian Cultural Institute, London, 27 April 2022
  • Luigi Ghirri. The Map and the Territory, in conversation with James Lingwood, Italian Cultural Institute, London, 22 October 2018
  • The Flying Carpet, in conversation with Cesare Fabbri and Michael Mack, Italian Cultural Institute, 20 March 2017
  • Guido Guidi, Facciate/Facades: In conversation with David Campany and James Lingwood, Large Glass, London, 15 December 2016, http://largeglass.co.uk/Events/Conversation-Guido-Guidi-with-David-Campany-Dr-Marina-Spunta-and
  • Luigi Ghirri. The Complete Essays; in conversation with Julian Stallabrass, Waterstones Gower Street, London, 25 October 2016

Qualifications

PhD in Italian Studies, University of Birmingham (2003)

MA & MPhil in Applied Linguistics, University of Exeter (1997)

BA & MA degree in Modern Languages, University of Bologna (1992)

Teaching qualifications

SFHEA: Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2017)

TESOL Certificate, University of Manchester (1993)

Awards

Italian Studies journal Article Prize 2023 for M. Spunta, ‘Pia Pera’s Poetics of the Planetary Garden’, Italian Studies, 78: 1 (2023), pp. 91-106

Discovering Excellence Award for Teaching Team of the Year: Modern Languages, University of Leicester, November 2019

Professional associations

External examining

  • University of Leeds, Italian undergraduate and postgraduate courses (2023-2027)
  • University of Nottingham Trent, Italian undergraduate courses (2016-2020)
  • University of Liverpool, Italian undergraduate courses (2014-2018)
  • University of Salford, Italian undergraduate and postgraduate courses (2009-2013)

 

Verdi BrillantiSpunta & Ross eds

Celati & Traduzione

Celati e Arti Visive

Viaggi minimi

Spunta & Benci eds

CP

voicing the word

Let us know you agree to cookies

We use cookies to give you the best online experience. Please let us know if you agree to functional, advertising and performance cookies. You can update your cookie preferences at any time.

Cookie policy