Gennaro Ambrosino

About

I am a PhD student in Italian Studies at the University of Warwick, funded by a Chancellor’s International Scholarship and supervised by Prof. Fabio CamillettiLink opens in a new window. I am also a Freer Fellow at the Royal Institution.

Research

My research project examines how the interplay between archaeological, geological, and literary forms of knowledge contributed to the articulation of a discourse on the ‘unconscious’ in Italian literature and culture from the mid-18^th century (1738, first archaeological excavations in Herculaneum) to the mid-19^th century (1841, establishment of the Vesuvius Observatory). In particular, I focus on the ways the discourses of archaeology and geology, constructed and defined as autonomous disciplines in those very same decades, played a significant role in shaping concepts such as ‘the return of the repressed’ and ‘imaginative historical reconstruction’. My project possesses, therefore, a strongly interdisciplinary outlook, intercepting for the first time rising trends in different fields such as the cultural history of Archaeology and Geology, the study of ‘Occulture’ (Partridge 2004) in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment imaginary, and the cultural pre-history of psychoanalysis, particularly of Sigmund Freud’s use of archaeological and stratigraphical metaphors.

Research Interests

• Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Italian literary culture
• Literature and science
• The irrational and the Unconscious before Freud
• Italian travel literature
• History of Science and Medicine
• Dante's Reception in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Literature

Publications

• “Awakening Pompeii. Statues, Bodies, Casts and Shadows”, The Italianist, 46, 3 (forthcoming 2026).
• “‘Gli occhi sono il telegrafo dell’anima’:Tracing the Prehistory of Modern Spiritualism in Italian Literature and Culture (1792–1853)”, in Ambrosino G., Camilletti F., Van den Bossche B. (eds.), Modern Spiritualism in Italian Literature and Culture (1765-1969) (London, New York: Routledge: 2026), pp. 33-51. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003606048
• “Gli Etruschi e lo spirito di Dante: il folklore occulto di Charles Leland”, Studi medievali e moderni, 19, 1 (2025), pp. 75-91. DOI: 10.26379/SMM20251_005.

• “Inorganico pre e post-umano: Giacomo Leopardi e la geologia nelle Operette morali”, Cahiers d’études italiennes, 40 (2025). DOI: http://journals.openedition.org/cei/16034.

• “Tra archeologia, scienze naturali e racconti di viaggio: Viterbo nei resoconti archeologici ibridi di Francesco Orioli”, Studi sul Settecento e l’Ottocento, 19 (2024), pp. 11-20, pp. 11-20 DOI: 10.19272/202407401001.

• “Un itinerario di viaggio tra le necropoli etrusche dell’Italia centrale. Francesco Orioli e le memorie archeologiche viterbesi”, in Gola S., Vanden Berghe D. (eds.), Il viaggio in Italia nell’Ottocento (Bruxelles, Berlin, Bern, New york, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien: Peter Lang, 2023), pp. 125-145. https://www.peterlang.com/document/1396729

• “Etruscan studies and the Infernal Landscape in Vincenzo Cardarelli’s prose d’arte”, in Zampieri C., Piperno M. and Van den Bossche B. (eds.), Modern Etruscans: Close Encounters with a Distant Past (Leuven: KU Leuven University Press, 2023), pp. 127-145. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/76515 

• "La diffusione del mesmerismo nell’ambiente culturale napoletano: i Racconti inverisimili (1886) di Federigo Verdinois”, Incontri. Rivista europea di studi italiani, 37 (2022), pp. 1-14. https://doi.org/10.18352/inc12866
• “Leopardi e il mesmerismo: una lettura in chiave magnetica del Tasso”, ENTHYMEMA, 27 (2021), pp. 31–43. https://doi.org/10.13130/2037-2426/14470

Conference Papers

• “Layers of Fire: Volcanoes, Time and the Substance of Memory”, at the International Conference Substrata. Primitive antiquities, fossils, excavations in the long 19th century, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, 11-12 September 2025.
• “Pre-Human and Post-Human Inorganic: Geological Imaginaries in Giacomo Leopardi’s Operette morali”, at the Ottocentismi (Interdisciplinary Network for Nineteenth-Century Italian Studies) – III Symposium, University of Toronto, 1-3 May 2025.
• with Rossana Galimi, “Resurfacing the Etruscan Past: Subterranean and Subaltern Discourses in La chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023)”, at the International Conference Underground Imaginaries 2025: Spaces in Between, Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici di Napoli, University of Naples ‘La Parthenope’, 3-5 April 2025 .
• “New Perspective on Mesmerism in Italy”, at the Atelier de travail Mesmer et ses heritage. Un état de recherches, Sorbonne Université, 7 December 2024.

• “Scientific Exploration and Personal Introspection. Climbing Volcanoes as a Purgatorial Journey (1750-1850)”, at at the conferenceDante Futures. New Voices in the UK and Ireland, University of Cambridge, 15-16 November 2024.

• “In Dialogue with Tradition: Pliny and the Reconstruction of a Buried Past in Vesuvian Literature of the Revolving Century”, at the Speaking with the dead. Italy and the Legacy of the Past in the Revolving Century (1750-1850) International Conference, University of Warwick, 26-27 September 2024.

• “Ruins, Archaeological Landscapes and Spiritual Invocations in Le notti romane (1792-1804) by Alessandro Verri”, at the Society for Italian Studies Biennal Conference 2024, Royal Holloway Univeristy of London, 19-21 June 2024.

• “Dall’inorganico pre-umano all’inorganico post-umano: Giacomo Leopardi e la geologia nelle Operette morali”, at the one-day Symposium New Approaches to Operette morali (1824-2024), University of Oxford, 17 June 2024.

• “Magnetic Healing, Occult Performance and Popularisation: the 1856 Challange between Francesco Guidi and Antonio Zanardelli”, at the International Workshop Performing Magnetism in the Long Nineteenth-Century: Transnational Perspectives, University of Antwerp, 18-19 April 2024.

• “Science, Literature and the Supernatural: Modern Spiritualism in Italian Culture (1870-1920)”, at the MDRN Lecture Series, KU Leuven, 27 February 2024.

• “‘The Eyes are a Telegraph of the Soul’: The Emergence of the Concept of Telepathy and Ghostly Thought-Transference in Italian Popular Culture”, at the international conference Occultism and Popular Culture in Europe, Copenhagen, 22-23 November 2023.

• “Etruscan Infernal Landscapes: the Reception of Dante’s Inferno in the Travel Accounts of Francesco Orioli, Elizabeth Hamilton Gray and George Dennis”, at the conference Dante Futures. New Voices in the UK and Ireland, Leeds, 17-18 November 2023
• “Tra religione e scienza: le origini e la diffusione del mesmerismo nella cultura italiana (1779-1853)”, at the international conference (KU Leuven-University of Warwick), Spiritismo e letteratura italiana tra il Settecento e il Duemila, Leuven, 29-30 settembre 2023.
• “Tra dimensione spaziale e temporale: il paesaggio nelle prose di viaggio di Vincenzo Cardarelli”, at the annual conference of Associazione degli Italianisti, Contemplare/abitare: la natura nella letteratura italiana, Napoli, 14-16 settembre 2023.
• “Mesmeric Imagery in Leopardi’s Works: a ‘Magnetic’ Reading of Dialogo di Torquato e del suo Genio familiare”, at the one-day Symposium Leopardi in the UK, Christ Church, University of Oxford, 26 May 2023.
• “Gli etruschi nel Risorgimento: la rappresentazione di Viterbo nelle memorie archeologiche di Francesco Orioli (1783-1856)”, at the International Symposium All’Etrusca. La scoperta della cultura materiale e visiva etrusca nell’Europa premoderna e moderna, École française de Rome, 23-25 February 2023.
• “Archaeology and the Unconscious. Tackling the Mystery from an Interdisciplinary Approach (1745-1845)”, at the Annual Conferences of Canadian Association for Italian Studies, online, 12 June 2021.
• “Da Muratori ad Orioli: le origini del mesmerismo italiano”, at the Conference Il mesmerismo nell’Otto-Novecento, Laboratorio Leopardi Sapienza, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, 24-26 May 2021.

Organized Events and Workshops

• Co-organiser: International Conference, University of Warwick, Dante Futures: New Voices in the UK and Ireland, 21-22 November 2025.
• Co-organiser: AIPI Summer School 2025, University of Warwick (Venice Centre), Corpo a Corpo. Prospettive transtoriche e transmediali sulla corporeità nella cultura italiana, 16-19 September 2025.
• Co-organiser: International Conference, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Substrata. Primitive antiquities, fossils, excavations in the long 19th century, 11-12 September 2025.
• Co-organiser: Conference, University of Warwick, Speaking with the dead. Italy and the Legacy of the Past in the Revolving Century (1750-1850), 26-27 September 2024.
• Co-Organiser: HRC Conference, University of Warwick, Archaeology, Psychoanalysis and Colonialism: The Return of the Repressed in the Modern Age, 17 May 2024.
• Co-Organiser: International Workshop, University of Antwerp, Performing Magnetism in the Long Nineteenth-Century: Transnational Perspectives, 18-19 April 2024.
• Co-Organiser: Society of Italian Studies PGR Colloquium 2023, University of Warwick – University of Oxford, Scientific and Technological Imaginaries in Italian Literature and Culture, 2 December 2023.
• Co-Organiser: International Conference, University of Warwick – KU Leuven, Spiritismo e letteratura italiana tr ail Settecento e il Duemila, 29-30 September 2023 [funded by HRC “Funding Conference” scheme and MDRN KU Leuven]
• Co-Organiser: SMLC PGR Symposium, University of Warwick, Rethinking the Crisis Across Languages and Cultures, 12 May 2023.

Scholarships and Awards

Royal Institution Freer Prize Fellowship (2025-2026) intended as writing-up awards for doctoral candidates researching the history of science.

HRC Doctoral Fellowship Competition 2023 for organising one-day conference in Spring 2024.

Chancellor’s International Scholarship, University of Warwick, 2022.

Erasmus+ Scholarship, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2020.

Qualifications

MA in Western Literature, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

MA in Modern Philology, Università degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza”.

BA in Modern Languages and Cultures, Università degli studi di Napoli “Federico II”.