About

I am a current Mphil/PhD student in Italian Studies at the University of Warwick, funded by Chancellor’s International Scholarship, under the supervision of Prof. Fabio CamillettiLink opens in a new window.

Research

My 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

• Gennaro Ambrosino, “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 

• Gennaro Ambrosino, "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
• Gennaro Ambrosino, “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

• “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 – 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

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”.