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School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Gennaro Ambrosino

Gennaro AmbrosinoPhD Italian Studies

Email: gennaro.ambrosino@warwick.ac.uk

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-18th century (1738, first archaeological excavations in Herculaneum) to the mid-19th 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

  • “Inorganico pre e post-umano: Giacomo Leopardi e la geologia nelle Operette morali”, Cahiers d’études italiennes (forthcoming 2025).

  • “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

  • “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: 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

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”.