Simona Di Martino
Dr Simona Di Martino is a 2023/24 MHRA Research Fellow at the University of Warwick.
Her current research focuses on adolescent girls and analyses the ways in which they are represented in media for young people. Simona is interested in studying whether girls have positive and empowered models to look up to in a crucial period of identity formation which is adolescence, and aims to co-create her study with young girls themselves. Her research is not confined to a single country but it rather focuses on the concept of transnational girlhood and involves different media (novels, comics, magazines, TV, social networks).
She is currently working on her first monograph, Italian Gothic Poetry: Excess, Abjection, and Dantean Legacy (1789-1816), stemming from her doctoral thesis. She completed her PhD in Italian Studies at the University of Warwick, funded by SMLC Doctoral Fellowship, under the supervision of Professor Fabio CamillettiLink opens in a new window. She is now an Associate Fellow of the IASLink opens in a new window and a Teaching Assistant.
In 2023 she held a Visiting Research FellowshipLink opens in a new window at the Centre for Contemporary Women's Writing (ILCS, SAS) University of London; a Jeffs Postdoctoral FellowshipLink opens in a new window at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; and a Visiting FellowshipLink opens in a new window at the Centre for Book Cultures & Publishing, University of Reading.
Current Project
Simona is currently working on representations of the trope of the witch in contemporary Italian culture. She has a twofold interest:
- Investigating the ways in which the figure of the witch successfully embodies female adolescence in contemporary media (magazines, novels, comics, and animated series) for young people, being a role model and representing empowered young girls that are otherwise objectified, neglected and made invisible by society.
- Examining American models of girlhood (such as teen-age witches) and how these have been received by the Italian context. Specifically, she is interested in the huge role played by American comics in promoting a new efficient medium to communicate to younger generations and an increasing presence of American culture in Italy.
PhD Thesis
From Flesh to Soul: The Dichotomy of the Body in Alfonso Varano, Salomone Fiorentino, and Giacomo Leopardi
My thesis advocates the existence of a cluster of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Italian poetry, often imperfectly labelled as ‘sepulchral’, focusing on the co-existence between the physicality of death and the religious longing for eternal life. By dynamically relying on Dante’s model and reinstating it within Italian literature, these texts explore the tension between belief and secularisation embodied by the corpse as an object of supreme ‘abjection’ but also of devotional contemplation. I hypothesise the existence of a direct literary lineage running from the works of Alfonso Varano (Visioni sacre e morali, 1789) and Salomone Fiorentino (Elegie in morte di Laura sua moglie, 1790) to Giacomo Leopardi’s early poetic experiments, and particularly to his Dante-inspired poem Appressamento della morte (1816). As a consequence, the study detects a so-far under-investigated strain in Italy’s literary history, enabling a different assessment of young Leopardi’s sources, beyond his overt Dantean inspiration. The research draws on Hans Robert Jauss’ reader’s response theory: texts are analysed as they were their authors’ response, completion, confirmation, refusal to previous works (in relation to one another and to Dante’s oeuvre). My study also pivots around Julia Kristeva’s notion of ‘abjection’, and applies Fred Botting’s concept of Gothic, defined as “writing of excess” which trespasses the rational. This study opens new avenues of investigation, including a re-evaluation of the current literary canon, and a reflection on the outset of the Italian Gothic.
IT101 Italian for Beginners (2018/2019)
IT115 The History of Modern Italy - reading group (2018/2019)
IT212 Italian for Historians (2018/2019)
IT317 Introducing Dante's Hell - reading group (2019/20)
IT301 Modern Italian Language III (2019/2020; 2020/2021; 2021/22; 2022/23)
Leopardi in the UK: A One-Day Symposium in Memory of Michael Caesar. Research Centre, Christ Church, University of Oxford, 26th May 2023. Paper entitled: Leopardi gotico: l’Appressamento della morte tra eccesso e abiezione.
La morte al femminile. Donne e morte nella cultura italiana dal Medioevo ai giorni nostri, Équipe Litérature et Culture Italiennes (ELCI) Sorbonne Université, Paris, 11-12 May 2023. Paper entitled: Di medica mano arte fallace! Elegia, aborto e medical humanities: nuove prospettive di ricerca.
Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick, Spring Research Exchange, 9 February 2023. Paper entitled: Transnational Girlhood. Girls’ Empowerment in Italian and British Literature, Magazines and Comics from 1920s to Today.
[organiser] Italian Research Seminar - Death and the birth of a nation: Cemeteries in Nineteenth-Century Italy, by Hannah Malone (University of Groningen). Respondent: Prof. Fabio Camilletti. Online.
[co-organiser] "Really Fantastic! Intertwinements, Exchanges, and Discordances Between Realism and The Fantastic in Italian Culture", SIS PG Colloquium co-organised with Andrea Brondino (University of Warwick), 18th February 2022 (online)
Women in Sardinia: Creativity and Self-Expression, University of Cambridge, 27-28 September 2021 - Paper entitled: Balie, bambinaie e baby-sitter. Lavoro femminile e folklore in Sardegna e oltre nella letteratura per l’infanzia di Bianca Pitzorno (28th September 2021) (online).
Annual Society for Pirandello Studies Conference 2021 In Search of an Author: New Perspectives on Pirandello - Saturday 25 September 2021. Paper entitled: Wet Nurses’ Stories. Rediscovering the Role and Life of Wet Nurses through Pirandello’s Novelle per un anno (online).
[co-organiser] CAIS Conference, 4th-5th June & 11th-12th June 2021, virtual conference. Co-organiser of panel called: 'La Morte! La Morte!' Mapping Italian Death Cultures from the Late Eighteenth Century until Today (11th-12th June 2021) with Mattia Petricola (Università degli Studi dell'Aquila).
AAIS Conference, 28th May - 6th June 2021, virtual conference. Panel entitled: Forging the myth: Dante in the long nineteenth century -- Sponsored by Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies (Center for Italian Studies, University of Pennsylvania) Paper entitled: ‘Orecchie rose e labbra mozze’ and Other Bodily Suffering in Alfonso Varano. Dantean Reminiscences in Eighteenth-century Sepulchral Poetry (5th June 2021).
[organiser] HRC Interdisciplinary Conference: The Remains of the Body: Legacy and Cultural Memory of Bodies in World Cultures, online via Teams, 22nd May 2021.
In Extremis: the Limits of Life, Death and Consciousness in the Long Nineteenth Century, University College Dublin, 10-11 January 2020 - paper entitled: Late Eighteenth-Century Sepulchral Literature: An Archaeology of the Italian Gothic.
XXIII Congresso Nazionale Associazione degli Italianisti (ADI), "Letteratura e scienze", Pisa 12-14 September 2019 - paper entitled 'Lo spettro, che parve arte maga'. Il fenomeno della Fata Morgana e l'aurora boreale nelle Visioni di Alfonso Varano.
Constructions of Love and the Emotion of Intimacy, 1750-1850 (HRC one-day interdisciplinary conference), University of Warwick, 9th February 2019 - paper entitled: The polite intimacy in Italian cultural salons: the love correspondence between Ugo Foscolo and Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi as a case study.
Publications
- Journal Articles
Di Martino, Simona. “Streghe, fattucchiere e medicina contadina: donne curatrici e leggende regionali nella cronaca dei Misteri d’Italia di Dino Buzzati”, in Rivista Italies, La medicina al femminile. Donne e medicina, realtà e rappresentazioni in Italia, vol. 27, ed. by Antonella Mauri, Judith Obert, pp. 61-74, 2023.
Brondino, Andrea, Bianca Rita Cataldi, and Simona Di Martino. “Introduzione” in "Really Fantastic! Intertwinements, Exchanges, Discordances Between Realism and the Fantastic in Italian Culture", Notes in Italian Studies, 2, ed. by Andrea Brondino, Bianca Rita Cataldi, and Simona Di Martino, 2023, pp. 1-4. Read: hereLink opens in a new window.
Di Martino, Simona. “Introduzione” in Quaderni d'Italianistica: Quel che resta del giorno. La notte nella letteratura italiana dal Settecento ai giorni nostri, edited by Simona Di Martino, vol. 43, 1, 2022, pp. 5-11.
Di Martino, Simona. “Le visioni letterarie di Alfonso Varano e Giacomo Leopardi: tra teologia e ghost story?” in Quaderni d'Italianistica: Quel che resta del giorno. La notte nella letteratura italiana dal Settecento ai giorni nostri, edited by Simona Di Martino, vol. 43, 1, 2022, pp. 57-80.
Di Martino, Simona. "Wet Nurses’ Tales: Female Rivalry, Motherhood Performativity, and Bestiality in Pirandello’s La balia and Il libretto rosso", in Pirandello Studies, vol. 42, 2022, pp. 55-68.
Di Martino, Simona. "Una scampagnata. La metamorfosi della marcia su Roma raccontata in Canale Mussolini – Antonio Pennacchi, Canale Mussolini", in Nuovi Argomenti, 9, Mondadori, gennaio-aprile 2022, pp. 89-94. Read: here
Di Martino, Simona. "The Figure of the Wet Nurse from Vittorelli to Pirandello", in Notes in Italian Studies, 1, ed. by Bianca Rita Cataldi, Claudia Dellacasa, Lachlan Hughes, 2021, pp. 22-28. Read: here.
Di Martino, Simona. "'Orecchie rose e labbra mozze' and Other Bodily Suffering in Alfonso Varano. Dantean Reminiscences in Eighteenth-Century Sepulchral Poetry", in Bibliotheca Dantesca. Journal of Dante Studies, vol. 4, art. 6, 2021. Read: here.
- Book Chapters
Di Martino, Simona. “Gothic Poetry”, in Italian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, ed. by Marco Malvestio and Stefano Serafini, Edinburgh University Press (March 2023), pp. 107-22.
Di Martino, Simona. «Questo è il libro per cui sono venuto al mondo». L'epopea storico-familiare in Canale Mussolini di Antonio Pennacchi, in «Non poteva staccarsene senza lacerarsi». Per una genealogia del romanzo familiare italiano, a cura di Filippo Gobbo, Ilaria Muoio e Gloria Scarfone, Pisa, Pisa University Press, 2020, pp. 195-217. Read: here.
- Edited Collections
“Il potere del passato e l’affermazione del presente. Forme e declinazioni letterarie dell’identità nazionale in Italia tra Sette e Novecento” ed. by Simona Di Martino and Beatrice Pecchiari, in Letteratura e Potere/Poteri, Atti del XXIV Congresso dell’AdI (Associazione degli Italianisti), Catania, 23-25 settembre 2021, ed. by Andrea Manganaro, Giuseppe Traina, Carmelo Tramontana, Rome, Adi editore 2023.
Quaderni d'Italianistica: Quel che resta del giorno. La notte nella letteratura italiana dal Settecento ai giorni nostri, edited by Simona Di Martino, vol. 43, 1, 2022.
- Reviews
Marco Ceravolo and Anna Finozzi (eds). Italian Studies across Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity, New Approaches, and Future Directions, Rome, Aracne, 2022, 324 pp., 2024, in Modern Italy, Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Andrea Penso, Un libero di Pindo abitator. Stile e linguaggio poetico del giovane Vincenzo Monti, Roma, Aracne, 2018, 314 pp., in "La Rassegna della Letteratura Italiana", gennaio-giugno 2020, serie IX, N. 1, Firenze, Le Lettere, pp. 230-231. Read: here.
Workshops and Events
Being Human Festival of the Humanities, Witches! Draw-along Creative WorkshopLink opens in a new window, The Cartoon Museum, London, 11th November 2023.
Bloomsbury FestivalLink opens in a new window, Growing Up with Witch Power, Holborn Library, 14th October 2023.
Academic, Woman, Other: A Roundtable and Zine-Making Workshop, IAS, University of Warwick, 8/04/2023.
Co-organiser: Italian Research Seminar: "Notes and Scribbles Into the World of Academic Journals for Italian Studies", University of Warwick, 23 May 2022, Online event. With: Phil Cooke, Lorenzo Fabbri, Claudio Fogu, Monica Jansen, Silvia Ross, Gigliola Sulis, Sandra Waters.
Moderator - Italian Research Seminar. Book Launch: Dante beyond Influence: Rethinking Reception in Victorian Literary Culture (Manchester University Press). The author Federica Coluzzi in conversation with Prof. Alison Milbank. University of Warwick, 7 March 2022, Faculty of Arts Building.
Tea(chers) PGRLink opens in a new window - I was invited to give a talk as one of winners of WATE PGR 2021 - 4 August 2021
I organised the School of Modern Languages and Cultures Postgraduate Symposium Feelings and Emotions across Languages and CulturesLink opens in a new window, funded by SMLC, Researcher Development (Doctoral College) and CADRE, 22 January 2021, online.
School of Modern Languages and Cultures Teacher DayLink opens in a new window, 20th September 2019, Radcliffe Building, University of Warwick (facilitator Italian session)
Accademia della Crusca, Le settimane estive della Crusca. Summer School for Teachers of Italian Language to Foreign Students. Villa Medicea di Castello, Firenze. 1st-5th July 2019
I was selected and awarded a grant to be part of the HRC Workshop on 'Passion';Link opens in a new window (2018-2019)
Scholarships and awards
MHRA Research Fellowship in the Modern European Languages (2023-2024)
ILCS Conference Grant Scheme for the conference Seen and Heard: Voices of Transnational Girlhood(s) on Identity, Gender, and Culture, April 2024 (together with Dr Anna Gasperini, University of Galway).
WATE PGR winnerLink opens in a new window - Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence 2023
HRF Travel Grant 2023
Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) Fellowship (2022/23)
WATE PGR winnerLink opens in a new window - Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence 2021
Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) issued 26/10/2020
HRF Travel Grant (2019/2020; 2020/2021)
WATE PGR nomination (2020)
HRC Doctoral Fellowship Competition 2020 for organising one-day interdisciplinary conferenceLink opens in a new window in Spring 2021
RD grant + SMLC funding for organising a PG conference (2019/2020)
HRC Workshop on 'Passion' grant (2018-2019)
HRF Travel Grant (2018)
SMLC Doctoral Fellowship (2018-2021)
Erasmus scholarship (University of Warwick 2017; University of Exeter 2013/14)
‘Wanted the Best’ Grant (awarded by Sapienza Università di Roma, 2015)
Memberships
SIS - The Society for Italian Studies
ADI - Associazione degli Italianisti
AIPI - Associazione Internazionale Professori di Italiano
CAIS - Canadian Association for Italian Studies
AAIS - American Association for Italian Studies
Education
TLHE, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Organisational Dev (AP), University of Warwick
MA Modern Philology, Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’
BA Literary Studies, Università degli Studi di Urbino ‘Carlo Bo’
Dr Simona Di Martino
simona.di-martino@warwick.ac.uk
Advice and Feedback Hours (term time only): By appointment on MS Teams.
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