About

Dr Martina Piperno is now an IAS Early Career Fellow at Warwick (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/fellows/iasfellows/ecf/).

She was a PhD student in the Department of Italian Studies and teaches on the third year undergraduate module Modern Italian Language II. Martina Piperno's primary research questions address issues of perception and representation of time - with specific reference to the dichotomy ancient-modern - and temporality in occasion of revolutionary and/or traumatic events. Her PhD thesis was dedicated to Italian and European post-revolutionary culture (1816-1848), but she also dedicated some attention to case sudies related to the impact of WWII. Her research has driven Martina to explore the legacy of Giambattista Vico's ground-breaking though in post-revolutionary and postwar readers (including Giacomo Leopardi and Carlo Levi). She is interested in any aspect of global nineteenth century culture, philosophy of history, reception of the ancient.

She was awarded the National Award “Giacomo Leopardi”, XIII edition (2012) issued by the Centro Nazionale Studi Leopardiani (Recanati, MC, Italy) for her MA thesis. With Giacomo Comiati and Kate Willman she won one of the 2012-3 Doctoral Fellowships launched by Warwich Humanities Research Centre for their conference proposal "Italy made in England: Contemporary British Perceptions of Italian Culture". It took place on Saturday 22nd of February 2014. Martina will be a Visiting Fellow at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in March and April 2015.

Research interests

Martina Piperno's PhD Thesis is entitled Leopardi and Vico and is supervised by Dr. Fabio Camilletti and Dr. David Lines. Martina passed her viva in February 2016. She is now working on a monograph inspired by her doctoral work.

Martina's research has touched the themes of the relationship with the ancient, which in concrete has lead Martina to explore the conflict ancient/modern and imagination/reasoning, the transformation of the concept of philology, the rise and the effect of the Homeric question. A confrontation between Giacomo Leopardi and Giambattista Vico has proven effective to test the development and the implication of these themes in Italy between the eighteenth and the nineteenth century: this is the focus of Martina's dissertation. Further more, by following the line of a Vico-related genealogy in the Italian thought, she developed an interest in Carlo Levi, and consequently for the role of Jewish thought in Italian and European culture.

Teaching

October-December 2014: (With Fabio Camilletti) IT305 Culture and identities in Nineteenth Century Italy

November 2013: FR922 The Lure of Italy (Session on Madame De Stael)

May 2014: Community course sessions on Rome and Le Marche

October 2013-June 2015: IT301 Modern Italian language II

October 2012 – March 2013: IT110 Representations of modern Italy (Reading group tutor)

Selected publications

• 'Attorno all'Epistola al Conte Carlo Pepoli: contraddizione, ritrattazione, palinodia, apostasia', in L'Ellisse 2 (2015) [forthcoming]
• 'Giambattista Vico personaggio drammatico', in Filologia e critica 2: 2014 [forthcoming]
• "Barbarie", "Mutazione", "Vero" in Lessico leopardiano 2014, ed. by N. Bellucci e F. D'Intino (Rome: SUP, 2014).
• 'Creating the myth of Vico between press and literature', in Readers and spectators in Italy [forthcoming].

Academic Roles

• Current: Co-ordinator of the research project “Per un lessico leopardiano”, launched by La Sapienza, Università di Roma, 2011-2013, directed by Professor Novella Bellucci, Franco D’Intino, Stefano Gensini. For more information, please see http://readingitaly.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/zibaldone-voices/
• June 2010 – July 2011: Research Assistant Abroad for Professor Martha Feldman, University of Chicago (IL, USA)
• November 2009 – June 2010: Intern at Dartmouth college (NJ, USA), Rome branch, supervised by Professor Keala Jewell and Courtney Quaintance

Qualifications

• BA, MA in Italian Studies (University of Rome La Sapienza)