Rossana Galimi

PhD Film and Television Studies

About

I am a PhD candidate in cotutelle between the University of Milan (PhD in Philosophy and Human Sciences) and the University of Warwick (PhD in Film and Television Studies) under the supervision of Profs. Barbara Grespi, Mary Harrod and Helen Wheatley.

I hold a BA (with honours) in Philosophy (2019, University of Padua, IT) and an MA (with honours) in Philosophical Sciences (2022, University of Milan, IT). My BA dissertation focused on the concept of the End of Art by the philosopher Arthur Danto and its relationship with Feminist Visual Culture, while in my MA dissertation I analysed the work of the French director Julia Ducournau and became interested in the contemporary female and feminist reworking of the horror genre. From March 2023 to March 2025 I was an affiliated member of the ERC Advanced Project AN-ICON, where I conducted research on gender issues in immersive environments, on the evolution of the horror genre in virtual reality (VR) with a feminist approach, and on gender theory between cinema and immersive media. Since March 2025 I am a member of the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ARTCHAE. Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence, where I am researching surveillance and self-surveillance in the work of female video artists.

I am a member of the scientific editorial board (as editorial assistant and support contact) of the international peer-reviewed journal Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal and a contributor to Cineforum, an Italian academic journal on film criticism and culture where I write on female-directed cinema and immersive experiences. Together with the AN-ICON team, I was one of the organisers of the award Gradi di libertà ["Degrees of Freedom"] award for the best VR experience at Filmmaker Festival 2022 (Milan, IT). Between 2022 and 2024 I have been the curator of film selections and post-screening discussions for small festivals in Italy: Donne al centro: reinventarsi per resistere, organized by Collettivo Femminista Scledense, Cinema Campana, Marano Vicentino (both film selection and post-screening discussions); Cinema Femminile Plurale, University of Milan (film selection); Filosofilm. Proiezioni tra Cinema e Filosofia, University of Milan (post-screening discussion of Titane, Julia Ducournau, 2021). In 2024 I have been nominated by the councillor for culture of the Municipality of Bergamo (IT) as a member of the jury for the “Ermanno Olmi” Award for the Best Short Film.

Research

For most of its history, horror cinema has been a site of male intervention and has been considered by film scholars to be particularly misogynistic. Indeed, given that bodies and identities are culturally produced through sedimented performative acts (Butler 1990), female bodies have been constructed by and within the horror genre through performances of abject terror, which is therefore gendered as feminine (Clover 1992/2015). In the last fifteen years, however, horror has undergone a renaissance phase, that includes the representation and production of gender identity and an increased involvement of female directors, who aim to challenge traditional constructions of female bodies both on- and off-screen. I argue that these objectives are achieved not by disrupting horror’s conventions, but precisely by applying and manipulating them. This means exploiting the corporeal quality of the genre, which is expressed through the address and production of embodied spectators, eliciting their bodily reactions by displaying female bodies subject to intense bodily sensations (Williams 1991; Beugnet and Mulvey 2015). Although a handful of recent volumes have focused on female-authored horror films, exhuming forgotten female work (Heller-Nicholas 2020; Peirse 2020), focusing on women’s roles in film production and distribution (McCollum and Clarke 2022) or detecting a feminist use of horror elements (Pisters 2020), this dimension of rewriting the film form remains unexplored.

My research method is informed by genre theory, feminist philosophy and feminist film theory. This includes a focus on the corporeal aspect of on- and off-screen bodies as performative and culturally inscribed surfaces (Grosz 1994). Within this framework, I argue that this current of contemporary female-directed horror employs the tropes and forms of the genre, referencing and manipulating paramount horror texts to reconfigure especially female identities.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles:

"Domestic Closed Circuits (of Violence)", in European Journal of Women Studies, vol. 31, no. 3, Special Issue "Digital media, feminisms, and public health in the age of a pandemic", 2024 (co-written with Barbara Grespi), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/13505068241262774.
"Beyond the Gaze, Towards the Body: Early Feminist Film Theory as a Matrix of Visual Culture Studies", in VCS. Visual Culture Studies, Special Double Issue no. 6-7, 2024.

Translations:

"I touchscreen del cinema delle origini. Da Zio Josh ad Ali Barbouyou", in Dalmasso, A.C., Grespi, B. (eds.),Mediarcheologia, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano 2023. Italian translation of Strauven, W.,Early cinema’s touch(able) screens: From Uncle Josh to Ali Barbouyou,“NECSUS”, vol. 2, 2012, pp. 155-176.

Film Reviews:

“Recensione di Spots of Light di Adam Weingrod”, in Cineforum, 09/09/2023. https://www.cineforum.it/focus/Venezia-80/Spots-of-Light-di-Adam-Weingrod.
“Recensione di Comfortless di Gina Kim”, in Cineforum, 09/09/2023 (co-written with Rosa Cinelli). https://www.cineforum.it/focus/Venezia-80/Comfortless-di-Gina-Kim.
“La recensione di Houria – La voce della libertà”, in Cineforum, 18/07/2023. https://www.cineforum.it/recensione/Houria-La-voce-della-liberta.
“La recensione diL’amore secondo Dalva”, in Cineforum, 23/05/2023. https://www.cineforum.it/recensione/L-amore-secondo-Dalva.

Conferences and Seminars (Selection)

"Revenge as Becoming-Animal: The Double Horror Reworking in Animale (Emma Benestan, 2024)", FEMME Conference Women Filmmakers: Genre and Gender in French, British and US Cinema and TV Series, University of Le Mans, 25–26 June 2025.
"Il coming-of-age femminile tra body horror e posthuman turn", Conference Studiare l'horror oggi – Teoria e analisi di un genere, University of Bergamo, Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures, 8 May 2025.
"Resurfacing the Etruscan Past: Subterranean and Subaltern Discourses in La chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023)", with Gennaro Ambrosino, Conference Underground Imaginaries: Spaces in Between, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici di Napoli, 3–5 April 2025.
"Female Coming-of-Age as a Global Form of Body Horror", BAFTSS 2025 Conference Global Aesthetics, University of Warwick, 26–28 March 2025.
"Between Surveillance and Self-Surveillance: the (Gendered) Horrors of the Closed Circuit", ARTCHAE #1: Inside and Outside the Circuit Conference, in the context of the two-day event BETWEEN BODIES AND CIRCUITS: Archaeologies of Extension and Exposure. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 14 March 2025.
"Un-tying the Patriarchal Family Through Abjection: The Morphing Pregnant Body in Titane", Cine-Excess 2024 In-Person Symposium Blood Ties: The Family in Cult and Horror Cinema, Birmingham School of Art, 25 October 2024.
“Emerging Horror: Excessive Female Bodies Between Cinema and Virtual Reality”, NECS Graduate Workshop Emerging Media: Exploring Post-Cinema, University of Economics, İzmir, 26 June 2024.
Artist Talk "Measuring Mistakes" in dialogue with Dr. Ulrike Kuchner (University of Nottingham), International Conference "PHOTOGRAPHS FROM OUTER SPACE. A female archaeology of image-data", University of Milan, 13 December 2023.

Organisation of Conferences and Seminars

Conference ARTCHAE#2: Archaeologies of Telematic Presence. Curated by Rossana Galimi, Prof. Barbara Grespi and Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 22-23 September 2025. Funded by the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ARTCHAE. Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence.
Conference ARTCHAE#1: Inside and Outside the Circuit, in the context of the two-day event BETWEEN BODIES AND CIRCUITS: Archaeologies of Extension and Exposure. Curated by Rossana Galimi, Prof. Barbara Grespi and Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 14 March 2025. Funded by the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ARTCHAE. Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence.
Seminar “Slaughtering the Patriarchy: Bending the (Closed) Circuit in Moving Images”, including the presentation of the book by Pier Maria Bocchi So cosa hai fatto. Scenari, pratiche e sentimenti dell’horror moderno and a roundtable with: Rossana Galimi, Prof. Barbara Grespi, Dr. Francesco Iezzi and Dr. Maria Teresa Soldani. University of Milan, Department of Philosophy, 2 December 2024. Funded by the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ARTCHAE. Rediscovering video and installation art as an archaeology of telepresence.
Seminar “Rebirth, Revival, and Afterlives: The Gothic in Contemporary Film and Television”. Speaker: Dr. Federica Perazzini (Sapienza University of Rome); Chair: Arianna De Gasperis (Sapienza University of Rome); Respondent: Rossana Galimi. University of Warwick, Department of Film and Television Studies, 19 November 2024. Funded by the HRC’s Visiting Speakers’ Fund.
International Conference PHOTOGRAPHS FROM OUTER SPACE. A female archaeology of image-data, University of Milan, 11-13 December 2023 (co-organised with Rosa Cinelli and Melania Mariconda, curated by Prof. Barbara Grespi and Prof. Luca Guzzardi).