New Cabell Hall 459
Office Hours: Tues & Thurs 1:00-2:00pm & by appt

Research Summary

Enrico Cesaretti is a Professor of Italian at UVA, and a Mellon Humanities Fellow for 2016-17. He holds a Laurea in Modern Languages and Literatures (English and German) from the University of Pisa (Italy), a M.A. from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. from Yale University. His articles appeared in Italian Studies, Italica, Annali d’Italianistica, Modern Language Notes, Comparative Literature, Romance Studies, Ecozon@ and Symposium, among others. His most recent research has been focused on the fields of the Environmental Humanities and ecocriticism.

He is the author of four books: Castelli di carta: retorica della dimora tra Scapigliatura e Surrealismo (Longo, 2001),  Fictions of Appetite: Alimentary Discourses in Italian Modernist Literature (Peter Lang, 2013), Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies. Italy and the Environmental Humanities (co-edited with Serenella Iovino and Elena Past, University of Virginia Press, Series “Under the Sign of Nature”, 2018), and Elemental Narratives. Reading Environmental Entanglements in Modern Italy (Penn State University Press, 2020). This latest book explores the narrative eloquence and agency of some of the materials (i.e. concrete, steel, marble, petroleum, asbestos) that have contributed to make (and, simultaneously, “un-make”) modern Italy.

He is currently working on an article that approaches Italian science fiction through ecocriticism and doing research on "Naturismo futurista."

Education

Ph.D., Yale University
M.A., University of Virginia
Laurea in Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Pisa

Publications

Books

Elemental Narratives. Reading Ecological Entanglements in Modern Italy. University Park: Penn State University Press (AnthropoScene: The SLSA Book Series) (Forthcoming November 2020). http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08773-3.html.

Italy and the Environmental Humanities. Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies. Eds. Serenella Iovino, Enrico Cesaretti, Elena Past. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Series "Under the Signs of Nature", 2018. http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5050

Fictions of Appetite. Alimentary Discourses in Italian Modernist Literature. Series: “Italian Modernities.” Eds. Pierpaolo Antonello and Robert Gordon. Bern - Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013. https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/35622

Castelli di carta: retorica della dimora tra Scapigliatura e Surrealismo. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2001.

Articles

“Spectral Tales and Real Disasters: (Re-)visiting the Trauma(s) of Modernization in Daniele Atzeni’s I morti di Alos” in Italian Experiences of Trauma Through Film and Media. Eds. Alberto Baracco e Rosario Pollicino, Cambridge Scholar Publishing (forthcoming). 

“Nutty Logic: Listening to the Hazelnuts in Pavese and Fenoglio” in ISLE Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Online publication: 02/12/2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isaa203 

“Eco Futurism? Some Thoughts on Nature, Matter, and Body in F. T. Marinetti”, in Modernism and the Avant-garde Body in Spain and Italy. Eds. Maria Rosa Truglio & Nicolás Fernandez-Medina. Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature Series, 2016. pp. 232-47.

“Domestic Fronts: Bringing the Great War Home in Pirandello’s Novelle per un anno” in Annali d’Italianistica 33 (2015): 223-39. (Special issue on “The Great War and the Modernist Imagination in Italy”)

“Struggling with Beauty: a Reading of Vanni Santoni’s Se fossi fuoco arderei Firenze.” Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 69.1 (2015): 14-24.

“A Life of Metal: an Ecocritical Reading of Silvia Avallone’s Acciaio.” Ecozon@. European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 5.2 (2014): 107-22.

“‘Una finestra sul buio’: note sull’immaginario della ferita in Tommaso Landolfi.” AVANGUARDIA Rivista di letteratura contemporanea 47 (2011): 33-46.

“Materiali sessuali: osservazioni sulla narrativa erotico-sociale di F.T. Marinetti.” L’anello che non tiene: Journal of Modern Italian Literature 22 (Spring-Fall 2010): 24-38.

“Milk and Blood: Nursing Capitalism in Luigi Pirandello’s La balia.” Italian Studies 65.1 (February 2010): 33-45.

“Recipes for the Future: Traces of Past Utopias in The Futurist Cookbook.” The European Legacy 14.7 (2009): 841-56.

“Outplaying Kronos’ Hunger: Massimo Bontempelli’s Gente nel tempo.” Forum Italicum 43.2 (Fall 2009): 385-404.

“Dangerous appetites: Sex and the Inorganic in F.T. Marinetti’s Erotic Short-Fiction.” Annali d’Italianistica 27 (2009): 139-55.

“Indigestible Fictions: Hunger, Infanticide and Gender in Paola Masino’s ‘Fame’ and Massimo Bontempelli’s La fame.” Spunti e Ricerche 23 (2008): 5-20.

“Nutrition as Dissolution: Paola Masino’s Nascita e morte della massaia.” Quaderni d’Italianistica 28.2 (2007): 1-20.

“‘Oh, la disobbedienza…!’. Meditazioni su una novella giovanile di Grazia Deledda.” Italica 84.4 (Winter 2007): 723-34.

“Dyspepsia as Dystopia? Marinetti’s Le Roi Bombance.” The Romanic Review 97.3-4  (May-November 2006): 351-67.

“Palazzeschi’s :Riflessi or Writing as Erasure.” The Modern Language Review 99.4 (October 2004): 924-37.

“Consuming Texts: Creation and Self-effacement in Palazzeschi and Kafka.” Comparative Literature 56.4 (Fall 2004): 300-16.

“Back to the Future: Temporal Ambivalences in F.T. Marinetti’s writings.” Italian Modernism: Italian Culture between Decadence and Avant-Garde. Ed. M. Moroni and L. Somigli. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 243-66. 29.

“The Language of Passion: Silence and Melodrama in Niccoló Tommaseo’s Fede e bellezza.” Modern Language Notes 119.1 (January 2004): 52-66.

“Uno scrittore di una realtà che (s)fugge: Marco Lodoli.” In Search of Italia. Saggi sulla cultura dell’Italia contemporanea. Ed. Antonio Vitti and Roberta Morosini. Pesaro: Metauro Edizioni, 2003. 29-48.

“‘Il giocattolo futurista’: Futurism and fumetti.” Romance Studies 21.3 (November 2003): 191-202.

“A New Home for Italians? A Literal and Metaphorical Interpretation of National Identity within the Context of Scapigliatura.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 38.2 (2002): 140-54.

“La parola e l’immagine: alcune riflessioni su G. Leopardi e C.D. Friedrich.” Testo 40 (Luglio - Dicembre 2000): 77-92.

“Il fantastico in sagrestia: un’ipotesi di lettura delle Memorie del Presbiterio di Emilio Praga.” Rassegna Europea di Letteratura Italiana 14 (1999): 37-48.

“I loci della dissacrazione: nel ‘monastero’ della Desinenza in A di Carlo Dossi.” Rivista di Studi italiani, 16.1 (June 1998): 227-40.

“The Representation of the Arts in Visconti’s The Leopard.” L’anello che non tiene: Journal of Modern Italian Literature 9.1-2 (Spring-Fall 1997): 27-38.

“Preoccupazione devozionale nella Rappresentazione di San Giovanni e Paolo di L. De’ Medici.” The Italianist (December 1995): 66-82.

Conference Proceedings

“A Life of Metal: an Ecocritical Reading of Silvia Avallone’s Acciaio” in the volume Identity and Conflict in Tuscany. Eds. Silvia Ross & Claire Honess. Florence: Firenze University Press, 2015, pp. 85-99. (This is a reprint, with minor changes, of my article in Ecozon@).

“Metallo vivente. Una lettura ecocritica di Acciaio di Silvia Avallone” in the volume ContaminAzioni ecologiche: Cibi, Nature, Culture. Milano: LED, 2015, 133-147. (Translated reprint of above-mentioned article).

“Massimo Bontempelli e il mito classico: il caso di Gente nel tempo.” L’Analisi linguistica e letteraria 2 (2009): 293-306.

Selected Grants & Awards

Mellon Humanities Fellow, Institute of Humanities & Global Cultures (2016-2017)

Summer Research Stipend (Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences), UVa Vice Provost for Research (2017)