Top of page
Skip to main content
Main content

Achille CastaldoAssistant ProfessorItalian

Education

PhD Romance Studies, Duke University 2019

Biography

Achille Castaldo (PhD Romance Studies, Duke University 2019). 19th-21st Century Italian Literature. Aesthetics. Film Studies. Mediterranean Studies. Associated faculty in Film and Media Studies

 

My research investigates the relationships between ideology, literature, and visual arts, focusing in particular on the impact of social conflicts on narrative forms. My current book project addresses the work of Anna Maria Ortese and Roberto Rossellini in the context of post-war Naples, using a methodology rooted in Marxism, Phenomenology, and Semiotics. Works in progress also include a study on Rossellini's films for television and an analysis of Nanni Balestrini's narrative production.

Recent publications

2023 “Narratives of a ‘City Under Siege’: Places, Bodies, and Discourses of 1977 Bologna,” (co-authored), in Interpreting Urban Spaces in Italian Cultures. Eds. A. Porcarelli, A. Scapolo. Amsterdam, Amsterdam UP, 2023, 225-243.
 
2022 “Trauma and Literary Experience in Anna Maria Ortese’s ‘Oro a Forcella,’” in Trauma Narratives in Italian and Transnational Women’s Writing. Eds. T. de Rogatis, K. Wehling-Giorgi. Roma, Sapienza UP, 2022, 239-264.
 
2022 “Lyrical intensity and narrative function: the animal gaze in Pietro Marcello’s Bella e perduta,” in Italy and the Ecological Imagination. Ecocritical Theories and Practices. Eds. D. Benvegnù, M. Gilebbi, Wilmington, Vernon Press, 2022, 141-155.
 

2021 “Salvezza privata e crisi del cinema politico: Fosca e l’adattamento cinematografico di Ettore Scola,” La Questione Romantica - Rivista interdisciplinare di studi romantici, Vol.13, n.1-2, 2021, pp. 91-112.   

2021 “Neither Utopia nor Juvenile Transgression: Retracing the Link between the ’77 Movement, Autonomy, and Literature” (co-authored), Italian studies, 76:1, 2021, 96-111. https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2020.1851516

2020 “Curzio Malaparte’s La pelle. Extreme experience and the rhetoric of interruption,” Italica, 97: 4, Winter 2020, 697-717.
 

2020 “The novel and the myth of the epic: Balestrini, Lukács, and the cathartic experience,” Forum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies. 2020; 54(3): 785-805.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0014585820925476

2020 “La comunità oscena: Stile adolescenziale e politica del movimento nel primo Tondelli,” in De Dante a Camilleri. Estudios de literatura y cultura italiana. eds. S. Longhitano, F. Ibarra,  Ciudad de México, UNAM y Cátedra Extraordinaria Italo Calvino, 2020, pp. 197 - 212.  http://ru.atheneadigital.filos.unam.mx/jspui/handle/FFYL_UNAM/2527

 2019 “Ideological figuration in Rohmer’s first two Moral Tales: ‘voice of memory’, clinamen of the image, and colonial fantasies,” Studies in French Cinema. 19:2, 2019, 85-102. https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2018.1511031

 2019 “The ‘Essence of things’ and their decomposition: The use of montage in Dino Terra’s Metamorfosi,” in Literature as Document. Series: Textxet: studies in comparative literature, 90, 2019. Brill-Rodopi, Amsterdam, 121-132. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004384255_008