Research in Italian at UCC

Chiara Giuliani

Research in Italian at UCC revolves primarily around modern and contemporary Italian literature, cinema and culture, as well as Medieval/Renaissance Studies. The Department has distinguished itself nationally and internationally in a wide range of areas with cutting-edge, theoretically-informed research contributions. Individual members’ of staff research areas are listed below, with links to their web pages which provide greater detail regarding publications, conference participation, teaching, supervision and other professional activities.

Italian at UCC has a strong and dynamic research environment, reflected in the productivity of staff, in terms of their peer-reviewed publications, participation at important international conferences, success in obtaining funding, and wider contribution to the fields in which they are active.

Research Areas:

Dr Marco Amici

• Dystopian and apocalyptic literature
• Noir and crime fiction
• Ecocriticism and environmental humanities
• Posthuman theories

Dr Mark Chu

• Modern and contemporary Italian literature, with particular emphasis on Sicilian literature, from Verga to the present
• The crime genre 
• Issues relating to textual representation and identity
• Cultural Studies

Dr Chiara Giuliani

• Postcolonial Italy
• Migration Studies
• Cultural Studies
• Comparative Literature
• Cultural Geography
• Geocriticism
• Memory Studies

Dr Daragh O’Connell

• Sicilian literary culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly Vincenzo Consolo
• Eighteenth-century Neapolitan philosophies and intellectual culture
• The poetics of Dante in relation to the modes of self-figuration and metapoetics in the Commedia
• European Modernism; Italian theatre; Italian historical novel; Ekphrasis and the novel; genetic criticism

Dr Silvia Ross

• Modern and contemporary Italian literature, in particular on space and literature, Tuscan writers, women writers
• Travel writing
• Ecocriticism
• Literature and the Holocaust

Graduate Studies:

Graduate Studies is a core component of the research activity in Italian at UCC. Doctoral students make a significant contribution to the research culture in Italian at UCC, not only through their research projects but also through their participation in conferences and their publications. For more information on Graduate Studies in Italian at UCC and on individual doctoral students’ research activity, see the following link: Graduate Studies