People

Donata Meneghelli is Full Professor at the University of Bologna, where she teaches Comparative Literature, Literary theory and Literature and visual studies. Her interests focus on the novel between the 19th and 20th centuries, intermediality, narration, adaptation, the relationships between literature and visuality, and between literature and material culture. She has worked as a translator from English and French and has published essays in numerous national and international journals. Her books include Una forma che include tutto. Henry James e la teoria del romanzo (il Mulino, 1997), Storie proprio così. Il racconto nell'era della narratività totale (Morellini 2013), Senza fine. Sequel, prequel, altre continuazioni (Morellini, 2018), Il valore degli oggetti Segni, spoglie, scarti nel romanzo dell’Ottocento (Nottetempo, 2024). She edited the volumes Teorie del punto di vista (La nuova Italia, 1998), La rappresentazione allo specchio. Testo letterario e testo pittorico (Meltemi, 2008, with Francesco Cattani), A Story Is Always Born Twice. Issues in Adaptation (Duetredue, 2017, with Massimo Fusillo). Recently, together with Andrea Cortellessa, he edited the monographic issue of the magazine il Verri dedicated to 'L'inconscio tipografico' (2024).

Ferdinando Amigoni is Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, where he teaches Comparative Literature. His main fields of study concern the relationship between literary texts and psychoanalysis (with a particular focus on dreams in literature), fantasy literature and the study of photography as a privileged field of research in relation to literature. He is the author of several books and essays, including the most recent L'ombra della scrittura. Racconti fotografici e visionari (Quodlibet, 2018) and Altezza degli occhi. Corpi, lampi e spettri nel Photomatic (Quodlibet, 2025).

Jan Baetens is Professor Emeritus at KU Leuven. His research interests focus in particular on the relationship between words and images in genres such as graphic novels, novelisations and photo-novels. He has published numerous essays and books on these topics, including: The Graphic Novel (Cambridge UP, 2014, with Hugo Frey), Novelisation: From Film to Novel (Ohio State University Press, 2018), The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel (Cambridge UP, 2018, co-edited with Hugo Frey and Stephen E. Tabachnick), The Film Photonovel. A Cultural History of Forgotten Adaptations (Texas University Press, 2019) and Rebuilding Storyworlds. On The Obscure Cities by Schuiten and Peeters (Rutgers University Press, 2020).

Silvia Baroni is Tenure Track Researcher in Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature at the University of Messina. She published several articles and contributions for national and international journals, focusing on illustrated literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the relationship between art and literature, geocriticism and contemporary Italian crime fiction. She is the author of the monographs L'immagine alla lettera. La letteratura illustrata e il caso Balzac (Artemide 2023) and Leggere la letteratura illustrata (il verri, 2024).

Federico Bertoni is Full Professor of Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature at the University of Bologna, where he has been teaching Literary Theory since 2000. He is the author of several essays on literary criticism and theory, mainly devoted to European fiction between the 19th and 20th centuries. His main works include: Il testo a quattro mani. Per una teoria della lettura (La Nuova Italia 1996, Ledizioni 2010), Romanzo (La Nuova Italia 1998), La verità sospetta. Gadda e l’invenzione della realtà (Einaudi 2001), Realismo e letteratura. Una storia possibile (Einaudi 2007), Letteratura. Teorie, metodi, strumenti (Carocci, 2018). He edited the critical edition of Italo Svevo, Teatro e saggi, in Tutte le opere di Italo Svevo ('I Meridiani' Mondadori, 2004). In 2016, he published Universitaly. La cultura in scatola (Laterza), which is both a story and a cultural critique of universities and society in the 21st century. In April 2017 appeared his first novel, Morire il 25 aprile (Frassinelli), a story of wars, generations and resistance. He is a member of the Literary Jury of the Campiello Prize.

Giuseppe Carrara is Tenure Track Researcher at the University of Milan. His research interests include the relationship between literature and visual culture, contemporary fiction, 20th-century poetry and literary forms of desire in the 19th century. He is the author of the monographs Il chierico rosso e l’avanguardia. Poesia e ideologia in Triperuno di Edoardo Sanguineti (Ledizioni, 2018) and Storie a vista. Retorica e poetiche del fototesto (Mimesis 2020). He edited Teoria della letteratura (Carocci, 2022) with Laura Neri and Erotismo e letteratura. Antologia di scritti militanti 1960-1976 (Mucchi, 2022) with Silvia Cucchi.

Andrea Cortellessa is Associate Professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at Roma Tre University. He has curated exhibitions and edited texts (including works by de Chirico, Manganelli, Pagliarani, Raboni, Rosselli, Zanzotto, Di Ruscio, Paolini, Parmiggiani and Serafini), produced radio and television programmes, and staged theatrical and musical performances. His latest books include Le notti chiare erano tutte un’alba. Antologia di poeti italiani nella Prima guerra mondiale (Bompiani 2018), Andrea Zanzotto. Il canto nella terra (Laterza 2021), Filologia fantastica. Ipotizzare, Manganelli (Argolibri 2022), Amelia Rosselli. Con l'ascia dietro le nostre spalle (Electa 2024), Forse che sì. Joyce fra Pascoli e Gadda (Quodlibet 2025) and Una ragione in più per andare all'inferno. Vedere Pasolini (Treccani Libri, 2025). He is on the editorial staff of the magazines 'il verri', 'Strumenti critici' and 'Moderna', and is one of the founders of 'Antinomie. Scritture e immagini' (Antinomies. Writings and images); he contributes to 'il manifesto', 'Corriere della Sera', 'Domenica' del 'Sole 24 ore', 'Giornale dell'Arte' and other publications.

Professor Hugo Frey is Director of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Visual and Cultural History at University of Chichester. With Jan Baetens he has published The Graphic Novel: An Introduction (CUP, 2015) and with Baetens and Stephen Tabachnick he co-edited the award-winning The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel (2018). In 2023, he published again with CUP, The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel (co-editor). In 2022, he was awarded the post of Visiting Professor at the University of Gent, and in 2025 is co-curating an exhibition on surrealistic comics pages at the Brussels Comics Museum titled: ‘Visionary Comics’.

Guido Mattia Gallerani is Associate Professor of Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature at the University of Bologna, where he teaches Sociology of Literature and History of Literary Criticism. His research interests focus in particular on hybridisations between literary genres (essays and novels, with particular attention to Roland Barthes) and the relationships between texts and paratexts, also in light of transmedia creation processes. For Firenze University Press, he published L'intervista immaginata. Da genere mediatico a invenzione letteraria (2022): a study dedicated to a genre suspended between journalism and literature. For Morellini, he published a volume on the creative evolutions of literary criticism, Pseudo-saggi. (Ri)Scritture tra critica e letteratura (2019), and the monograph Roland Barthes e la tentazione del romanzo (2013). For Mondadori, he edited, together with Alberto Bertoni, the annotated edition of Eugenio Montale's Quaderno di quattro anni (2015). For Carocci, he wrote the intellectual biography Roland Barthes. Dalla vita al testo (2024).

Luigi Marfè is Associate Professor of Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature (COMP-01/A) at the University of Padua. He has studied 20th-century travel literature, translation theories and practices in 16th-century Europe, forms of fantasy fiction in the 19th century and photo literature. He is the author of numerous publications, including Oltre la fine dei viaggi (Olschki 2009; selected for the 'Premio Pen-Compiano 2010'), Introduzione alle teorie narrative (ArchetipoLibri 2011), In English Clothes. La novella italiana in Inghilterra: politica e poetica della traduzione (Accademia UP 2015), Un altro modo di raccontare. Poetiche e percorsi della fotoletteratura (Olschki 2021; finalist for the 'Premio Nabokov 2022'), and Effetto Faust (Mimesis 2025).

Vanessa Pietrantonio is Associate Professor of Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature at the University of Bologna. Her main areas of research include the history of literary and artistic criticism, reception theory and history (France-Italy), nineteenth-century literature, and the themes of dreams, the grotesque and the formless in literature and psychoanalysis. She is the author of several essays, including: Archetipi del sottosuolo. Sogno, allucinazione e follia nella cultura francese del XIX secolo (2012), Maschere grottesche. L’informe e il deforme nella letteratura dell’Ottocento (2018), L'idea fissa. Una malattia dell'immaginario (Bompiani, 2023).

Corinne Pontillo is a research fellow in Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature at the University of Catania. Her main research interests concern the relationships between literature and visual arts, literature and journalism, divagrafie, contemporary literature, and the relationship between literature and museums. She published several essays on contemporary authors (de' Giorgi, De Luca, Pamuk, Pasolini, Vittorini, Wu Ming, Zavattini) and four monographs: Di luce e morte. Pier Paolo Pasolini e la fotografia (Duetredue, 2015), «Il Politecnico». Progetto e storia di una narrazione visiva (Carocci, 2020), Musei di carta. Esposizioni e collezioni d'arte nella letteratura contemporanea (Carocci, 2022) and «L'immagine di me». La scrittura di Elsa de' Giorgi fra autobiografia e attorialità (Kaplan, 2024). She is part of the editorial staff of 'Arabeschi - Rivista di studi su letteratura e visualità'.

Maria Rizzarelli is Full Professor of Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature at the University of Catania, where she teaches Literary Theory, Literature and Visual Culture, and Cultural Journalism. She studied various 20th-century authors, with a particular focus on forms of hybridisation between different genres and languages. Her main areas of research include: literature and visual culture (with a particular focus on photography and cinema); literature and journalism; contemporary literature; gender studies and Digital Humanities. Her publications include: Una terra che è solo visione. La poesia di Pasolini tra cinema e pittura (Duetredue, 2015); Goliarda Sapienza. Gli spazi della libertà, il tempo della gioia (Carocci, 2018); Amore e guerra. Percorsi intermediali fra letteratura e cinema (Duetredue, 2019 - Kinomata Award 2021); Nuvole, cloni e tracce impreviste. Simulacri di donne fra letteratura e altri media (Kaplan 2023); Sapienza A-Z, edited by M. Rizzarelli (Electa, 2024). Together with Stefania Rimini, she founded and directs 'Arabeschi. International journal of studies on literature and visuality'.

Beatrice Seligardi is Tenure Track Researcher in Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature at the University of Bologna. Her research interests focus on literary theory, literary genres, Intermedial Studies, literature and visual culture, Gender Studies. She is the author of three monographs: Ellissi dello sguardo. Pathosformeln dell’inespressività femminile dalla cultura visuale alla letteratura (Morellini, 2018); Finzioni accademiche. Modi e forme del romanzo universitario (Franco Cesati Editore, 2018); Lightfossil. Sentimento del tempo in fotografia e letteratura (Postmedia Books, 2020). She is part of the scientific committee of the international journal «Between», of the governing board of COMPALIT (Association for Theory and History of Comparative Literature Studies) and of the scientific committee of FAScinA (Annual Forum in Women's and Film Studies).