Chiara Barni

Research and Teaching Interests

Italian Cinema; Modernism; Fine Arts; Travel Literature; Ecocriticism; Theater.

Biography

Chiara Barni is a third year Ph.D. candidate in Italian Studies. She graduated from the University of Pisa in Modern Languages and Literatures, where she also completed a study abroad period at Royal Holloway, University of London. She subsequently earned a Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature and Criticism at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and a second Master’s Degree in Italian Studies at Boston College, where she was recipient of the Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award.

Given her comparative background, she is passionate about new emergences and reworkings of classic topoi, as well as the interweavings between different arts. Currently, she is developing a dissertation project on the imagery of cinematic ruins and rubble from fascist cinema to Alice Rohrwacher's films. She is particularly interested in the unresolved paradox between the chase for modernization and the burden of Italy's archeological and ideological heritage. Other research interests include: Renaissance and Baroque erotic literature, Comedy Italian-Style, and urban studies.
 

Publications

• "When the Serenissima is no longer serene: Staging chaos in La Veniexiana." Italian Studies, 78:1 (2023). DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2023.2185435
• "Re, virago e mostri: itinerari fantastici nelle lettere di viaggio di Petrarca" in Laureatus in Urbe VI. Roma: Aracne, forthcoming.
• "Il “fratello secentesco” perduto: Gabriele D’Annunzio e la riscoperta del marinismo." Carte Italiane, 13(1) (2021).
• “The Spirit of the South: Mediterranean “Otherness” according to the Northerners.” Romance EReview, 22 (2019).