PARTICIPANTS

Pierpaolo Antonello is currently University Lecturer in Italian at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St. John’s College.  He has published numerous articles on contemporary Italian literature in such journals as Iride, Italian Culture, and Contemporanea, and is the author of Il ménage a quattro. Scienza, filosofia, tecnica nella letteratura italiana del Novecento (Le Monnier, 2005).  He is the editor (with Simon A. Gilson) of Science and Literature in Italian Culture: From Dante to Calvino (Oxford, 2004), and he has published a book-length interview with Rene Girard, Origine della cultura e fine della storia (Cortina, 2003).

Luigi Ballerini lives between New York City and Milan, and teaches at UCLA. His books of poetry include eccetera. E (Guanda, 1972 ), Che figurato muore (Scheiwiller, 1988), Che oror l’orient (Lubrina, 1991), Il terzo gode (Marsilio, 1994), Stracci shakespeariani (Quasar 1996), Uscita senza strada (Edizioni della Battaglia, 2000), Uno monta la luna (Manni, 2001), and Cefalonia 43 e altre poesie (Mondadori, 2005). His anthologies of American and Italian Poetry include La rosa disabitata (Feltrinelli, 1981), Shearsmen of Sorts (Forum Italicum 1992), and The Promised Land (Sun & Moon, 1999). He has translated Herman Melville, Henry James, William Carlos Williams, James Baldwin, Kurt Vonnegut and Gertrude Stein. He has written extensively on avant-garde literature and poetry as in La piramide capovolta (Marsilio, 1975); on Guido Cavalcanti, Colui che vede Amore (Olschi, 2004); and on poetics, La legge dell’ingratitudine. He is the editor of Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (U. of Toronto Press, 2003); Maestro Martino: The Book of the Culinary Art (U. of California Press, 2004); F.T. Marinetti’s Gli indomabili (Mondadori, 2000), and Mafarka il futurista (Mondadori, 2001). He is the recipient of prestigious awards for his poetry, including the Feronia Prize, the Premio Brancati, and the Premio Montano.

Andrea Cortellessa teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Rome III.  He has collaborated on cultural programs for RAI Radio 3.  He has published several books, including Le notti chiare erano tutte un’alba. Antologia di poeti italiani nella prima guerra mondiale (Mondadori, 1998); Ungaretti (Einaudi, 2000), and La fisica del senso. Saggi e interventi su poeti italiani dal 1940 a oggi (Fazi, 2006).  He has edited volumes of Giorgio Manganelli’s work, including La favola pitagorica. Luoghi italiani (Adelphi, 2005) and L’isola pianeta e altri Settentrioni (Adelphi, 2006); he also edited Giovanni Raboni, La poesia che si fa. Cronaca e storia del Novecento poetico italiano 1959-2004 (Garzanti, 2005), and Elio Pagliarani, Tutte le poesie 1946-2005 (Garzanti, 2006).  He is co-editor of the anthology Parola plurale. 64 poeti italiani fra due secoli (Luca Sossella, 2005).  He is a frequent contributor to Alias (a supplement in Il Manifesto), ttL (supplement of La Stampa), L’Indice dei libri del mese, Poesia, I quaderni dell’ingegnere, Testi e studi gaddiani, the Edinburgh Journal of Gadda Studies, and Il Caffe illustrato.  He serves on the editorial board of the journal il verri.

Grazia Menechella teaches in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on 19th and 20th century Italian literature and culture, especially experimental writings, women writers, and popular culture, and her work has appeared in a variety of journals, including MLN, Italian Culture, Quaderni d’italianistica, Italica, and Forum Italicum. She is the author of Il felice vanverare. Ironia e parodia nell’opera narrativa di Giorgio Manganelli (Longo Editore, 2002).

Tommaso Ottonieri teaches at the University of Rome La Sapienza.  He has published several books of poetry and fiction, including Dalle memorie di un piccolo ipertrofico, with preface by Edoardo Sanguineti (Feltrinelli, 1980); Coniugativo  (Corpo 10, 1984); Crema acida (Lupetti-Manni, 1997); Elegia Sanremese, with preface by Manlio Sgalambro, accompanied by CD (Bompiani, 1998); Emblemi (Cronopio, 2002); L’album crèmisi (Empiria, 2000); Contatto (Cronopio, 2002). He is an active literary commentator, and he has published a book of criticism entitled La plastica della lingua. Stili in fuga lungo un’età postrema (Bollati Boringhieri, 2000).  He collaborates frequently with RAI Radio 3 on cultural programming.

Luca Somigli is on the faculty of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto.  He is the author of Legitimizing the Artist. Manifesto Writing and European Modernism 1885-1915 (University of Toronto Press, 2003), which won the 2004 book award of the American Association for Italian Studies; and Per una satira modernista. La narrativa di Wyndham Lewis (Cadmo, 1995).  He is the co-editor (with Mario Moroni) of Italian Modernism: Italian Culture between Decadentism and Avant-Garde (University of Toronto Press); co-editor (with Rocco Capozzi) of Italian Prose Writers, 1900-1945. Vol. 264 of Dictionary of Literary Biography (Gale Research Inc., 2002); co-editor (with Luigi Fontanella) of The Literary Journal as a Cultural Witness. 1943-1993: Fifty Years of Italian and Italian American Reviews (Filibrary, 1996).  He has contributed to many journals, including Narrativa, Studi italiani, L’anello che non tiene, Yale Italian Poetry, Quaderni d’italianistica, and Forum Italicum.

Roberta Tabanelli teaches in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at Christopher Newport University, following appointments at the University of Memphis and at Penn State. Her research and publications focus on 20th century Italian literature and film, cultural studies and popular culture, and she is a contributor to various journals, including Storie, Annali d’italianistica, and Italica.  She’s currently working on a book on contemporary Neapolitan cinema.