Serena Vandi
Assistant Professor in Italian
Research Profile
Position: Assistant Professor in Italian; TJH Fresh Coordinator (Italian); Erasmus Coordinator (Italian)
Office: 4037, Arts Building
Email: vandis@tcd.ie
Research Interests
• Dante Alighieri
• The Reception of Dante
• Carlo Emilio Gadda
• Satire and Humour Studies
• 20th- and 21st-century Italian and Comparative Literature and Culture
• Stylistics and Rhetoric
• Reception Studies
• Media Studies
Research
Dr Vandi’s first monograph, Satura. Varietà per verità in Dante and Gadda [‘Satura. Truth through Variety in Dante and Gadda’] (Milan-Udine: Mimesis, 2021), is the first comparative study on Dante and Gadda. It proposes a new critical category, satura, to investigate and connect the two authors’ works. The original name of satire is used to extend beyond that genre two of its key aspects – variety of form and content and a mission to unveil the truth – and to identify them and their relation as fundamental structures in the works of Dante and Gadda. Whilst coming to a thorough reassessment of the traditional way of interpreting the relationship between these two cornerstones of Italian literature, Satura offers a reflection on broader matters in literary criticism, and in particular on the relationship between the formal structure of the text and its ethical-gnoseological potentiality.
Her second project, ‘Eros and Priapus': Gadda, Fascism, and Truth, aims to reassess Gadda’s controversial relationship with fascism, to investigate his use of satire and his related commitment to truth, and to place this discourse for the first time within an international context. After the 2016 publication of the original uncensored manuscript (1944-45) of Gadda’s Eros e Priapo, a psychoanalytical/political/historical/satirical treatise-invective, a comparison with its first edition (1967) allows for a new understanding of this uniquely complex text, by also considering it as a case study of the multiple duplicities which characterise the satiric genre and its truth claims.
Dr Vandi is also currently developing a project entitled Naked and Layered. Satire, Truth, and Power: an intermedial, comparative, and interdisciplinary investigation of satire’s potential to shape human thinking, change human behaviour, and create community and/or barriers. The focus of the project is on the the intrinsic double nature of satire and on the ways in which these duplicities connect with the issue of unveiling the truth. Naked and Layered starts by considering Italy as a case study, acknowledging the centrality of the Italian peninsula for the development of this ubiquitous ‘non-genre’: from Latin fescennini and satura, Juvenal, and then Dante, Ariosto, up to Gadda, Flaiano, Fo, and political satire from 1994 to the present day, spanning from literature to theatre, cinema, TV, and social media.
Research Groups
• «L’ombra sua torna»: Dante, the Twentieth Century and Beyond – Co-Founder and Co-Director• Seminario Gaddiano Permanente – Member
• Seminario Internazionale di Studi Danteschi (SISD) – Member
Doctoral and Postdoctoral Researchers
Dr Vandi warmly welcomes expressions of interest on themes and ideas relevant or connected to her research. Simply contacted her by email.
Teaching
Dr Vandi teaches Dante, the modern and contemporary reception of Dante, modern and contemporary Italian literature and culture, and Italian language.
2024-25 Undergraduate Modules:
• ITU11172 Breakthroughs: 20th Century Italian Literary Turning Points
• ITU22161 Dante's Inferno
• ITU33241 Blurring Boundaries: Margins and Identities in Contemporary Italian Culture
• ITU4404Y Italian 4C Minor
• ITU44182 History and Forms of Italian Satire
2024-25 Postgraduate Modules:
• CP7004 Dantean Echoes
Publications
Monographs• ‘Eros and Priapus’. Gadda, Fascism, and Truth, in preparation
• Satura. Varietà per verità in Dante e Gadda, Prefazione di Paola Italia e Giuseppe Ledda (Milan-Udine: Mimesis, 2021).
[Reviews: Maria Valeria Dominioni, La rassegna della letteratura italiana, 125.2 (2021); Paolo Rigo, Annali d’italianistica, 40 (2022), 430-431; Olivia Santovetti, Allegoria, 86 (2022)]
Edited Volumes
• Gadda Transmissions. Carlo Emilio Gadda across Boundaries, Languages, and Systems, ed. by Luca Mazzocchi and Serena Vandi, submitted to Legenda (Oxford)
• Cinquant’anni dalla morte. Carlo Emilio Gadda (1973-2023). Gadda Transmissions, ed. by Luca Mazzocchi and Serena Vandi, special issue of Strumenti critici, XXXVIII, 163 (2023)
• «L’ombra sua torna»: Dante, il Novecento e oltre, ed. by Carlota Cattermole Ordóñez, Maddalena Moretti, and Serena Vandi, special issue of Tenzone, 22 (2023)
Peer-reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
• ‘Introduction’, by Luca Mazzocchi and Serena Vandi, in Gadda Transmissions. Carlo Emilio Gadda across Boundaries, Languages, and Systems, ed. by Luca Mazzocchi and Serena Vandi, submitted to Legenda (Oxford)
• ‘Doppia ecolalia. Sulla satira di Eros e Priapo’, Cinquant’anni dalla morte. Carlo Emilio Gadda (1973-2023). Gadda Transmissions, ed. by Luca Mazzocchi and Serena Vandi, special issue of Strumenti critici, XXXVIII, 163 (2023), 595-617
• ‘La “salamoia gravitazionale”. Cronotopo e confini del testo in Gadda’, in Carlo Emilio Gadda. Un seminario, ed. by Valentino Baldi and Cristina Savettieri (Milan-Udine: Mimesis, 2022), pp. 101-132
• ‘“Dal nero fondo della miniera alla luce”. L’antifascismo dantesco di Gadda’, «Per Dante Alighieri (1321-2021)». Fascicolo monografico nella cinquantesima annata di «Italianistica», ed. by Giorgio Masi, with the collaboration of Gloria Scarfone, Italianistica, L, n. 1 (2021), 331-342
• ‘Dante and Gadda: Outsider Prophets’, in Resistance in Italian Culture from Dante to the 21st Century, ed. by Ambra Moroncini, Darrow Schecter, Fabio Vighi (Florence: Cesati, 2019), 65-77
• ‘Dante in Gadda: lirismo “ricombinante” ne “La Madonna dei Filosofi”’, L’Alighieri, 45 (2015), 35-70
Glossary Entries
• ‘Cetriolo-Inghilterra deve scontare i suoi delitti’, ‘Eleganza-flanella’, ‘Felicità-facilità’, ‘Pastrufazianamente’, ‘Patateria’, ‘Ramarro-folgore’, ‘Salamoia’, in Gaddabolario. Duecentodiciannove parole dell’Ingegnere, ed. by Paola Italia (Rome: Carocci, 2022), 46, 63, 68, 112-113, 125-126, 129
Book Reviews
• Review of Stefano Jossa, Luciano Curreri, In balìa di Dante e Pinocchio, Bettino D’Aloja, Il viaggio di Pinocchio nell’aldilà dantesco (Rome: Mauvais Livres, 2022), Italian Studies, 79.2 (2024), 233-234
• Review of Gadda. Interpreti a confronto, ed. by Federica G. Pedriali (Florence: Cesati, 2021), Italianistica, 1 (2023), 113-115
• Review of Julia Caterina Hartley, Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy (Oxford: Legenda, 2019), Italian Studies, 2 (2022), 202-203
• Review of Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, ed. by Saverio Bellomo and Stefano Carrai (Turin: Einaudi, 2019), Textual Cultures, 13.2 (2020), 288-291
• Review of Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy Volume 3, ed. by George Corbett, Heather Webb (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017), Modern Language Review, 115.1 (2020), 188-190
Conference Organisation
«L’ombra sua torna» Series
• «L’ombra sua torna» 2023: Dante, il Novecento e oltre. I metodi [panel series and roundtable], Congresso Dantesco Internazionale Alma Dante 2023, Ravenna, 17-20 May 2023. Co-organisers: Carlota Cattermole Ordóñez, Dario Galassini, Valentina Mele, Maddalena Moretti
• «L’ombra sua torna» 2021: Dante, il Novecento e oltre [international conference], Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 19-21 April 2021. Co-organisers: Carlota Cattermole Ordóñez and Maddalena Moretti
• Dante and the Twentieth Century: New Perspectives [panel], SIS Biennial Conference 2017, University of Hull, 27-30 June 2017. Co-organisers: Carlota Cattermole Ordoñez and Maddalena Moretti
• «L’ombra sua torna»: Dante, the Twentieth Century and Beyond [international conference], University of Leeds, 24-25 March 2017. Co-organiser: Maddalena Moretti
• Editions, Translations, Transmissions. ‘That Awful Mess’ of Carlo Emilio Gadda [international conference], University of Oxford, 10-12 March 2022. Co-organiser: Luca Mazzocchi
• Satire, Satura, Revelation. Perspectives on Gadda [panel], SIS Biennial Conference 2019, University of Edinburgh, 26-28 June 2019. Co-organiser: Laura Lucia Rossi
• Un laboratorio per l’ingegnere. A Research Day on Gadda [international research workshop], University of Leeds, 21 May 2018. Co-organiser: Laura Lucia Rossi
• Made in Italy: Identities and Change in Perspective [research seminar], ItaLeeds Seminar Series, University of Leeds, 10 May 2018. Co-organisers: Francesca Petrizzo and Giovanni Pozzetti
Conference Presentation
Dr Vandi has presented her research and has been invited at international conferences, panels, workshops, and roundtables, in Ireland, the UK, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the US.
Leadership, Academic Roles, and Memberships
• Associate Editor and Editorial Coordinator, The Italianist
• Italian Studies Representative in the University Council For Languages Early Career Academics Special Interest Group
• Tutor and Member of the Alumni Association of the Collegio Superiore, University of Bologna
• Member of the Society for Italian Studies in the UK and Ireland • SIS Early Career Academics Representative, Society for Italian Studies (May 2020 – January 2023)
• Research Culture Intern, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds (October 2016 – July 2019)
Dissemination and Public Engagement
• ‘Enthousanding’ Words. Dante Inventor of Language at the Ends of the Paradiso [invited public talk], Dante After Hours. Heaven and Hell, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 26 November 2021• Maratona di lettura dell’Inferno di Dante / Maratona di lettura del Purgatorio di Dante, ‘Researchers’ Night’, University of Bologna, 27 November 2020 / 24 September 2021
• «Com’occhio per lo mare». Dante e la lingua che non c’è [invited public lecture], City Council of Bellaria-Igea Marina (Rimini, Italy), 5 June 2021
• Dante e Gadda a confronto. Nuove prospettive su Dante e il Novecento, ‘Connessione Straordinaria’ series, Collegio Superiore, University of Bologna, 28 May 2021
• ‘Da “trasumanar” (Par. I, 70) a “s’indova” (Par. XXXIII, 138): neologismi del Paradiso’,‘Di prima notte’. Alma Dantedì 2021, University of Bologna, 25 March 2021
• ‘Dante e Gadda’, Alma Dantedì 2020, University of Bologna, 25 March 2020 • Una giornata con l’ingegner Gadda, Pour Parler Podcast series, 8 July 2019