Guido Bonsaver, Ph.D. (University of Reading)
Professor of Italian Cultural History. Fellow of Pembroke College
also tutor at Merton, Queen's, and Wadham College
Research
Modern Italian cultural history. Recently worked on censorship during the Fascist regime; on immigration and contemporary Italian culture; and on the influence of American culture in Post-Unification Italy.
A video of Guido discussing his research in modern Italian culture (shot in 2010):
Teaching
Undergraduate: C19th to contemporary Italian history, literature and cinema.
Graduate: MSt in Medieval and Modern Languages. MSt in Film Aesthetics
DPhil supervision: Modern Italian cultural history (C19th until today)
Publications
Books:
America in Italian Culture: The Rise of a New Model of Modernity, 1861-1943 (Oxford University Press, 2023)
Mussolini censore: Storie di letteratura, dissenso e ipocrisie (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2013)
Vita e omicidio di Gaetano Pilati: 1881-1925 (Florence, Cesati, 2010)
Elio Vittorini: Letteratura in tensione (Florence, Cesati, 2008)
Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy (Toronto University Press, 2007) - American Association of Italian Studies Book Prize for 2007
Kaos: Luigi Pirandello e i fratelli Taviani (Palermo, L'Epos, 2007)
Elio Vittorini: The Writer and the Written (Leeds, Northern Universities Press, 2000; then London, Routledge, 2017)
Il mondo scritto: Forme e ideologia nella narrativa di Italo Calvino (Turin, Tirrenia, 1995)
Edited books:
With A. Carlucci and M. Reza, Italy and the Usa: Understanding Cultural Change in Language and Narrative (Cambridge: Legenda, 2019)
With B. Richardson and G. Stellardi, Cultural Reception, Translation and Transformation from Medieval to Modern Italy (Cambridge: Legenda, 2017)
With E. Bond and F. Faloppa, Destination Italy: Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015)
With M. McLaughlin and F. Pellegrini, Sinergie narrative: Cinema e letteratura nell'Italia contemporanea (Florence: Cesati, 2008)
With R. Gordon, Culture, Censorship and the State in 20th Century Italy (Cambridge: Legenda: 2005)
Chapters and articles:
'The Royal Italian Academy', in P. Gaborik (ed.), Pirandello in Context (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024).
with Alice Gussoni, 'From Sicily to Louisiana: Early Migration and Historiographical Issues', in L. Braun-Strumfels, M. Marinari and D. Fiorentino (eds.), Managing Migration in Italy and in the United States (Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter, 2023), pp. 171-189
'Aitzinsolasa' ('Prologue'), in Elio Vittorini, Solasaldia Sizilian (Conversazione in Sicilia), Iruñea: Igela, 2021, pp. 7-17
'Turin Between French and U.S. Culture: The Film and Car Industries in 1904-1914', in Bonsaver, Carlucci, Reza (eds), Italy and the USA: Understanding Cultural Change in Language and Narrative (Cambridge: Legenda, 2019)
'Narratives of Resistance (and Revolution) in Modern Italy', in Moroncini, Shecter and Vighi (eds), Resistance in Italian Culture from Dante to the 21st Century (Florence: Cesati, 2019), pp. 153-176
'La fortuna del romanzo statunitense', in Ferrando (ed.), Stranieri all'ombra del Duce. Le traduzioni durante il fascismo (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2019), pp. 277-289
‘The Dynamics of Cultural Change: A Theoretical Frame with Reference to Italy-USA Relations’,with Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza, 900 Transnazionale/Transnational 900, 3.1 (2019), 107-130
'"Senti‘n po’, a Gregori Pècche…": Shavelson’s It Started in Naples and Fellini's La dolce vita between Italian and U.S. Culture’, in Bonsaver G., Richardson B. and Stellardi G. (eds) Cultural Reception, Translation and Transformation from Medieval to Modern Italy (Cambridge: Legenda, 2017), 331-351
'De la censure politique à l’autocensure historique: le cas de la littérature italienne sous le fascisme' in Laurent Martin (ed.), Les censures dans le monde, Presses Universitaires de Rennes: Rennes, 2016, 1-13
'Accented Voices in Contemporary Italian Cinema', in Bond, Bonsaver and Faloppa (eds), "Destination Italy: Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative,: Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015, 345-364
'Censorship from the Fascist Period to the Present', in P. Bondanella (ed.), "The Italian Cinema Handbook, Peter Lang, London: Palgrave, 2014, 66-74
Moretti minimalista: La stanza del figlio', in Vito Zagarrio (ed.), "Nanni Moretti: Lo sguardo morale, Venice: Marsilio, 2012, 252-258
'Romano Bilenchi e la fascistissima Firenze', in Riem Natale and Csillaghy Andrea (eds.), "Un tremore di foglie": Studi in ricordo di Anna Panicali, Udine: FEUU, 2011, vol. 2, 1-11
'The aesthetics of documentary film-making and Giallo a Milano: An interview with film director Sergio Basso and sociologist Daniele Cologna', The Italianist, 31.2 (2011), 293-31
'Themes and Challenges for Italian Film Studies', The Italianist, 30.2 (2010), 287-289
'Fare gli itagliani' in the Bolognese Countryside. Some Notes on Language, Literature and Cultural History in Postunification Italy', The Italianist, 30.2. (2010), pp. 167-181
'Who's Shooting Whom? Screening Immigration in Contemporary Italian Cinema', in: L. Lepschy and A. Ledgeway (eds.): Into and Out of Italy: Lingua e cultura della migrazione italiana (Perugia, Guerra, 2010), 87-98
'Fascism and the Italian Intelligentsia’', in: R. Bosworth (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Fascism (Oxford University Press, 2009), 109-126
'Conversazione in Sicilia e la censura fascista', in: Il demone dell'anticipazione: Cultura, letteratura, editoria in Elio Vittorini (Milano: Fondazione Mondadori, 2009), 13-30
'Cent`anni di Elio Vittorini', La Rivista dei Libri, 19.3 (2009), 31-34
'Elio Vittorini e i fertili fallimenti del dopoguerra', in: R. Bertone (ed.), Un secolo con Vittorini (Turin: Trauben, 2009), 9-18
'Dall'uomo al divo: Un'intervista con Paolo Sorrentino', The Italianist, 29.2 (2009), 325-337
'Mussolinijev fašizem, literarna cenzura in Vatikan (Mussolini’s Fascism, Literary Censorship and the Vatican)', Primerjalna Književnost, 31.1 (2008), 43-54
'Recent Work on Neorealism', Italian Studies, 63.2 (2008), 309-314
'Dalle novelle ai film: un’intervista con i fratelli Taviani', in: La novella di Pirandello: Dramma film musica fumetto (Pesaro, 2007), 263-272
'Vittore Branca e la fascistissima Firenze', The Italianist, 26.2 (2006), 34-47
'Raccontare "all'americana": Io non ho paura tra autodiegesi letteraria e soggettiva cinematografica', in: Bertoni R. (ed.) Narrativa italiana recente/Recent Italian Fiction (Turin: Trauber, 2005), 53-73
'Fascist Censorship on Literature and the Case of Elio Vittorini', Modern Italy, 8.2 (2003), 165-186
'‘Sconcertante ma accettabile': il progetto Gulliver e la redazione italiana ', Riga, 21 (2003), 280-292
'Città senza tempo: cronologia 'debole' e tracce benjaminiane in "Le città invisibili" di Italo Calvino', Italianistica, 52 (2002), 48-69
Various entries in The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature, P. Hainsworth and D. Robie (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002
'The Egocentric Cassandra of the Left: Representations of Politics in the Films of Nanni Moretti', The Italianist, 20-21 (2001-2002), 65-88
'La carne, la morte e il chewing gum nella narrativa di Alessandro Baricco', Nuova prosa, 27 (2000), 56-62
'Calvino e l’ultimo Vittorini: Paternità e pratiche letterarie', Proteo, 5 (1999), 35-44
'Vittorini’s American Translations: Parallels, Borrowings and Betrayals ', Italian Studies, 53 (1998), 68-97
'Calvino tra Budapest e Parigi (1956-1966) ', in: Italo Calvino: Le défi au labyrinthe (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 1998), 45-60
'Un Gran Lombardo sbarca a Milano: ‘Il negozio di stoffe’ (con un inedito di E. Vittorini)', in: In amicizia. Essays in Honour of Giulio Lepschy (The Italianist, 1997), 45-65
'Dialect, Culture and Politics: The Northern League(s)', Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, 4 (1996), 97-107
'Cities of the Imagination: Traces of Italo Calvino in Jeanette Winterson’s Fiction', The Italianist, 15 (1995), 208-226
'Il menabò, Calvino and the Avanguardie: Some Observations on the Literary Debate in the Sixties', Italian Studies, 50 (1995), 46-67
'Il Calvino semiotico: dal romanzo naturalistico all opera come macrotesto', The Italianist, 14 (1994), 160-194
'George Orwell ai microfoni della B.B.C.', Quaderni di lingua e letteratura, 15 (1990), 25-41
Media Collaborations
BBC World News, BBC 4, Radio 4, BBC World Radio, "Sight & Sound", "Corriere della Sera", "L'Adige", Chora Media, and the educational platform MASSOLIT.