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Academic background

After studying philosophy at the University of Pisa and at the Sorbonne, Alessandra Aloisi completed her PhD in Aesthetics at the University of Pisa. In 2015-2017, she was Marie Curie research fellow at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick. She joined the University of Oxford in 2018 as a Departmental Lecturer in 18th- and 19th-Century French at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Jesus College. At present, she is a College Lecturer in French at Oriel College and Wadham College.

 

Research interests

Alessandra’s research interests broadly concern modern and early-modern French literature and philosophy, as well as cultural exchanges in modern Europe, namely between France and Italy. She specialises in the 18th and 19th centuries (in particular the pre-Freudian theorisations of the unconscious, the intersections between literature and the prehistory of cinema, and the cross-fertilisation of medicine, literature, and philosophy). Her research interests also extend to 20th-century theory and aesthetics.

 

Teaching

Modern and early-modern French literature and thought; Prelims Papers III and IV; Paper VII and Paper X

 

Selected publications

 

Books

  • The Power of Distraction. Diversion and Reverie from Montaigne to Proust (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). Expanded English edition of La potenza della distrazione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2020), also available in Spanish as El poder de la distracción (Alianza Editorial, 2022)
  • Desiderio e assuefazione. Studio sul pensiero di Leopardi (Pisa: Ets, 2014).

 

Edited books

  • Maine de Biran: Of Immediate Apperception, 1807, ed. A. Aloisi, M. Piazza, and M. Sinclair, transl. M. Sinclair, with an Introduction by A. Aloisi and M. Piazza (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2020).
  • Archaeology of the Unconscious: Italian Perspectives, ed. A. Aloisi and F. Camilletti, with a co-authored Introduction (London/New York: Routledge, 2019).
  • G. Leopardi, Il gallo silvestre e altri animali, Anthology of texts, eds. A. Prete and A. Aloisi (Lecce: Manni, 2010).
  • Contaminazioni leopardiane, eds. O. Calzolari, A. Aloisi, and E. Tandello (Milan: Mimesis, 2024).

 

Journal special issues

  • Maine de Biran and the Afterlives of Biranism, eds. A. Aloisi and D. Antoine-Mahut, with a co-authored Introduction, special issue of Perspectives on Science, MIT Press, vol. 32, issue 1, 2024.
  • Maine de Biran e la ricezione del biranismo nella cultura francese, italiana e anglo-americana, special issue of Historia Philosophica, eds. A. Aloisi and M. Piazza, with a co-authored Introduction, n. 22, 2024.

 

Journal articles

  • ‘Coenesthesia or the Immediate Feeling of Existence: Maine de Biran and the Problem of the Unconscious between Physiology and Philosophy’, in Maine de Biran and the Afterlives of Biranism, eds. A. Aloisi and D. Antoine-Mahut, special issue of Perspectives on Science, MIT Press, vol. 32, issue 1, 2024, pp. 47-69.
  • ‘Bodily Sensation, Organic Refraction, and the Problem of the Unconscious in Maine de Biran and Théodule Ribot’, in Maine de Biran e la ricezione del biranismo nella cultura francese, italiana e anglo-americana, special issue of Historia Philosophica, eds. A. Aloisi and M. Piazza, n. 2 2024, pp. 209-219.
  • ‘The Vie de Henry Brulard as an Essay on Moral Geology. Character, Habit, and Disposition in Rousseau and Stendhal’, Paradigmi, XXXVIII, 3/2020, pp. 547-68.
  • ‘Il pensiero italiano tra le discipline’, La filosofia italiana in questione, ed. F. Pitillo, special issue of Filosofia italiana, 1/2019, pp. 83-91.
  • ‘L’(in)attualità filosofica di Leopardi’, Il Cannocchiale, a. XLIV, n. 1-2, gennaio-dicembre 2019, pp. 243-60.
  • ‘Maine de Biran’s Conception of Melancholy, Between Medicine and Philosophy’, in Melancolia. Metamorfosi dell’umor nero, ed. V. Serio, special issue of Odradek. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics and New Media Theories, vol. 1, n. 1, 2018, pp. 7-19.
  • ‘Una macchina dal nome infernale in arrivo da un paese romantico’, Intersezioni. Rivista di storia delle idee, n. 2, 2017 (August), pp. 163-83.
  • ‘Elogio dell’inoperosità. Agamben e Leopardi’, Italian Studies, vol. 72, Issue 3, 2017, pp. 282- 91.
  • ‘Immagini della natura nello Zibaldone’, La Rassegna della letteratura italiana, n. 2, 2013 (July-Dec.), pp. 427-41.
  • ‘Disfare e rimutare di continuo le cose di quaggiùr: appunti su moda, morte e civiltà in Leopardi’, Leussein. Rivista di studi umanistici, n. 2-3/maggio-dicembre 2012, pp. 127-36.
  • ‘Memoria e attenzione involontaria nello Zibaldone’, Rivista Internazionale di Studi Leopardiani, n. 7, 2011, pp. 83-94.
  • ‘Memoria e infanzia in Agostino’, Rivista di filosofia, n. 2, 2010 (August), pp. 187-208.
  • ‘Fisica e metafisica della noia nelle Operette morali di Leopardi’, Rivista internazionale di studi leopardiani, n. 6, 2010, pp. 61-78.

 

Book Chapters

  • ‘Art and the Power of Distraction: Bergson, Benjamin, and Simone Weil’, in Politics of Curiosities. Alternatives to the Attention Economy, eds. E. Campo and Y. Citton, London/New York: Routledge, 2024, pp. 155-66.
  • ‘Leopardi, Gilles Deleuze, and the Art of the Philosophical Portrait’, Actes du colloque Le corpus: corps à corps, Université de Genève, 12-13 May 2023, eds. M. Manara and M. Kondrat, Fabula / Les Colloques, 2024.
  • ‘Tout en amour est signe: De l’amour et le début de la psychologie’, Stendhal, De l’amour, 200 ans après, eds. L. N. Cangiano, A. M. Scaiola, and H. de Jacquelot, Roma: Tab edizioni, 2024, pp. 107-23.
  • ‘L’immanence: une vie… Gilles Deleuze, Maine de Biran, and the Transcendental Field’, in Towards a New Anthropology of the Embodied Mind: Maine de Biran’s Physio-Spiritualism from 1800 to the 21st Century, ed. M. Milz, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2023, pp. 325-40.
  • ‘Quel œil peut se voir soi-même? Character and Habit in Maine de Biran and Stendhal’, in Towards a New Anthropology of the Embodied Mind: Maine de Biran’s Physio-Spiritualism from 1800 to the 21st Century, ed. M. Milz, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2023, pp. 147-61.
  • ‘La Moda e la Morte: invenzione di una genealogia mitica’, in Le mythe repensé dans l’oeuvre de Giacomo Leopardi, ed. P. Abbrugiati, Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2016, pp. 317-27; republished as Il mito ripensato nell’opera di Giacomo Leopardi, Milan: Mimesis, 2022.
  • The Unconscious in Philosophy’, in The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of the Possible, ed. V. P. Glăveanu, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
  • ‘Francesco Soave and the Unconscious of the Somnambulist: Dreams, Madness, and Distraction in Eighteenth-century Italy’, in Archaeology of the Unconscious, Italian perspectives, eds A. Aloisi and F. Camilletti, London/New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 33-49.
  • ‘The Melancholy of the Revolution, Maine de Biran facing Napoleon’s Hundred Days’, in Napoleon’s 100 Days and the Struggle for Legitimacy, eds K. Astbury and M. Philp, London: Palgrave, 2018, pp. 61-80.
  • ‘La Filosofia’, in Giacomo Leopardi, eds F. D’Intino and M. Natale, Roma: Carocci, 2018, 101-23.
  • ‘Rivoluzione’, in Lessico leopardiano, eds N. Bellucci and F. D’Intino, Roma: Sapienza Università Editrice, 2016, pp. 109-14.
  • ‘L’infinito come condizione di un’esperienza possibile’, in Ten Steps. Critical Inquiries on Leopardi, eds F. Camilletti and P. Cori, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015, pp. 149-73.
  • ‘Limite/confine’, in Lessico leopardiano, eds N. Bellucci & F. D’Intino, Roma: Sapienza Università Editrice, 2014, pp. 65-72.
  • ‘Leopardi e l’idea di sistema’, in Il velo scolpito. Dialoghi tra filosofia e letteratura, ed. D. Manca, afterword by A. Prete (Ets, 2014), pp. 27-39.
  • ‘Pensiero e figure dell’animalità in Antonio Prete’, in Pensiero poetante e poetica della lontananza, ed. C. A. Augieri, Lecce: Milella, 2012, pp. 125-35.
  • ‘Esperienza del sublime e dinamica del desiderio in Giacomo Leopardi’, in La prospettiva antropologica nel pensiero e nella poesia di Giacomo Leopardi, Firenze: Olschki, 2010, pp. 243-58.

 

Translations from French

  • M. de Beistegui, Proust e la gioia. Per un’estetica della metafora, Pisa: Ets, 2013
  • P. Steiner, Le ricchezze oscene, Pisa: Ets, 2012.
  • G. Deleuze, Cours de Vincennes, lecture of 27/01/1987 on Leibniz (www.webdeleuze.com).