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Vanessa Pietrantonio teaches literature courses at E.C.Co. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature in the United States and subsequently won various grants, such as a research grant and a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Bologna. She has delivered a series of lectures at the IULM University in Milan on rewriting, parody, pastiche, the modern European novel and on representations of time in Don DeLillo’s Underworld. Prof. Pietrantonio has also been a visiting professor of literature at Vassar College, and has taught courses on the history of literary criticism at the University of Bologna, where she currently collaborates with Prof. Ferdinando Amigoni. Among her publications are Debenedetti e il suo doppio. Una traversata con Marcel Proust (Mulino, 2003) and Archetipi del Sottosuolo (FrancoAngeli, 2011), as well as co-edited volumes Nel paese dei sogni (Le Monnier, 2003) and Crocevia dei sogni. Dalla Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse (Le Monnier, 2004).

Ivan Tassi teaches Italian languge and writing courses at E.C.Co. He received his doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Bologna and has taught at the Italian Cultural Institute in Barcelona. His research has focused on the techniques of autobiographical writing in Italy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as on Italian nineteenth- and twentieth-century narrative. Prof. Tassi has authored books on the history and theory of autobiography as a literary genre (Storie dell’io) and on the autobiographical techniques of Goldoni, Alfieri and Leopardi (Gli specchi del possibile). He has published a volume of the three editions of Silvio D’Arzo’s short story Casa d’altri, the entry for “Biography” in the Encyclopaedia Treccani, and a survey of Italian nineteenth-century literary criticism for l’Almanacco Rizzoli. Ivan Tassi has also translated Breece Pancake’s short stories into Italian (Trilobiti). He is a contributor to the daily newspaper il manifesto’s culture column and to the weekly supplement Alias with his articles on literary criticism.

Prof. Stefano Cavazza teaches “Contemporary History” (undergraduate) and “History of European Society in the Twentieth Century” (graduate) at the University of Bologna’s Faculty of Political Sciences. He is currently the director of the BA Program in International Studies and of the PhD Program in Politics, Institutions, and History. At E.C.Co, he offers the course “The Political System and Society in Italy after World War II (1945-2008).” Prof. Cavazza’s research interests include Italian and German political history, Fascism, the study of consumption and regional history. He has been a research fellow at the University of Tübingen, at the German Historical Institute in Rome, and at the Center for Contemporary History in Munich, and a visiting professor at the École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has also taught at the University of Trier, the Humboldt in Berlin, and in Potsdam with the Socrates Program. He is a member of the editorial board of the historical journal Ricerche di Storia politica and co-editor of the Storia Politica, a book series published by Rubbettino Editore. In 2005, Prof. Cavazza’s… Continue reading

Francesco Ceccarelli teaches architectural history at the University of Bologna, as well as the history of urbanism at the University of Ferrara. At E.C.Co., he offers a course on the urban and architectural development of Bologna. The focus of Prof. Ceccarelli’s research is the study of the early modern and modern Italian city, from the Renaissance through Neoclassicism. He has written numerous studies on Italian architects active between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries, from Leon Battista Alberti to Giovanni Antolini, and curated important international exhibitions in architectural history, such as Une renaissance singuliere. La cour des Este à Ferrare(Brussels 2003 and Ferrara 2004). He has also co-edited volumes on Giovan Battista Aleotti, on villas and gardens in Renaissance Ferrara, and on Bolognese art and architecture in the age of Pellegrino and Domenico Tibaldi, as well as contributing significant chapters to Electa’s series on the history of Italian architecture. In recognition of his innovative studies on the strategies of urban development of cities of the Po valley during the Renaissance – above all, his book La città di Alcina. Architettura… Continue reading

Prof. Beatrice Collina offers courses in women’s history at E.C.Co. and teaches in the Department of Italian Literature at the University of Bologna. Her research is focused primarily on the history of Renaissance and Baroque literature, in particular on Venetian female writers who addressed women’s issues between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some of her articles have been dedicated to biographies of notable women from this period and to theories regarding women in the Early Modern age. A student of Piero Camporesi, Prof. Collina has written widely on Italian Counter-Reformation authors, such as Giovan Battista Marino, Arcangela Tarabotti, and Tomaso Garzoni. She has published critical editions of Garzoni’s Le vite delle donne illustri della Scrittura Sacra and La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo. For many years, Prof. Collina held research and teaching positions in the United States: she was a visiting scholar at the Regenstein Library in Chicago, held a course for the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, and received a Fulbright Fellowship in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures… Continue reading