Barbara Spackman, Ph.D. Yale University, is Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature, and holder of the Giovanni and Ruth Elizabeth Cecchetti Chair in Italian Literature. She works on nineteenth and twentieth century Italian literature and culture, with special interests in decadence, the cultural production of the fascist period, feminist theory, travel writing and Italian Orientalism. She has published on topics as diverse as Macaronic poetry, Machiavelli and gender, film of the fascist period, the rhetoric of sickness at the fin de siècle, Italian futurism, contemporary feminist theory, the rhetoric of Mussolini’s speeches, Orientalism in the nineteenth century, and migrant writing in the twenty-first. She is the author of Decadent Genealogies: The Rhetoric of Sickness from Baudelaire to D’Annunzio (Cornell University Press, 1989) and Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), which won the 1998 MLA Howard R. Marraro, and Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prizes for Italian Literary Studies. Her most recent book, Accidental Orientalists: Modern Italian Travelers in Ottoman Lands (Liverpool University Press, 2017) won the 2018 American Association of Italian Studies won the prize for Best Book in the category of “Renaissance, 18th and 19th Century Italian Studies," and the 2018 MLA Howard R. Marraro Prize Honorable Mention.
Selected Publications:
BOOKS: Decadent Genealogies: The Rhetoric of Sickness from Baudelaire to D'Annunzio. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Accidental Orientalists: Modern Italian Travelers in Ottoman Lands. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017. SELECTED ARTICLES "Il verbo (e)sangue: Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Ritualization of Violence." Quaderni d'italianistica 4: 2 (1983), 218-229. "Nietzsche, D'Annunzio and the Scene of Convalescence." Stanford Italian Review 6:1-2 (1986), 141-157. "Pandora's Box." Quaderni Dannunziani 3-4 (1988), 61-73. "The Fascist Rhetoric of Virility." Stanford Italian Review 8: 1-2 (1990), 81-101. "Machiavelli and Maxims." In Reading the Archive: On Texts and Institutions. Ed. E. S. Burt and Janie Vanpée. Yale French Studies 77 (1990), 137-155. "Inter ursam et musam moritur: Folengo and the Gaping Other Mouth." In RefiguringWoman: Gender Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Ed. Juliana Schiesari and Marilyn Migiel. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, 19-34. "Politics on the Warpath: Machiavelli's Art of War.” In Machiavelli and Literature. Ed. Victoria Kahn and Albert Ascoli. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993, 179-193. "Mafarka and Son: Marinetti's Homophobic Economics." Modernism/Modernity 1: 3 (1994) 89-107. "Fascist Women and the Rhetoric of Virility." In Mothers of Invention: Critical Studies on Women in Italian Culture and Society during Fascism. Ed. RobinPickering-Iazzi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995, 100-120. "Recycling Baudelaire: The Decadence of Catulle Mendès." In The Decadent Reader. Ed. Asti Hustvedt. New York: Zone Press, 1998. "Interversions." In Perennial Decay: The Aesthetics and Politics of Decadence. Ed.Elizabeth Constable, Dennis Dennisoff, and Matthew Potolsky. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998, 35-49. "Monstrous Knowledge." In Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination. Ed. Keala J. Jewell. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001, 297-310. “Fascist Puerility.” In Qui Parle 13: 1 (2001), 13-28. "Shopping for Autarchy: Fascism and Reproductive Fantasy in Mario Camerini's Grandi magazzini." In Reviewing Fascism: Italian Cinema 1922-1943. Ed. Jacqueline Reich and Piero Garofalo. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UniversityPress, 2002, 276-292. "On ‘Cultural Studies’: A Response to Remo Ceserani, Italica 81:3 (Autumn 2004) 421-24. “D’Annunzio e la scena della convalescenza.” In Maschilita' decadenti. Ed. Marco Pustianaz and Luisa Villa. Bergamo, Italy: Bergamo University Press, 2004, 139-158. “Detourism: Orienting Italy in Amalia Nizzoli’s Memorie sull’Egitto.” The Italianist 25 (2005) 35-54. “Calvino’s Non-Knowledge.” Romance Studies 26: 1(January 2008) 7-19. “Hygiene in the Harem: The Orientalism of Cristina di Belgioioso.” MLN Italian Issue 124: 1 (January 2009) 158-176. “Puntini, Puntini, Puntini: Motherliness as Masquerade in Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna.” MLN Comparative Literature Issue Supplement: Special Issue in Honor of John Freccero 124.5 (December 2009) S210-S223. “Machiavelli and Gender.” In The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli. Ed. John Najemy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 223-238. “Oltre la nazione, dopo il genere?” In Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana: Percorsi critici e gender studies. Ed. Virginia Cox and Chiara Ferrari. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012, 193-209. "Touching the Future: Marinetti’s Haptic Aesthetic.” In Beyond Futurism. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Writer. For the Centennial Anniversary of the Italian Avant-Garde. Ed. Gino Tellini and Paolo Valesio. Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2011, 159-171. “Italiani DOC? Passing and Posing from Giovanni Finati to Amara Lakhous.” California Italian Studies Journal, 2(1). ismrg_cisj_8973, 2011. Reprinted in slightly revised form in Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity. Ed. Caterina Romeo and Cristina Lombardi-Diop. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 125-133; Reprinted and translated in L’Italia postcoloniale, ed. Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo. Florence: Le Monnier, 2014, 107-117. “Muslim in Milan: The Orientalism of Leda Rafanelli.” In Orientalismi italiani. Ed.Gabriele Proglio. Alba, Italy: Antares, 2012, 74-89.
Courses:
Please note that these are courses in the Department of Comparative Literature and do not include those in other departments.
223 (Sp08), 200 (Sp10), 190 (F11), 190 (Sp12), 225 (Sp14), 100 (Sp16), 254 (Sp20).
Books:
