Silvia Valisa

Silvia Valisa is Associate Professor of Italian Studies. She holds a laurea in lettere moderne from the Università di Pavia, Italy, a D.E.A in French literature from the Sorbonne Nouvelle, France, and a Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2007). She was a post-doctoral scholar at Brown University, RI (Cogut Center for the Humanities, 2009) and has held a research fellowship from the Newberry Library, Chicago (2017). In 2019-2020 she was part of the inaugural class of faculty fellows of FSU’s Demos Institute for Humanities Data at FSU.

Research Interests

History of Text Technologies - History of Print

Digital Humanities

Gender Theory, Gender Studies in Italy

Visual Studies - Photography and Cinema

Translation Theory and Practice

History and Theory of the Novel

Courses Taught

"Gender in Italian Literature" - in Italian (ITA4930-ITA5900)

"Masterpieces of Italian Literature: from Dante to Primo Levi" - in English (ITT3430)

"Culture fasciste" in Italian (ITW4480-5485)

"People or Not - How to Read a Book with Character(s)" - in Italian (ITW4440-ITW5445)

"Italiani, italiane. The Making of a Nation, the Making of Identity" - in Italian (ITA4500-5505)

Digital Projects

• Sonzogno Digital Catalog: 1885 Sample. FSU School of Information-Omeka, 2013 (in collaboration with Sanghee Oh and Wonchan Choi).
• Digitization of Italian Newspaper Il secolo. Florida State University Libraries, directed by Silvia Valisa.

Selected Publications

Books

Her first book, Gender, Narrative and, Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel (published in 2014 by the University of Toronto Press) offers a new analytical framework to understand how novels are built through gender, and how gender permeates the structures, not just the characters, of narrative. Single chapters focus on Alessandro Manzoni, Neera, Marchesa Colombi and Giovanni Verga, Paola Masino, and Elsa Morante’s works.

In 2021 she co-edited (with Morena Corradi, CUNY Queens) a volume on 19th-century journalism: La carta veloce. Figure, temi e politiche del giornalismo italiano dell’Ottocento (Milan, FrancoAngeli 2021). This collection features original contributions (Loredana Palma, Patrizia Landi, Massimo Castellozzi, Alessandra Palidda, Bianca Maria Antolini, Maurizio Punzo and Sara Boezio) on the rich landscape of periodicals and journalists that contributed to the Italian modernity (sample reviews in English and Italian).

In 2023 she published the Italian translation of Juan Carlos Galeano’s poems Amazzonia (Rome, Del Vecchio).

She is currently completing her second monograph, The Periodical Life of Modernity: Sonzogno’s (First) Century (1804-1909) devoted to Milan-based publisher Sonzogno, among the most important pioneer of periodical culture and print modernity in Italy.

Selected Refereed Articles and Book Chapters

• “What Did Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Women Write?: The Italian Contribution to the Woman’s Building Library of the World Fair in Chicago (1893)” Global Voices from the Women’s Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition: Feminisms, Transnationalism and the Archive. Marija Dalbello and Sarah Wadsworth Eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, 33-52.
• “Wanda Wulz.” A World History of Women Photographers, Luce Lebart, & Marie Robert (Eds.), Thames & Hudson 2022.
• “Les voyages les plus intéressants: La “Raccolta de’ viaggi” de Giambattista Sonzogno (Milan, 1815-1832).” Miriam Nicoli, Christine Rivalan-Guégo, Patricia Sorel and Francois Vallotton eds. Espaces, formes et métissages de la collection éditoriale (Europe/Amériques XIXe-XXIe siècles). Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2021. 231-245.
• “Il Secolo torna alla luce” (Pretext 12, April 2020, 114-116)
• "Corpo and Corpus: Paranoid and Reparative Writing in Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna andIl passaggio." Italian Culture, 36:1 (2017). 18-31.
• "Sulla preparazione di un campione di catalogo digitale aumentato delle edizioni Sonzogno: Sample 1885 - Campione 1885." La fabbrica del libro. Bollettino di storia dell'editoria in Italia. XX: 1. (2014).
• "An Imaged Life: Wanda Wulz and the Familiar Archive." In Rossella Riccobono (Ed.), A 'Window' on the Female Modernist 'I': from Neera to Elsa Morante. (2013). 45-77.
• "Casa editrice Sonzogno: Mediazione culturale, circuiti del sapere ed innovazione tecnologica nell'Italia unificata." In Gabriella Romani, & Ann H. Caesar (Eds.), Technology and the Printed Media in Italy between 1870 and 1914. (2011) 90-106.
• "Still Figures: Neera's Fotografie matrimoniali and The Epistemology of Photography." The Italianist -supplement on"Rethinking Neera", 30 (2010). 26-49.
• "Corpi estranei and Moving Stereotypes: Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Trauma of the Other in L'odore dell'India." MLN. Modern Language Notes - Italian Issue, 124:1 (2009). 269-292.
• "Gendered Quests: Analysis, Revelation and the Epistemology of Gender in Neera's Teresa, Lydia and L'indomani." The Italianist, 28:i, 92-112.
• "Making News: the Sonzogno Affair (1875) and the Print Networks in Liberal Italy." California Italian Studies 8:2 (2019).