bellocchio

bellocchio@arizona.edu
Office
572 Modern Languages
Office Hours
Tues 11am-12pm or by appointment
https://arizona.zoom.us/j/3871331723
Bellocchio, Maria Letizia
Associate Professor of Practice

Maria Letizia Bellocchio - Director of Basic Language, Italian

Ph.D. University of Siena (2007) and Ph.D. Rutgers University (2014). Laurea in English Theatre at the University of Milan (2001). Dr. Bellocchio arrived at the University of Arizona in 2016, after being Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University. Her Italian Ph.D. dissertation examined the Shakespearean influences on the theatre (prose and opera) and cinema of Luchino Visconti. Her US research focused on the history of Italian cinema by concentrating on its depictions of the family, civil society and law. Her current book explores the tension between tradition and innovation in the filmic construction of the politics, practices and symbolic values of the Italian family. Her areas of expertise include Film Studies, 19-20-21 century Italian Literature and Theatre, Intermediality, Italian Family Law.

 

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

Italian Business. Money and Culture in Post-War Italy. Special Issue of Italian Quarterly. Letizia Bellocchio and Francesca Cadel eds. (2017).

 

Finestre, Atti della Scuola Europea di Studi Comparati Synapsis 2004. Letizia Bellocchio ed. Firenze: Le Monnier 2006.

 

PEER-REFEREED ARTICLES & CHAPTERS IN SCHOLARLY BOOKS

“Gli imprenditori italiani in Visconti, Rosi, Moretti, Francesca Comencini, e Molaioli.” Italian Quarterly – Special Issue: Italian Business. Money and Culture in Post-War Italy. Letizia Bellocchio and Francesca Cadel eds. (2017): 17-32.

 

“Francesca Comencini’s Single Moms and Family Law.” Italian Motherhood on Screen. Giovanna Faleschini and Maria Elena Damelio eds. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2017. 157-174.

 

“Dreams, Nightmares and Hallucinations in Francesca Comencini’s Films.” Dreamscapes in Italian Cinema. Francesco Pascuzzi and Bryan Cracchiolo eds. FDU Press. 2014. 147-158.

 

“Difficult Years for Anni difficili by Luigi Zampa (1948).” NeMLA Italian Studies – Volume XXXIV (2014) – Special Issue: Italy in WWII and the Transition to Democracy: Memories, Fictions, Histories. Franco Baldasso ed. 155-171.

 

“Otello di Visconti. Un viaggio a ritroso da Verdi a Shakespeare a Giraldi Cinzio.” Atti del Convegno La macchina e le Muse. Luchino Visconti, le arti, la storia. Federica Mazzocchi ed. Bari: Edizioni di Pagina 2008. 69-89.

 

“Il Medioevo nei Macbeth cinematografici (Welles, Kurosawa, Polanski, Visconti).” Doctor Virtualis. (December 2006): 9-22.

 

“Identificazione e straniamento in Ossessione e La terra trema.” Letizia Bellocchio, Mauro Giori, Tomaso Subini. Guarda bene, fratellino, guarda bene. Kubrick, Pasolini, Visconti. Milano: CUEM 2005. 53-67.

 

“Ossessione. Il primo film.” Luchino Visconti. Raffaele De Berti ed. Milano: CUEM 2005. 7-28.

 

“Il montaggio intellettuale.” Letizia Bellocchio and Sara Criscuolo. Il montaggio non indifferente. Il problema della forma nel cinema di S. M. Ejzenštejn. Milano: CUEM 2003. 7-28.

 

“Il montaggio nel cinema sonoro.” Letizia Bellocchio and Sara Criscuolo. Il montaggio non indifferente. Il problema della forma nel cinema di S. M. Ejzenštejn. Milano: CUEM 2003. 75-92.

 

BOOK REVIEWS

“Il cinema di Marco Tullio Giordana: interventi critici.” Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies vol. 5 n. 3 (2017): 416-8 .

 

WORKS IN PROGRESS

Kinship and Family Law in Italian Film (monograph)

Visconti and Shakespeare. Cinema and Theatre (monograph)

“Cinema and The Italian Family Law since 1960.” The Interplay of Law and Literature in the Italian Tradition. Bernardo Piciché ed. Forum Italicum Special Volume 2019.

Currently Teaching

ITAL 230 – Introduction to Italian Culture

This gateway course introduces students to Italian thought and culture through multiple perspectives and disciplines including history, philosophy. literary traditions and cultures, arts and architecture, film, cultural studies and geography. By the end of the course, students will have acquired a broad historical understanding of Italian culture and a deeper sense of the interdisciplinary perspectives that contribute meaning to individual and collective Italian identities. Taught in English.

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This gateway course introduces students to Italian thought and culture through multiple perspectives and disciplines including history, philosophy. literary traditions and cultures, arts and architecture, film, cultural studies and geography. By the end of the course, students will have acquired a broad historical understanding of Italian culture and a deeper sense of the interdisciplinary perspectives that contribute meaning to individual and collective Italian identities. Taught in English.

View Section Details

This gateway course introduces students to Italian thought and culture through multiple perspectives and disciplines including history, philosophy. literary traditions and cultures, arts and architecture, film, cultural studies and geography. By the end of the course, students will have acquired a broad historical understanding of Italian culture and a deeper sense of the interdisciplinary perspectives that contribute meaning to individual and collective Italian identities. Taught in English.

View Section Details

This gateway course introduces students to Italian thought and culture through multiple perspectives and disciplines including history, philosophy. literary traditions and cultures, arts and architecture, film, cultural studies and geography. By the end of the course, students will have acquired a broad historical understanding of Italian culture and a deeper sense of the interdisciplinary perspectives that contribute meaning to individual and collective Italian identities. Taught in English.

View Section Details

This gateway course introduces students to Italian thought and culture through multiple perspectives and disciplines including history, philosophy. literary traditions and cultures, arts and architecture, film, cultural studies and geography. By the end of the course, students will have acquired a broad historical understanding of Italian culture and a deeper sense of the interdisciplinary perspectives that contribute meaning to individual and collective Italian identities. Taught in English.

View Section Details

This gateway course introduces students to Italian thought and culture through multiple perspectives and disciplines including history, philosophy. literary traditions and cultures, arts and architecture, film, cultural studies and geography. By the end of the course, students will have acquired a broad historical understanding of Italian culture and a deeper sense of the interdisciplinary perspectives that contribute meaning to individual and collective Italian identities. Taught in English.

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ITAL 240 – Italian Folklore and Popular Culture

Through multiple interdisciplinary approaches, this course focuses on the dynamics between Italian folklore, or materials that are produced outside of the authoritative and sanctioned Culture, and their depictions in 20th-21st-century popular culture. It will explore the oral narratives (fairy tales, legends, saints' legends) and customary crafts of ordinary Italians and Italian Americans, their variations through the transmission process and their depictions in contemporary media. To better understand folkloristics materials, we will situate them in their cultural contexts: specifically, the culture of the historical Italian peasantry and working-class people as well their geographical placements (North, South, and the implications thereof).

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Through multiple interdisciplinary approaches, this course focuses on the dynamics between Italian folklore, or materials that are produced outside of the authoritative and sanctioned Culture, and their depictions in 20th-21st-century popular culture. It will explore the oral narratives (fairy tales, legends, saints' legends) and customary crafts of ordinary Italians and Italian Americans, their variations through the transmission process and their depictions in contemporary media. To better understand folkloristics materials, we will situate them in their cultural contexts: specifically, the culture of the historical Italian peasantry and working-class people as well their geographical placements (North, South, and the implications thereof).

View Section Details

Through multiple interdisciplinary approaches, this course focuses on the dynamics between Italian folklore, or materials that are produced outside of the authoritative and sanctioned Culture, and their depictions in 20th-21st-century popular culture. It will explore the oral narratives (fairy tales, legends, saints' legends) and customary crafts of ordinary Italians and Italian Americans, their variations through the transmission process and their depictions in contemporary media. To better understand folkloristics materials, we will situate them in their cultural contexts: specifically, the culture of the historical Italian peasantry and working-class people as well their geographical placements (North, South, and the implications thereof).

View Section Details

Through multiple interdisciplinary approaches, this course focuses on the dynamics between Italian folklore, or materials that are produced outside of the authoritative and sanctioned Culture, and their depictions in 20th-21st-century popular culture. It will explore the oral narratives (fairy tales, legends, saints' legends) and customary crafts of ordinary Italians and Italian Americans, their variations through the transmission process and their depictions in contemporary media. To better understand folkloristics materials, we will situate them in their cultural contexts: specifically, the culture of the historical Italian peasantry and working-class people as well their geographical placements (North, South, and the implications thereof).

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ITAL 433 – Italian Business

Italian Business is an advanced seminar in Italian language and general business culture for 400-level students. It will be structured in weekly modules in which students explore both cultural and practical aspects of the Italian economy within the European Union. For example, they will investigate how traditions and customs affect the country's economy and will learn commercial terminology and business practices. Moreover, the seminar will include Italian films dealing with the world of business. These films aim to familiarize students not only with business situations but also with pivotal moments in Italian economic history such as the economic boom, the Mattei case, and the Parmalat scandal.

The seminar will provide an introduction to Italian economy from the 1950s to the present, focusing on key factors in the transition from an agricultural-based economy to a leading country in world trade and exports ('Made in Italy' brand, vehicles, clothing, furniture, food, wine, etc.). The seminar will also focus on the acquisition and reinforcement of the essential, practical content, vocabulary and style of every-day business situations and transactions. Each module will offer a specific business situation in which students in pairs or small groups introduce themselves in a business meeting, make travel arrangements, write their resume and cover letter, prepare for a job interview, create a business plan and launch a new product. Finally, while students will be familiarizing themselves with the language and the practices of Italian business, they will also review contextually-relevant, advanced grammatical structures in writing and speaking.

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ITAL 498H – Honors Thesis

An honors thesis is required of all the students graduating with honors. Students ordinarily sign up for this course for two sequential semesters. The first semester the student performs research under the supervision of a faculty member; the second semester the student writes an honors thesis.

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An honors thesis is required of all the students graduating with honors. Students ordinarily sign up for this course for two sequential semesters. The first semester the student performs research under the supervision of a faculty member; the second semester the student writes an honors thesis.

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ITAL 301 – Advanced Italian Conversation through Media

Course emphasizes advanced speaking and listening skills in Italian by analyzing different media.

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To view full listing of courses offered, please visit our Course Schedule.

Course Schedule