bellocchio

bellocchio@arizona.edu
Office
572 Modern Languages
Office Hours
Mon 9-10am & 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 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).

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ITAL 250C – Intermediality: Italian Theatre, Opera, and Film

How did the Italian historical context and theatrical spaces impact the creation and reception of theatrical texts? How did these texts shape the context of the Italian society? What is intermediality? How do media re-narrate, re-interpret, and adapt literary texts? How do media cross linguistic, space/time, and cultural borders? What gets lost in the translation of texts across different media? What is produced instead? These are some of the questions we will explore to improve our understanding of intermediality, or the relations among different media (theatre, opera, film), using the humanist's tools and methodologies (historical and social contextualization, close reading, critical analysis, scholars' production).We will engage with the history of Italian theater from 16thto 20thcentury, contextualizing, reading, and analyzing plays and libretti by Machiavelli, Da Ponte, Goldoni, Mascagni, Pirandello, Fo, and Ginzburg. We will combine a traditional approach to canonical texts of the Italian theatrical tradition with an interdisciplinary methodology that compares literary and visual texts.

View Section Details

How did the Italian historical context and theatrical spaces impact the creation and reception of theatrical texts? How did these texts shape the context of the Italian society? What is intermediality? How do media re-narrate, re-interpret, and adapt literary texts? How do media cross linguistic, space/time, and cultural borders? What gets lost in the translation of texts across different media? What is produced instead? These are some of the questions we will explore to improve our understanding of intermediality, or the relations among different media (theatre, opera, film), using the humanist's tools and methodologies (historical and social contextualization, close reading, critical analysis, scholars' production).We will engage with the history of Italian theater from 16thto 20thcentury, contextualizing, reading, and analyzing plays and libretti by Machiavelli, Da Ponte, Goldoni, Mascagni, Pirandello, Fo, and Ginzburg. We will combine a traditional approach to canonical texts of the Italian theatrical tradition with an interdisciplinary methodology that compares literary and visual texts.

View Section Details

How did the Italian historical context and theatrical spaces impact the creation and reception of theatrical texts? How did these texts shape the context of the Italian society? What is intermediality? How do media re-narrate, re-interpret, and adapt literary texts? How do media cross linguistic, space/time, and cultural borders? What gets lost in the translation of texts across different media? What is produced instead? These are some of the questions we will explore to improve our understanding of intermediality, or the relations among different media (theatre, opera, film), using the humanist's tools and methodologies (historical and social contextualization, close reading, critical analysis, scholars' production).We will engage with the history of Italian theater from 16thto 20thcentury, contextualizing, reading, and analyzing plays and libretti by Machiavelli, Da Ponte, Goldoni, Mascagni, Pirandello, Fo, and Ginzburg. We will combine a traditional approach to canonical texts of the Italian theatrical tradition with an interdisciplinary methodology that compares literary and visual texts.

View Section Details

How did the Italian historical context and theatrical spaces impact the creation and reception of theatrical texts? How did these texts shape the context of the Italian society? What is intermediality? How do media re-narrate, re-interpret, and adapt literary texts? How do media cross linguistic, space/time, and cultural borders? What gets lost in the translation of texts across different media? What is produced instead? These are some of the questions we will explore to improve our understanding of intermediality, or the relations among different media (theatre, opera, film), using the humanist's tools and methodologies (historical and social contextualization, close reading, critical analysis, scholars' production).We will engage with the history of Italian theater from 16thto 20thcentury, contextualizing, reading, and analyzing plays and libretti by Machiavelli, Da Ponte, Goldoni, Mascagni, Pirandello, Fo, and Ginzburg. We will combine a traditional approach to canonical texts of the Italian theatrical tradition with an interdisciplinary methodology that compares literary and visual texts.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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ITAL 160D1 – Food for Thought in Italian Culture

Food has always been an important thread woven through the fabric of Italian culture. Italian cuisine, as diverse and heterogeneous as it is inside the country from North to South, largely contributed to the building of a strong Italian identity, as testified in recent times by the worldwide success of large-scale marketplaces such as Eataly. This course will investigate food's role in shaping Italian society and its cultural practices by looking at images of food in visual art, literature and film. Our historical review will focus on the many symbolic meanings circulating around the representation of food in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and the 20th and 21st centuries. Food will be a lens through which we will read the political, social, and economic changes that have affected Italy in its millennial history.

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Food has always been an important thread woven through the fabric of Italian culture. Italian cuisine, as diverse and heterogeneous as it is inside the country from North to South, largely contributed to the building of a strong Italian identity, as testified in recent times by the worldwide success of large-scale marketplaces such as Eataly. This course will investigate food's role in shaping Italian society and its cultural practices by looking at images of food in visual art, literature and film. Our historical review will focus on the many symbolic meanings circulating around the representation of food in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and the 20th and 21st centuries. Food will be a lens through which we will read the political, social, and economic changes that have affected Italy in its millennial history.

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

Course Schedule