Giuseppe Gazzola
BA, Università di Genova
MA, University of Notre Dame
Ph.D, Yale University
Associate Professor
Former Fellow, Humanities Institute at Stony Brook (2015)
Office: 2123 Humanities Building
Email: giuseppe.gazzola@stonybrook.edu
Academia: https://sbsuny.academia.edu/GiuseppeGazzola
Giuseppe Gazzola is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Stony Brook University, where he serves
as Graduate Program Director in the Department of Languages and Cultural Studies.
He is also Executive Editor of Forum Italicum
and affiliated faculty in the Department of English. From 2019 to 2022, he was Interim
Director of the Center for Italian Studies.
- Research Interest
Research Interest
His research explores European literature and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to Italian modernism, transnational reception, and the intersections of literature, politics, and the arts. He is the author of Montale, the Modernist (Olschki, 2016), which re-situates Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale within Anglo-American modernism, and editor of Versi e Prose: Marinetti traduce Mallarmé (Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2018). His critical edition of G.A. Borgese’s previously unpublished drama La fuga in Egitto appeared with Palermo University Press in 2025. Earlier editorial projects include Italy from Without (2013), Futurismo: Impact and Legacy (2011), and Ugo Foscolo: Essays über Petrarca (2006).
Recent articles and book chapters extend from Montale’s postmodern legacy to Italian literary canon formation, the politics of exile, and the afterlives of cultural figures from Dante to Marco Polo. His essay “G.A. Borgese, dantista antifascista” (2024) and earlier contributions such as “European Man and Writer: Romanticism, the Classics, and Political Action in the Exemplary Life of Ugo Foscolo” (Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism, 2015) exemplify a dual focus on textual interpretation and cultural history.
Current projects include a short monograph, You Can’t Fool the Youth: Cultural and Political Appropriations of the Afterlives of Marco Polo and Cristoforo Colombo (in progress, expected 2025), a book on Genoa in the Grand Tour (with University of Genoa Press), and new studies on Pirandello, Alda Merini, and Borgese.
Professor Gazzola has been invited to lecture internationally at universities in Europe, Asia, and the United States, and his outreach includes frequent talks on Italian literature and cinema for community organizations, cultural centers, and media outlets. He is the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service (2023), an AI Innovation Institute Seed Grant (2024), and multiple fellowships and research awards.
A complete list of publications, courses, and activities can be found in his CV.
- Projects
Projects
- Publications
Publications
- Courses
Courses
SBU 102.144 (GLS 102) This course contains graphic language: Semiotics and comics.Do we read comics, or do we watch them? How does the grammar of comics function? What is semiotics and what does it have to do with comics? How does this mode of simultaneous seeing and reading complicate conventional approaches to a text? We will be talking about narratives and the visual arts, using the form of comics as a pretext, and a text, to speak about the semiotic function. As a SBU 102 course, this class will focus on learning how to read a text.
1 credit, Letter Grading
HUI 231: Italian Cinema
The cinematic representation of gender, class, and sexual politics in post-World War II Italian films and the relationship of these themes to Italian history, society, and culture are discussed. Films by directors such as Bertolucci, Fellini, and Wertmuller are studied. Readings include selected works of film history, criticism, and theory.
3 credits
HUI 331: Lessons on Love from the Italian Lyric Tradition
3 credits
ITL 313: History of Italian Food
3 credits
ITL 441/552: The Roaring Twenties
3 credits
- Books
Books
- Gallery
Gallery
Chancellor's Award