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Dr. Serena Vandi

Assistant Professor (Italian)
      
Profile Photo

Dr. Serena Vandi

Assistant Professor (Italian)

 vandis@tcd.ie

 


Serena Vandi is Assistant Professor in Italian. She graduated at the University of Bologna, as a student of the Collegio Superiore (BA and MA), and she obtained her PhD in Italian from the University of Leeds (2019). Before joining Trinity in 2024, she was LAHRI Short-Term Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds (2019), Powys Roberts Research Fellow in European Literature at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford (2019-2023), and Lecturer in Italian Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester (2023-2024). She is Honorary Faculty Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford.
Language Skill Reading Skill Writing Skill Speaking
English Fluent Fluent Fluent
French Medium Medium Medium
Italian Fluent Fluent Fluent
Details Date From Date To
Society for Italian Studies in the UK and Ireland 2017 Present
Luca Mazzocchi, Serena Vandi (eds.), Gadda Transmissions: Carlo Emilio Gadda Across Boundaries, Languages, and Systems, Oxford, Legenda, 2025, Book, IN_PRESS
Valentina Mele, Serena Vandi, "Mistakenly passed for a man's work". Edith Mary Shaw's unrecognized translation of the Commedia in English, Forum on Women Dante Scholars, Dante Studies, ed. by Gaia Tomazzoli, 2025, Journal Article, APPROVED
Serena Vandi, Review of In balìa di Dante e Pinocchio. Il viaggio di Pinocchio nell'aldilà dantesco, by Stefano Jossa, Luciano Curreri, Bettino D'Aloja , Italian Studies, 2, (79), 2024, p233-234 , Review, PUBLISHED
La "salamoia gravitazionale". Cronotopo e confini del testo in Gadda in, editor(s)Valentino Baldi, Cristina Savettieri , Carlo Emilio Gadda. Un seminario, Milan-Udine, Mimesis, 2023, pp101 - 132, [Serena Vandi], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
«L'ombra sua torna»: Dante, il Novecento e oltre, Special Issue of "Tenzone", 22, (2023), Carlota Cattermole Ordóñez, Maddalena Moretti, and Serena Vandi, Journal, PUBLISHED
Cinquant'anni dalla morte Carlo Emilio Gadda (1973-2023) Gadda Transmissions, Special Issue of "Strumenti critici", 163, (2023), Luca Mazzocchi, Serena Vandi, Journal, PUBLISHED
Serena Vandi, Doppia ecolalia. Sulla satira di Eros e Priapo, Cinquant'anni dalla morte Carlo Emilio Gadda (1973-2023) Gadda Transmissions, Special Issue of "Strumenti critici", 2023, p595 - 617, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Serena Vandi, Review of Gadda. Interpreti a confronto, by Federica G. Pedriali (ed.) , Italianistica, (1), 2023, p113-115 , Review, PUBLISHED
Cetriolo-Inghilterra deve scontare i suoi delitti, Eleganza-flanella, Felicità-facilità, Pastrufazianamente, Patateria, Ramarro-folgore, Salamoia, Paola Italia, Gaddabolario. Duecentodiciannove parole dell'Ingegnere, Rome, Carocci, 2022, [Serena Vandi], Item in dictionary or encyclopaedia, etc, PUBLISHED
Serena Vandi, Review of Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy, by Julia Caterina Hartley , Italian Studies, (2), 2022, p202-203 , Review, PUBLISHED
  

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Award Date
Honorary Faculty Research Fellowship, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford 2023
Powys Roberts Research Fellowship in European Literature 2019
Short-Term Postdoctoral Fellowship, Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds 2019
AHC Faculty Interdisciplinary Research Support Awards, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures, University of Leeds 2018
University of Leeds 110 Anniversary Research Scholarship 2015
Collegio Superiore of the University of Bologna Scholarship 2008
Dr Vandi specialises in the study of Dante Alighieri, the contemporary reception of Dante, the twentieth-century Italian writer Carlo Emilio Gadda, and satire. She also has strong research interests in 20th- and 21st-century Italian and comparative literature and culture, stylistics and rhetoric, reception studies, humour studies, and media studies. Dr Vandi's first monograph, "Satura. Varietà per verità in Dante and Gadda"['Satura. Truth through Variety in Dante and Gadda'] (Milan-Udine: Mimesis, 2021), is the first comparative study on Dante and Gadda. It proposes a new critical category, satura, to investigate and connect the two authors' works. The original name of satire is used to extend beyond that genre two of its key aspects (variety of form and content and a mission to unveil the truth) and to identify them and their relation as fundamental structures in the works of Dante and Gadda. Whilst coming to a thorough reassessment of the traditional way of interpreting the relationship between these two cornerstones of Italian literature, Satura offers a reflection on broader matters in literary criticism, and in particular on the relationship between the formal structure of the text and its ethical-gnoseological potentiality. Her second monograph project, "'Eros and Priapus': Gadda, Fascism, and Truth", aims to reassess Gadda's controversial relationship with fascism, to investigate his use of satire and his related commitment to truth, and to place this discourse for the first time within an international context. After the 2016 publication of the original uncensored manuscript (1944-45) of Gadda's "Eros e Priapo", a psychoanalytical/political/historical/satirical treatise-invective, a comparison with its first edition (1967) allows for a new understanding of this uniquely complex text, by also considering it as a case study of the multiple duplicities which characterise the satiric genre and its truth claims. Dr Vandi is also currently developing a project entitled "Naked and Layered. Satire, Truth, and Power": an intermedial, comparative, and interdisciplinary investigation of satire's potential to shape human thinking, change human behaviour, and create community and/or barriers. The focus of the project is on the the intrinsic double nature of satire and on the ways in which these duplicities connect with the issue of unveiling the truth. "Naked and Layered" starts by considering Italy as a case study, acknowledging the centrality of the Italian peninsula for the development of this ubiquitous 'non-genre': from Latin fescennini and satura, Juvenal, and then Dante, Ariosto, up to Gadda, Flaiano, Fo, and political satire from 1994 to the present day, spanning from literature to theatre, cinema, TV, and social media.