Laura Chiesa

Assistant Professor
Office: 927 Clemens Hall
Phone: (716) 645-0872
Email: lchiesa@buffalo.edu
Website: Personal site

Degrees

• Ph.D., Comparative Literature, UCLA
• D.E.A, Philosophy, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris)
• Laurea, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università di Pisa

Areas of Specialization

• Modern and Contemporary Italian Studies
• Critical Theory
• Architecture, Film and Visual Arts

Selected publications

• "Superstudio Double-Take: Rescue Operations in the Realms of Architecture," Neoavanguardia. Italian Experimental Literature and Arts in The 1960s, edited by Paolo Chirumbolo, Mario Moroni and Luca Somigli, U. of Toronto Press, 2010, p. 283-319.
• Formules 14:Forme urbaines de la création contemporaine, co-edited with Jan Baetens and Bernardo Schiavetta, Vol. 14, Association Reflet de Lettres, June 2010.
• "Transnational Multimedia: Fortunato Depero's Impressions of New York City (1928-1930)," CIS, California Italian Studies, edited by Claudio Fogu and Lucia Re, 2010, (48 ms. pages).
• "Italo Calvino and Georges Perec: the Multiple and Contrasting Emotions of Cities and Puzzles," special issue of Romanic Review "Italy and France: Imagined Geographies," edited by Laura Wittman, Vol. 97, issue 3/4 (May-Nov. 2006), p. 401-421.

Web projects

• Avventura, a web-based multimedia companion for first-, second-, third-year students of Italian language and culture.

Current Research Projects

• Adapting dissertation manuscript Space as Storyteller into a book on the new and critical notion of space that develops in the 20th century at the intersection of architectural experimentation, literary theory and the practice of writing
• A book project tentatively titled Almost Abstract: Italian Multimedia Experimentations which focuses on the Italian mediascape in literature, film, and visual arts from the '30s to today

Awards

• Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America Fellowship, Columbia University
• Dissertation Fellowship, UCLA
• Pre-doctoral Fellowship, Northwestern University
• "Paris Program in Critical Theory" Fellowship, UCLA
• Fulbright Fellowship

Frequently Taught Courses

• ITA151: Intermediate Italian
• ITA321. Italian Conversation and Civilization
• ITA322. Italian Cinematic Histories and Poetics
• ITA405. Introduction to Italian Contemporary Studies
• ITA410. Modern Italian Studies: Italian Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde
• ITA422. Modern Italian Landscapes: Literature and Cinema
• ITA422. Modern Italian Studies: Reconsidering the Canon from Women Perspectives from the 19th to 21st Century
• ITA534/FRE680/HMN509 Italian and French Spatial Modernities