Scientific Board

Mattia Arioli  (Co-Coordinator of the Permanent Seminar on Comics) is a research fellow at the University of Bologna. He holds a PhD degree in Modern Languages, Literatures, and Culture from the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna; his doctoral project focused on the remembrance of the Vietnam War in graphic narratives. He presented a paper on “Deconstructing Vietnam War Memories in Graphic Form” at the 8th Congress of the European Society of Comparative Literature (ESCL), Lille 2019, and on “Framing a Shot: Towards an Ethical Remembrance of the Vietnam War” at the COMICS/POLITICS 2nd Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society, Toronto 2019.

Jan Baetens is professor of Cultural Studies at the Research Unit of Literary Studies, where he mainly teaches word and image studies from an interdisciplinary point of view (semiotics, history, cultural analysis). He has coordinated various collective research programs and is member of the directive board of the PhD program in comparative studies of the University of Lisbon. Since many years he also teaches as a guest professor at various programs organized by the Nar-Trans group of the University of Granada.

In his work, he specializes on the analysis of so-called minor genres, such as comics and graphic novels, novelizations, and photonovels, all topics on which he has widely published. Some recent publications are The Graphic Novel (New York : Cambridge UP, 2014, coauthored with Hugo Frey), Novelization: From Film to Novel (transl. Mary Feeney, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2018), The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel (New York: Cambridge UP, 2018, coedited with Hugo Frey and Stephen E. Tabachnick), The Film Photonovel. A Cultural History of Forgotten Adaptations (Austin: Texas University Press, 2019) and  Rebuilding Storyworlds. On The Obscure Cities by Schuiten and Peeters, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020. 

He is also working in the field of poetry studies and French literary history, and some recent books are: Pour en finir avec la poésie dite minimaliste (Bruxelles : Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2014),  Correspondance. The Birth of Belgian Surrealism (New York : Lang, 2015, coauthored with Michael Kasper), À Voix haute. Poésie et lecture publique (Bruxelles : Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2016), and Comme un rat (Paris: L'Herbe qui tremble, 2020).

Next to his academic work, he is also active in the field of creative working, having published some twenty collections of poetry, a novel, a nonfiction comic book (coauthored with the visual artist Clémentine Mélois). He often collaborates with Milan Chlumsky (photographer) and Olivier Deprez (woodcut artist).

Daniele Barbieri, semiologist, works on comics and visual communication, but also on poetry and music. He teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, the ISIA in Urbino, the University of San Marino. He is among the leading scholars of comics in Italy.

Among his books: Valvoforme valvocolori (Idea Books 1990), I linguaggi del fumetto (Bompiani 1991), Questioni di ritmo. L’analisi tensiva dei testi televisivi (Eri/Rai 1996), Nel corso del testo. Una teoria della tensione e del ritmo (Bompiani 2004), Tensioni, interpretazione, protonarratività (edited by, monographic issue of VS, 98-99, 2004), Breve storia della letteratura a fumetti (Carocci 2009, new ed. 2014), Il pensiero disegnato. Saggi sulla letteratura a fumetti europea (Coniglio 2010), Guardare e leggere. La comunicazione visiva dalla pittura alla tipografia (Carocci 2011), Il linguaggio della poesia (Bompiani 2011), Maestri del fumetto (Tunuè 2012), Semiotica del fumetto (Carocci 2017), Letteratura a fumetti? Le impreviste avventure del racconto (ComicOut 2019), Testo e processo. Pratica di analisi e teoria di una semiotica processuale (Esculapio 2020).

Giorgio Busi Rizzi is BOF post-doctoral fellow at Ghent University, with a project investigating experimental digital comics. He holds a PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies with joint supervision from the Universities of Bologna and Leuven; the PhD project analysed nostalgic aesthetics and practices concerning contemporary graphic novels, and is currently being submitted for publication. He has published in scientific journals and edited volumes, and presented at numerous international conferences. He is a founding member of the international research group on Italian comics SNIF - Studying 'n' Investigating Fumetti, and a member of several international research groups on comics (CSS, ComFor, La Brèche, ACME).
He is interested in comics studies, narratology, digital humanities, humour theory and translation.

Enrico Fornaroli, pedagogist, works on comics, children literature and cultural studies.

He is Full Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and teaches at the University of Bologna. He collaborated with Walt Disney Company, Granata Press, Panini Comics, as editor of many collections like I Classici del Fumetto e I Classici del Fumetto – Serie Oro for “Repubblica”. Since 2006 he has been a consultant for the Natalino Sapegno Foundation, for which he curates several exhibitions on comics and the Mafrica Day “for popular literature”. He is a member of the “Technical table on Italian comics” established in 2020 by the Ministry of Culture.

Among his books and contributions relating to comics:

Milton Caniff – Un filmico pennello tra il nero e il merletto (1988), Desideri in forma di nuvole (1996), Eroi in quadricromia (1998), I volti e la maschera. Le incarnazioni a fumetti di Fantômas (2004), Magnus e l’Oriente (2007), Dino Battaglia, graphic storyteller (2008), Linee di fuga (2009) Comicswood. Cinema e fumetto da Tim Burton a Frank Miller (2009), Quando il racconto diventa immagine. Forme e modalità narrative nel fumetto dalle daily strips alla graphic novel (2013), Ragione, sentimento e passioni nel roman graphique contemporaneo (2014) and the preface to Mattotti - Kramsky, Labirinti (2021)

Professor Hugo Frey is a cultural and political historian whose research work focuses on twentieth century France and Francophone Europe with special emphasis on the politics of visual culture. He has published over 40 substantial outputs in this field including Louis Malle (Manchester University Press 2004); Nationalism and the Cinema in France (Berghahn Books 2014) and The Graphic Novel: An Introduction [co-author] (Cambridge University Press, 2015), .

In addition he has published journal articles with Journal of European Studies, South Central Review, Modern and Contemporary France and Yale French Studies, among others.

His writings on Pierre Benoit have featured with Nebraska University Press and in turn were translated and published in France in the Cahiers des Amis de Pierre Benoit.

Elena Lamberti teaches North American Literature and Media Studies at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bologna. Her areas of research include: Anglo-American Modernism, Literature and Technology, Cultural Memory, War Literature.

She has published books and essays on English and Anglo-American Modernism, as well as Anglo-American culture of the late 20th Century. Her volume Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic. Probing the Literary Origins  of Media Studies was a finalist for  the 2013 Canada Prizes and received the 2016 Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology.

She coordinated the EU/Canada Cultural Project: “PERFORMIGRATIONS: People Are the Territory” (www.performigrations.eu) investigating shifting ideas on/of ‘mobility’ (both cultural and technological).

Donata Meneghelli is Full  Professor at the University of Bologna, where she teaches Comparative Literatures and Literature and Visual Studies. Her interests focus on the theory and history of the novel, intermediality, narratology, literature and the visual arts, adaptation, fan fiction, fan vidding and remix culture. She is the co-director of «Scritture migranti». She wrote extensively on Henry James, Balzac, Joseph Conrad, Robbe-Grillet, William Faulkner, Sophie Calle, Jane Austen. Amongst her publications: Una forma che include tutto (1997), Teorie del punto di vista (1998), Storie proprio così. Il racconto nell’era della narratività totale (2012), Senza fine. Sequel, prequel, altre continuazioni: il testo espanso (2018).

Chiara Patrizi (Co-Coordinator of the Permanent Seminar on Comics) teaches Anglo-American Literature at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures – LILEC at the University of Bologna. She holds a PhD in American Literature from Roma Tre University, with a dissertation on the relation between the self and time in the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Don DeLillo, and an MA from Ca’ Foscari University Venice — her MA dissertation was awarded with a special mention at the Lombardo-Gullì Award 2015. Her areas of research include: Anglo-American Postmodernism, Contemporary US literature, Trauma Studies, studies on temporality, African-American Literature and Culture, Pop Culture.

She has published essays on various Italian and international journals — on Jesmyn Ward, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Don DeLillo, Langston Hughes, among the others, on the evolution of the notion of blackness, and on the relationship between trauma and temporality. She collaborates with the publisher D Editore as a literary translator.

Marco Petrelli is research fellow and adjunct professor of Anglo-American literature at the universities of Turin and Bologna.

He is the author of Nick Cave: Preghiere di fuoco e ballate assassine (Castel Negrino 2021), Paradiso in nero: Spazio e mito nella narrativa di Cormac McCarthy (Aracne 2020), and of several essays devoted to contemporary American literature that appeared in Italian and international journals. His research interests include the literature and culture of the Southern United States, the American Gothic, African-American literature, Geocriticism, and graphic narratives. He is a literary critic for the Italian newspaper «il manifesto».

Sara Pour is an illustrator, visual artist, and set designer. As an "artivist", she has led workshops and artistic projects with asylum seekers in Pozzallo, tomato pickers in the ghettos of Borgo Mezzanone, Afghan refugees in camps between Bosnia and Croatia, and undocumented migrants in Calais. As an illustrator, she has published some children books in Iran. She has designed the Bolognese “Vecchione” for two editions. She has designed and built installations in some European theaters (Calais, Brussels, Warsaw). As a set designer, she has overseen productions such as the Negro del Narciso by Joseph Conrad and Madame Rose by Romain Gary. She created board game images from literary works such as Karen Blixen's Anecdotes of Destiny.

Gino Scatasta (Coordinator of the Permanent Seminar on Comics) teaches English Literature and Media Cultures of Anglophone Countries at the University of Bologna. His most recent publication is Fitzrovia o la Bohème a Londra (2018), a work about the Bohemian London scene between 1850 and 1950. His areas of research include: comic books, paraliterature, Irish studies, Victorian literature and English literature of the 1970s. He translated, among others, works from W.B. Yeats, Max Beerbohm, I. Asimov, R. Coover, W. Stevens. He collaborated with Panini Comics, Comma 22, Phoenix, Coconino Press, as editor and he translated graphic novels by Moore, Talbot, Mazzucchelli. He is chairman of the Italian Oscar Wilde Society and coordinator, alongside Paola Scrolavezza, of the research group Power to the Pop at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures – LILEC at the University of Bologna.