Paola Bonifazio
Phone: +1 512 471 1561
Email: pbonifazio@austin.utexas.edu
I received my PhD in Italian Studies from New York University (2008) and my M.A. in Italian and Film Studies from the University of Pittsburgh (2003). In 2011-12, I was National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew Mellon Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. My research interests focus on Italian cinema, film theory and history, cultural studies, and gender studies. My book Schooling in Modernity: The Politics of Sponsored Films in Postwar Italy (University of Toronto Press, 2014) explores short film productions sponsored by state and non-state agencies to promote modernization and industry, and to govern the Italian peoples conduct. In my second book, The Photoromance: A Feminist Reading of Popular Culture (MIT Press, 2020), I examine the convergence culture of Italian media as photoromance magazines dispersed their content across multiple formats, narrative conventions, editorial and business strategies, and platforms. I am also one of the editors of the on-line open access peer review journal gender/sexuality/italy, which publishes research on gendered identities and the ways they intersect with and produce Italian politics, culture, and society by way of a variety of cultural productions, discourses, and practices spanning historical, social, and geopolitical boundaries.