Silvia Valisa is Associate Professor of Italian Studies. She holds a laurea in lettere moderne from the Università di Pavia, Italy, a D.E.A in French literature from the Sorbonne Nouvelle, France, and a Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2007). She was a post-doctoral scholar at Brown University, RI (Cogut Center for the Humanities, 2009) and has held a research fellowship from the Newberry Library, Chicago (2017).  She is currently part of the inaugural class of faculty fellows of FSU’s Demos Institute for Humanities Data, 2019-2020.

Research Interests

History of Text Technologies - History of Print

Digital Humanities

Gender Theory, Gender Studies in Italy

Visual Studies - Photography and Cinema

History and Theory of the Novel

Courses Taught

"Gender in Italian Literature" - in Italian (ITA4930-ITA5900)

"Masterpieces of Italian Literature: from Dante to Primo Levi" - in English (ITT3430)

"Culture fasciste" in Italian (ITW4480-5485)

"People or Not - How to Read a Book with Character(s)" - in Italian (ITW4440-ITW5445)

"Italiani, italiane. The Making of a Nation, the Making of Identity" - in Italian (ITA4500-5505)

Digital Projects

• Sonzogno Digital Catalog: 1885 Sample. FSU School of Information-Omeka, 2013 (in collaboration with Sanghee Oh and Wonchan Choi).
• Digitization of Italian Newspaper Il secolo. Florida State University Libraries, directed by Silvia Valisa.

Selected Publications

Books

Her first book, Gender, Narrative and, Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel, was published in 2014 by the University of Toronto Press.

Currently working on her second book project, Sonzogno and the Making of Modern Italian Print Culture, 1804-1939.

Currently co-editing (with Morena Corradi, CUNY Queens) a volume on 19th-century journalism, entitled Notizie, novelle e note. Figure e temi del giornalismo italiano dell’Ottocento (publisher FrancoAngeli).

Selected Refereed Articles and Book Chapters

• "Cosa scrivevano le donne di fine Ottocento? Il contributo italiano alla Woman' Building Library della World Fair di Chicago (1893)."G/S/I Gender Sexuality Italy 5 (2018)
• "Corpo and Corpus: Paranoid and Reparative Writing in Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna andIl passaggio."Italian Culture, 36:1 (2017). 18-31.
• "Sulla preparazione di un campione di catalogo digitale aumentato delle edizioni Sonzogno: Sample 1885 - Campione 1885." La fabbrica del libro. Bollettino di storia dell'editoria in Italia. XX: 1. (2014).
• "An Imaged Life: Wanda Wulz and the Familiar Archive." In Rossella Riccobono (Ed.), A 'Window' on the Female Modernist 'I': from Neera to Elsa Morante. (2013). 45-77.
• "Casa editrice Sonzogno: Mediazione culturale, circuiti del sapere ed innovazione tecnologica nell'Italia unificata." In Gabriella Romani, & Ann H. Caesar (Eds.), Technology and the Printed Media in Italy between 1870 and 1914. (2011) 90-106.
• "Still Figures: Neera's Fotografie matrimoniali and The Epistemology of Photography." The Italianist -supplement on"Rethinking Neera", 30 (2010). 26-49.
• "Corpi estranei and Moving Stereotypes: Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Trauma of the Other in L'odore dell'India." MLN. Modern Language Notes - Italian Issue, 124:1 (2009). 269-292.
• "Gendered Quests: Analysis, Revelation and the Epistemology of Gender in Neera's Teresa, Lydia and L'indomani." The Italianist, 28:i, 92-112.
• "Making News: the Sonzogno Affair (1875) and the Print Networks in Liberal Italy." California Italian Studies 8:2 (2019).