Eugenia Paulicelli

Research Interests

Eugenia Paulicelli is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature and is a member of the faculty in the Certificate Program in Women's Studies at the Graduate Center. She is co-director of the interdisciplinary concentration in Fashion Studies at the Graduate Center. She holds a Laurea in Foreign Languages and Literatures, with a specialization in English and Literary Semiotics, awarded by the University of Bari, Italy; and a PhD in Italian, with a minor in French, awarded by the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The major areas of her research are in the fields of critical theory, Italian literature and cinema, fashion studies, women's studies and cultural history. In particular, she has studied the impact visual culture and new technologies have had on the word/image relationship and on perception and cognition of the world, on language, writing and memory. Gender and how it has transformed knowledge of the past and understanding of reality, whether literary writing or systems of signification such as fashion, is central to her research. These interests have taken to form of scholarly publications in various areas: the debate among the disciplines in Renaissance Italy: dress and identity vis-ą-vis social, political and geographical spaces; the study of Italian writers who were fascinated with or drew inspiration from art and visual culture; the cultural politics of fascism and the use it made of fashion, style and the media; fashion and its implications in the construction of national identity, as well as studies focusing on literature, history and the craft of writing. She is the originator and co-curator of the exhibition "The Fabric of Cultures. Fashion, Identity, Globalization" held at the Godwin-Turnbach museum at Queens College in the spring of 2006, Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco (spring 2008), and the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in Los Angeles (2010). She has lectured in US and Europe and has been Guest Professor at The University of Stockholm in the graduate program of "Fashion Studies."

Courses Taught

  • Writing Lives/Framing Life
  • The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, Globalization
  • Fashion, Power and Space
  • Codes and Code Breaking in Italian Renaissance Culture
  • Fashioning the Self in Social and Cultural Spaces
  • Technologies of the Self: Sexuality and Gender in Historical Perspective
  • Inventing Italy: Narratives of Nationhood, Identity, Otherness
  • Fashion Narratives. Gender, Hegemony and Identity
  • Fashion: Gender, Power, Consumerism
  • Other Voices: History and Ethics in Italian Literature
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    Select List of Publications (Recent and Forthcoming)

    Books

    Co-editor with Hazel Clark and author of introduction and one of the chapters for volume The Fabric of Cultures. Fashion, Identity, Globalization, London and New York: Routledge, 2008

    Book-length study provisionally entitled Fashioning the Self: Writing and Dress in Early Modern Italy (in progress)

    Editor of Moda e Moderno. Dal Medioevo al Rinascimento (Fashion and Modernity from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance), Rome: Meltemi, 2006

    Fashion under Fascism. Beyond the Black Shirt, Oxford & New York: Berg, 2004

    Parola e immagine. Sentieri della scrittura in Leonardo, Marino, Foscolo, Calvino, Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 1996

    Dimore (Poems), Ragusa: Libro Italiano, 1996

    Co-author with Augusto Ponzio and Maria-Grazia Tundo, Lo spreco dei significanti: L'Eros, la morte, la scrittura, Bari: Adriatica, 1983>

    Articles

    "Fashion & Futurism," in Annali d'Italianistica, 27, Federico Luisetti & Luca Somigli eds., special issue dedicated to Futurism (forthcoming, 2009)

    "Made in Italy, Italian Identity & Style in the US," in Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli & Giorgio Riello eds., Fashion & History (bilingual edition) Bologna: Il Mulino (forthcoming, 2010)

    "Branding Italian Fashion under Fascism," in Mario Lupano & Alessandra Vaccari, eds., Catalogue of the Exhibition to be held in Rome, July 2009 on Modernism & Fashion in the 1930s (forthcoming, 2009)

    "Notes from NYC: Fashion Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York," in the bilingual journal of the University of Bologna, Rimini Campus Zone/Moda (forthcoming, 2009)

    "Dal Boom alla rivolta: moda e cinema nei film di Michelangelo Antonioni (1960-1969)" in S. Casilio, L., Guerrieri, eds., Il '68 diffuso: Contestazione, Linguaggi e Memorie in movimento. Un approccio pluridisciplinare. Rome: Edizioni Associate (2009, forthcoming)

    "From the Sacred to the Secular: the Gendered Geography of Veils in Italian Cinquecento Fashion," in Bella Mirabella, ed., Accessorizing the Renaissance Body, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (forthcoming)

    "Rome goes Global: Italian Fashion and Cinema in the Boom Years," in Annali d'Italianistica, 28, C. Mazzoni, ed., special issue dedicated to Capital City: Rome 1870-201 (2010, forthcoming)

    "La poetica e politica dello spazio nella scrittura di Clara Sereni," in Athanor 11 (2008): 157-163, special issue on "Umano troppo disumano," A. Ponzio and F. Leonardis, eds.

    "Fashion, Identity, Globalization" and "Introduction," in Winter, A., ed., The Fabric of Cultures, catalogue of the exhibition at The Godwin-Turnbach Museum, Queens College, 2008

    "Framing the Self, Staging Identity: Clothing and Style in the Films of Michelangelo Antonioni (1950-1964)," in Paulicelli & Clark, eds., The Fabric of Cultures, London & New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 53-72

    "Mapping the World: The Political Geography of Dress in Cesare Vecellio's Costume Books," in The Italianist 28 (2008): 24-53

    "Dress, Gender and Identity," in J. Warren, ed., Feminism and Multiculturalism, Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholar Press, 2007, pp. 45-55

    "Introduzione" e "Geografia del vestire nei libri di costume di Cesare Vecellio," in ed., Paulicelli, Moda e Moderno. Dal Medioevo al Rinascimento, Rome: Meltemi, 2006, pp. 7-15 and 129-153

    "The Rhetoric and Politics of Appearance in the Italian Cinquecento," in Jane Tylus, Paul Ferrara, and Eugenio Giusti, eds., Medusa's Gaze: Essays on Gender, Literature, and Aesthetics in the Italian Renaissance. In Honor of Robert Rodini, West Lafayette, IN: Bordighera Press, 2004, pp. 127-143

    "Fashion Writing under the Fascist Regime: An Italian Dictionary and Commentary of Fashion by Cesare Meano and Short Stories by Gianna Manzini and Alba de Cespedes," invited contribution for Fashion Theory: Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 8:1 (Winter 2004): 1-32

    "Politica e ideologia: Usi del discorso di moda nell'Italia degli anni trenta," in Athanor: Semiotica, Filosofia, Arte, Letteratura 14:7 (2003-04): 347-354

    "Fashion, the Politics of Style and National Identity in Pre-Fascist and Fascist Italy," in Gender and History (November 2002): 537-59, special issue on Fashion, Dress and Material Strategies, Barbara Burman and Carole Turbin, eds. Also in the volume of the same title published by the Basil Blackwell Company, Oxford, 2003

    "Clara Sereni" entry for Jewish Women. A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, CD-ROM, Paula E. Hyman, Dalia Ofer, Alice Shalvi, eds., Jerusalem: Shalvi Publishing, 2006

    "Le narrative della moda. Egemonia, genere, identitą," in Robert S. Dombroski and Dino Cervigni, eds., Annali d'Italianistica 16 (1998): 315-37

    "Performing the Gendered Self in Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier and the Discourse on Fashion" in Annalecta Husserliana (2001): 237-248

    "Art in Modern Italy. From the Macchiaioli to the Transavanguardia," and "Fashion: Narration and Nation," in An Introduction to Modern Italian Culture, Zygmunt Baranski and Rebecca West eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 243-263 and pp. 283-291

    "Natalia Ginzburg and the Craft of Writing," in Natalia Ginzburg, A Voice of Our Century, Angela Jeannet and Giuliana Katz, eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000, pp. 153-178

    With David Ward, "Interview with Clara Sereni," in L'Anello che non tiene 9:1-2 (Spring-Fall, 1997): 73-83

    "Languages and Borders of Disciplines at a Crossroads in Leonardo Da Vinci's Paragone," in The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms 1:1 (1996): 214-19

    "Dalla cittą invisibile alla cittą futura. Italo Calvino: storia, impegno, linguaggio," in The Italianist 16 (1996): 143-60

    "On Memory, Culture and Interdisciplinarity," in Romance Languages Annual 6 (1994): 340-44

    "Fashion as a Text: Talking about Femininity and Feminism," in Feminine Feminists: Cultural Practices in Italy, Giovanna Miceli Jeffries, ed., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, pp. 171-89

    "The Sign and its Alterity," in Differentia 3-4 (1989): 329-36

    "Il ritratto di Nessuno ovvero nessuno ritratto," in Carte semiotiche 3 (1987): 63-70

    Current Projects

    New York Fashion Capital: Shifting Geographies, Ethnicities and Urban Cultures in the Branded City. The fashion city as "global capital of fashion" is now a feature of the global competition between cities which through their "cultural industries" gain visibility in the geography of consumption, tourism and imaginary and desirable spaces. This complex mechanism has been described by David Harvey in his essay "The Art of Rent." Fashion as an industry, as an economic and symbolic force, paired with individual and community practices of dressing and appearing in public spaces, has a key impact on the process of branding a city but also of shaping its cultures. It is on the twin issues of branding and cultural shaping that the project focuses, concentrating on New York City, especially on the developments of the last decade.

    Fashioning the Self: Writing and Dress in Early Modern Italy is an investigation into personal and collective self and identity that spans the wide range of the genres of the conduct literature of the first half of the Sixteenth century, including treatises on love and women during the Counter Reformation, Venetian costume books and satires.

    Going Global: Fashion and Italian Cinema (1950-1970), a study exploring costume and Italian cinema (1950 until late 1960s) and its implications in framing and deframing identity. The study also explores the power of both cinema and fashion in projecting and spreading on a global scale national identity, lifestyles and brands associated with particular countries such as Italy. The project will also consider the reception of "italianess" abroad (especially the US) and how this is constructed through cinema and fashion.