Christ, Chemistry, Curdled Cheese, and the Caravaggians

Alessandro Giammei, Society of Fellows-Department of French and Italian, will give a presentation on “Christ, Chemistry, Curdled Cheese, and the Caravaggians: The interplay of art, gastronomy, politics, and religion in Pasolini’s La Ricotta”

Alessandro Giammei received his Perfezionamento (PhD) in Italian Literature from Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, completed his Laurea and Laurea Magistrale studies at the University of Rome La Sapienza, and taught at NYU as a Visiting Scholar Researcher. His published articles address topics such as the interactions between verbal and iconic codes in both classicist and experimental texts, avantgarde and neo-avantgarde writing, the appropriation of early-modern cultural objects in 20th century literature and art, and the work of Italian poets that have been marginalized because of their peripherality, their gender, their infirmity, their ideology.

Alessandro’s first book, Nell’officina del nonsense di Toti Scialoja: Topi, toponimi, tropi, cronotopi, was fully sponsored by a grant from Fondazione Toti Scialoja, and won the Harvard edition of the Edinburgh Gadda Prize in 2015. As a fellow at Princeton, Alessandro will complete his current book project A Poet in Marble, which is based on his doctoral thesis. The work shows how the multimedia legacy of Orlando Furioso — the most influential book of the Italian Renaissance and a model of ‘interdisciplinarity’ avant-la-lettre — intersects with the major aesthetic and literary experiences that define twentieth-century Italy as it moved through colonialism, totalitarianism, two world wars, and through highly visible vanguard artistic movements. While at Princeton, Alessandro will be affiliated with the Department of French and Italian, teaching courses on both Renaissance and modern Italian literature and art, and he will also take part in the Prison Teaching Initiative.