Directory Profile

Sabrina Ovan

Professor of Italian; Sara M. Adler Professor of Italian Endowed Chair
Italian Studies
Phone: 73546
sabrina.ovan@scrippscollege.edu

Academic History

M.A., Ph.D. Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Academic Focus

Contemporary Italian literature, Italian film, literary theory, genre literature and film, collectivity in writing and the arts, Futurism and the neo-avant garde, New Italian Epic.

Courses Taught

  • All levels of Italian language
  • Contemporary Italian Novel
  • Italy as a Murder Mystery
  • The Legacy of the Past (upper division courses in Italian)
  • Italian Cinema
  • Core 1
  • Core 2: “What is Avant-garde?”
  • “Contract enforcement: mafia(s) histories and narratives”

Selected Research and Publications

Book Chapter:
  • “Azioni Precarie: etica e retorica del lavoro nel caso no TAV” in Le culture del precariato. Verona: Ombre corte, 2015.
  • "Milano dei Miracoli: Le cinque giornate secondo Argento e Lizzani", in Cinema e Risorgimento. Roma: Vecchierelli Editore, 2012.
Peer reviewed articles:
  • "Names, Travelers, Transindividuality: Italo Calvino in the 1970s". Enthymema, Rivista Internazionale di Critica e Filosofia della Letteratura, Università degli studi di Milano (University of Milan, Italy), N. 7 (December 2012): 409 -424.
  • "Nameless History Before and After Las Meninas: Luther Blissett's Archaeological Fiction". Genre, Forms of Discourse and Culture. Duke University Press, Volume 45, number 3 (Fall 2012): 423-441.
  • "The Space of Exception: the Paranoid City in 1970s Italian Giallo film." NeMLA Italian Studies, Special Issue: ID City, Vol. XXXIII (October 2011).
  • "The General Body: Representations of the Cognitariat in Contemporary Italy". NeMLA Italian Studies, Vol. XXXI (Spring 2009): 81-100.
  • "Q's General Intellect", Cultural Studies Review, (The University of Melbourne). Special Issue "The Italian Effect." (September 2005): 63-70.
Book reviews
  • "Tra Coscienza e Autocoscienza" by Paolo Chirumbolo. Rubbettino, 2009. Forum Italicum, n.2(Fall 2011).
  • "Da Modugno a X Factor: Musica e Società Italiana dal Dopoguerra a Oggi", by Edoardo Tabasso and Marco Bracci. Roma: Carocci, 2010. NeMLA Italian Studies, Special Issue: ID City, Vol. XXXIV, Spring 2012.
  • "Lo Specchio Oscuro", by Franco Pappalardo La Rosa. NeMLA Italian Studies, Vol. XXXI (Spring 2009).
Translations
  • "Dyslexia and the Economy", by Christian Marazzi. Angelaki. Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, Volume 16, Issue 3, 2011.
  • "Twenty Theses on Contemporary Capitalism (or Cognitive Biocapitalism)", by Andrea Fumagalli, Angelaki. Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, Volume 16, Issue 3, 2011.