About Ellen Nerenberg

Professor of Italian Ellen Nerenberg is a scholar of contemporary Italian culture with focus on Italian literature, cinema and television, media, and crime studies. She is the author of Prison Terms: Representing Confinement During and After Italian Fascism (U of Toronto P, 2001), an exploration of spaces and tropes of incarceration in Italian narrative between 1930 and 1960 and fwinner of the Howard R. Marraro Prize from the Modern Language Association. She is also the author of Murder Made in Italy: Homicide, Media, and Contemporary Italian Culture (U of Indiana P, 2012), an examination of the cultural significance of three post-1989 murder cases and the ways they were constructed in varied media. Body of State: The Moro Affair, A Nation Divided (Fairleigh-Dickinson U P, 2011), a collaboration, offers the English translation of Marco Baliani's acclaimed dramatic monologue about the kidnapping and assassination of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro. The co-edited Writing Beyond Fascism (Fairleigh-Dickinson U P, 2000) examines the literary oeuvre of Alba de Cèspedes. She is one of the founders and associate co-editor of g/s/I: gender/sexuality/Italy , the reviews editor of the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, and editor of the Italian Studies Channel on the New Books Network. She holds the Hollis Chair of Romance Languages & Literatures and has served as the elected chair of the Wesleyan faculty as well as the Dean of the Arts and Humanities. She is the current President of the American Association for Italian Studies (2019-22). Current research projects include: Winx Nation: Educare la futura consumista (forthcoming, Rubbettino Editore), a feminist media studies examination that centers on WinxClub, the animated TV series for girls and tweens, its formats, spin-offs, and titanic merchandising empire, and essays on the nostalgic cinema of Paolo Sorrentino, and the North American reception of the tv and literary serials with protagonist Detective Montalbano.
Ellen Nerenberg, Wesleyan University
Ellen's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Ellen:

Sergio Rigoletto, "Le norme traviate: Saggi sul genere e sulla sessualità nel cinema e nella televisione italiana" (Meltemi Publishers, 2020)

May 31, 2021

Le norme traviate

Sergio Rigoletto
Hosted by Ellen Nerenberg

What does it mean to “upend a norm,” which is the translation of the title of Sergio Rigoletto’s recent study “Upended norms: essays on gender and sex…

Ramsey McGlazer, "Old Schools: Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress" (Fordham UP, 2020)

April 7, 2021

Old Schools

Ramsey McGlazer
Hosted by Ellen Nerenberg

Ramsey McGlazer's Old Schools: Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress (Fordham University Press, 2020), traces the ways in which a group o…

Charles L. Leavitt IV, "Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History" (U Toronto Press, 2020)

November 16, 2020

Italian Neorealism

Charles L. Leavitt IV
Hosted by Ellen Nerenberg

In Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History (University of Toronto Press, 2020), Charles Leavitt steps back from the micro-histories focusing more narro…

Giorgio Bertellini, "The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and the Political Leadership in 1920s America" (U California Press, 2019)

September 25, 2020

The Divo and the Duce

Giorgio Bertellini
Hosted by Ellen Nerenberg

In 1927, the Hollywood stars (and spouses), Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr stood outside their California home, arms raised in fascist salute…

Barbara Spackman, "Accidental Orientalists: Modern Italian Travelers in Ottoman Lands" (Liverpool UP, 2017)

January 6, 2020

Accidental Orientalists

Barbara Spackman
Hosted by Ellen Nerenberg

Barbara Spackman’s riveting study identifies a strand of what it calls “Accidental Orientalism” in narratives by Italians who found themselves in Otto…

Elena Past, "Italian Ecocinema: Beyond the Human" (Indiana UP, 2019)

November 4, 2019

Italian Ecocinema

Elena Past
Hosted by Ellen Nerenberg

Elena Past’s recently published Italian Ecocinema: Beyond the Human (Indiana University Press, 2019) studies a complex of issues surrounding on-locati…

Gerry Milligan, "Moral Combat: Women, Gender and War in Italian Renaissance Literature" (U Toronto Press, 2018)

October 1, 2019

Moral Combat

Gerry Milligan
Hosted by Ellen Nerenberg

Gerry Milligan’s Moral Combat: Women, Gender and War in Italian Renaissance Literature (University of Toronto Press, 2018) takes as its subject the wo…