Simona Di Martino

Simona holds a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Warwick (UK). Before her current role as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, she served as a Research Fellow at the Universities of Warwick, London, Leeds, and Reading. Simona has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. After working on topics such as Italian Gothic poetry, Giacomo Leopardi, ghost-seeing, and mysticism, she focused on figures such as women healers and witches, particularly studying the teenage witch as an empowering trope for girls.

Organised Conferences, Workshops and Events (selection)

Seen and Heard: Voices of Transnational Girlhood(s) on Identity, Gender, and Culture, 18-19 April 2024. Visit the conference page here. Listen to the interview here.

Being Human Festival of the Humanities, Witches! Draw-along Creative Workshop, The Cartoon Museum, London, 11th November 2023.

Bloomsbury Festival, Growing Up with Witch Power, Holborn Library, 14th October 2023. Listen to the interview for Bloomsbury Radio.

Academic, Woman, Other: A Roundtable and Zine-Making Workshop, IAS, University of Warwick, 8/04/2023.

Co-organiser: Italian Research Seminar: "Notes and Scribbles Into the World of Academic Journals for Italian Studies", University of Warwick, 23 May 2022, Online event. With: Phil Cooke, Lorenzo Fabbri, Claudio Fogu, Monica Jansen, Silvia Ross, Gigliola Sulis, Sandra Waters.

Moderator - Italian Research Seminar. Book Launch: Dante beyond Influence: Rethinking Reception in Victorian Literary Culture (Manchester University Press). The author Federica Coluzzi in conversation with Prof. Alison Milbank. University of Warwick, 7 March 2022, Faculty of Arts Building.

Tea(chers) PGR  - Talk as one of winners of WATE PGR 2021 - 4 August 2021

I co-organised the School of Modern Languages and Cultures Postgraduate Symposium Feelings and Emotions across Languages and Cultures, funded by SMLC, Researcher Development (Doctoral College) and CADRE, 22 January 2021, online.

School of Modern Languages and Cultures Teacher Day, 20th September 2019, Radcliffe Building, University of Warwick (facilitator Italian session)

Accademia della Crusca, Le settimane estive della Crusca. Summer School for Teachers of Italian Language to Foreign Students. Villa Medicea di Castello, Firenze. 1st-5th July 2019

Publications - Journal Articles

Di Martino, Simona. “Empowering Girls in the Transnational W.I.T.C.H. Magazine and Comics Series”, in Girlhood Studies An Interdisciplinary Journal, special issue Boundless Girls: Transmedia and Transnational Perspectives on Girlhood in Comics edited by Nicoletta Mandolini, Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato, Eva Van de Wiele, (forthcoming 2024).

Di Martino, Simona. “La vita sessuale dei nostri antenati: memoria tra generazioni nel romanzo familiare intermediale contemporaneo” in Quaderni d’Italianistica, special issue Il romanzo di famiglia contemporaneo: La natura transculturale e transtemporale della memoria fra generazioni, storia e autobiografismo, edited by Stefania Lucamante, vol. 44, no 2, 2023, pp. 191-213.

Di Martino, Simona. “Streghe, fattucchiere e medicina contadina: donne curatrici e leggende regionali nella cronaca dei Misteri d’Italia di Dino Buzzati”, in Rivista Italies, La medicina al femminile. Donne e medicina, realtà e rappresentazioni in Italia, vol. 27, ed. by Antonella Mauri, Judith Obert, pp. 61-74, 2023.

Brondino, Andrea, Bianca Rita Cataldi, and Simona Di Martino. “Introduzione” in "Really Fantastic! Intertwinements, Exchanges, Discordances Between Realism and the Fantastic in Italian Culture", Notes in Italian Studies, 2, ed. by Andrea Brondino, Bianca Rita Cataldi, and Simona Di Martino, 2023, pp. 1-4. Read: here.

Di Martino, Simona. “Introduzione” in Quaderni d'Italianistica: Quel che resta del giorno. La notte nella letteratura italiana dalSettecento ai giorni nostri, edited by Simona Di Martino, vol. 43, 1, 2022, pp. 5-11.

Di Martino, Simona. “Le visioni letterarie di Alfonso Varano e Giacomo Leopardi: tra teologia e ghost story?” in Quaderni d'Italianistica: Quel che resta del giorno. La notte nella letteratura italiana dal Settecento ai giorni nostri, edited by Simona Di Martino, vol. 43, 1, 2022, pp. 57-80.

Di Martino, Simona. "Wet Nurses’ Tales: Female Rivalry, Motherhood Performativity, and Bestiality in Pirandello’s La balia and Il libretto rosso", in Pirandello Studies, vol. 42, 2022, pp. 55-68.

Di Martino, Simona. "Una scampagnata. La metamorfosi della marcia su Roma raccontata in Canale Mussolini – Antonio Pennacchi, Canale Mussolini", in Nuovi Argomenti, 9, Mondadori, gennaio-aprile 2022, pp. 89-94. Read: here

Di Martino, Simona. "The Figure of the Wet Nurse from Vittorelli to Pirandello", in Notes in Italian Studies, 1, ed. by Bianca Rita Cataldi, Claudia Dellacasa, Lachlan Hughes, 2021, pp. 22-28. Read: here.

Di Martino, Simona. "'Orecchie rose e labbra mozze' and Other Bodily Suffering in Alfonso Varano. Dantean Reminiscences in Eighteenth-Century Sepulchral Poetry", in Bibliotheca Dantesca. Journal of Dante Studies, vol. 4, art. 6, 2021. Read: here.

Publications - Book Chapters

Di Martino, Simona. “Tailor-made Pastries in La signorina Euforbia: Food Pedagogy in Italian Pre-Teens’ Literature” in Cultural Perspectives on Sweets in Children’s Literature and Media, ed. by Corina Löwe and Sabine Planka, Routledge, forthcoming 2024.

Di Martino, Simona. “‘Di medica mano arte fallace!’ Elegia, aborto e medical humanities: nuove prospettive di ricerca” in La mort au féminin. Les femmes et la mort dans la culture italienne du Moyen Age à nos jours ed. by Frederique Dubard de Gaillarbois, Marguerite Bordry, and Laura Maver Borges, Editions Spartacus-Idh, forthcoming 2024.

Di Martino, Simona. “Sognare la fine: paura e sollievo nell’Appressamento della morte” in Lessico leopardiano della paura ed. by Fabio Camilletti and Giulia Scialanga, Sapienza University Press, 2024, pp. 67-86.

Di Martino, Simona. “Gothic Poetry”, in Italian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, ed. by Marco Malvestio and Stefano Serafini, Edinburgh University Press (March 2023), pp. 107-22.

Di Martino, Simona. «Questo è il libro per cui sono venuto al mondo». L'epopea storico-familiare in Canale Mussolini di Antonio Pennacchi, in «Non poteva staccarsene senza lacerarsi». Per una genealogia del romanzo familiare italiano, a cura di Filippo Gobbo, Ilaria Muoio e Gloria Scarfone, Pisa, Pisa University Press, 2020, pp. 195-217. Read: here.

Publications - Edited Collections

“Il potere del passato e l’affermazione del presente. Forme e declinazioni letterarie dell’identità nazionale in Italia tra Sette e Novecento” ed. by Simona Di Martino and Beatrice Pecchiari, in Letteratura e Potere/Poteri, Atti del XXIV Congresso dell’AdI (Associazione degli Italianisti), Catania, 23-25 settembre 2021, ed. by Andrea Manganaro, Giuseppe Traina, Carmelo Tramontana, Rome, Adi editore 2023.

Quaderni d'Italianistica: Quel che resta del giorno. La notte nella letteratura italiana dal Settecento ai giorni nostri, edited by Simona Di Martino, vol. 43, 1, 2022.