Southern Horrors: Identity, Geography and Nation-building in Italian Horror Films

To celebrate the Italian Heritage Month, the Italian Studies Program in collaboration with the Institute for Learning in Retirement invites you to a talk with Dr. Vincenzo Selleri, Assistant Professor of Italian Studies titled “Southern Horrors: Identity, Geography and Nation-building in Italian Horror Films."

Almost 80 years after the birth of the Italian Republic, Italians still imagine their country divided along cultural, economic and geographic lines. What role do media and art play in the symbolic (de)construction of a nation? In this talk, Dr Selleri will suggest that Italian horror cinema exploits a hegemonic gaze that presents the Meridione as a wild, exotic space culturally, economically, and symbolically closer to a postcolonial global south, than to the “modern” Italian nation-state.