Researcher and Teaching Assistant

Dott. Ling. Lett. (Siena); MA (Warwick and Birmingham); PhD (Warwick)

Teaching and research interests

• Clinical Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry (Krafft-Ebing, Abraham, Fenichel, Freud)
• Theoretical Psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan, Žižek)
• Intersemiotic Translation
• Cinema and Painting (Renaissance, Symbolism, Cubism, Expressionism, Realism)
• Film/Literary Theory and Analysis
• Comparative Studies
• Critical Theory
• Jazz and Literature, Jazz and Visual Art

Contact details

PhD thesis

An Analysis of Scopophilia in an Intersemiotic Context: Four Italian Case Studies

How can scopophilia be analyzed in an intersemiotic context? My Ph.D. research has analyzed how the reader and the spectator may share similar psychoanalytic receptive experiences by analyzing how narratives, both written and visual, enact scopophilic scenarios and their ideological implications, and how those narratives are shifted from the original novel to the film.

Academic profile

Mariarita Martino Grisa's academic background covers both Italian (Cinema, Contemporary Literature) and Anglo-American Studies-oriented research (Adaptation Studies, Beat Generation and Jazz Music, Edith Wharton and Women's Writing, Ghost Stories). She studied Foreign Languages and Literatures in the Department of Philology and Literary Criticism at the University of Siena, where she obtained a BA (Hons) in 2004 in Anglo-American Literature and and Criticism focusing on adaptations of novels to film. In the UK she studied in Edinburgh (Summer Programme) and in Warwick as an undergraduate research student in the Department of Film and Television Studies, and as a postgraduate taught student in the Department of Italian. She graduated with a University of Birmingham and University of Warwick combined MA in Italian Studies: Culture and Communication in 2006 with a thesis on Liliana Cavani's Trilogy (The Night Porter, 1974; Beyond Good and Evil, 1977; The Berlin Affair, 1983). She has completed her Ph.D. thesis on intersemiotic translation of scopophilia from a written code (novel) to a visual code (film) in the works of Pasolini, Brass, Boccaccio, and Tanizaki. 

In the United Kingdom and in Italy, Mariarita has taught at various academic and non-academic levels at the University of Birmingham, at the University of Warwick (where she currenlty teaches translation, reading conprehension and Italian language to Art Historians, Italian Cinema), at language schools in Birmingham and Manchester, and at the University of Siena. In 2008 she has worked as an intersemiotic translator for the Royal Shakespeare Company for the project Directing the Image. She has also provided tutorial assistance for the Year Abroad students in 2008 at the Lamaro Pozzani Residence in Rome, and in 2009 at the Palazzo Papafava in Venice. In Venice, she provide also language provisions to History and History of Art students at the Palazzo. From 2009, Mariarita collaborates with CineMonitor: Osservatorio Cinema. In 2011-12, Mariarita was a member of the Jazz Coventry committee.

Collaborations, Publications & Forthcoming Publications

Books and Volumes:

M. Martino, and D. Holdaway, ‘Da Sodoma a Gomorra: Framing Crisis and Rebirth of Italian Cinema’, Italian Studies Special Issue, 67. 2 (forthcoming 2012)

Journal Articles:

M. Martino, ‘Fetishization of Objects of Desire in an Intersemiotic Perspective: Brass Adapts Tanizaki’ (in preparation)

M. Martino, ‘Locating the Unconsciou and the Gaze in Dario Argento’s “Deep Red” (1975)’ (in preparation)

Chapters in Books:

M. Martino Grisà, ‘Narrative Scopophilia as Seen through the Lens of a Photographic Camera: Intersemiotic Translation and Voyeurism in L’uomo che guarda (1985)’, in Enlightening Encounters: Italian Literature and Photography through Time, ed. by Giorgia Alù and Nancy Pedri (Toronto: Toronto University Press; forthcoming 2012)

M. Martino, ‘Oedipal Desire in Alberto Moravia’s “L’uomo che guarda” (1985)’, in 'The Fire Within: Desire in Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature', ed. by Elena Borelli (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, in preparation)

Published Works on Online Journals & Magazines:

M. Martino Grisà, 'Cinecitta': Next Stop Warwick - Appunti D'oltremanica', Cinemonitor. Osservatorio Cinema, 31 December 2009

M. Martino Grisà, '2010', Film Review, Cinemonitor. Osservatorio Cinema, 14 November 2009

M. Martino Grisà, 'Bastardi senza gloria', Film Review, Cinemonitor. Osservatorio Cinema, 14 September 2009

M. Martino Grisà, ‘Appunti D'oltremanica: Da Sodoma a Gomorra’, Cinemonitor. Osservatorio Cinema (2010)

M. Martino Grisà, ‘Cinemonitor: Osservatorio Cinema’, The Italianist 30, (2010) pp. 321-3

M. Martino Grisà, and D. Holdaway, ‘Report on the conference ‘Da 'Sodoma' a 'Gomorra': Framing Crisis and Rebirth in Italian Cinema’, held at the University of Warwick, January 2010’, The Italianist 30, (2010) pp. 315-20

Encyclopaedic Entries:

M. Martino, ‘Pinocchio’ and ‘Pier Paolo Pasolini’. In Little Black Book Books: A Century of the Greatest Books, Writers, Characters, Passages and Events that Rocked the Literary World, ed. by Lucy Daniel (London: Octopus Publishing Group, 2007), pp. 81; 396

Conferences and seminars organized 

Principal organizer:

2009 Visual and Verbal Synergies: The Italian Case, Universtiy of Warwick Humanities Research Centre Seminars Series (HRC). Invited Speakers: Remo Ceserani (Bologna), Florian Mussgnug (UCL), Loredana Polezzi (Warwick).

Co-organized:

2010 ‘Da Sodoma a Gomorra’: Framing Crisis and Rebirth in Italian Cinema from the 1970s to the 2000s. Conference on Italian Screen Studies. Three-day confererence. Invited Speakers: Gian Piero Brunetta (Padova), Peter Bondanella (Indiana), Guido Bonsaver (Oxford), Robert Gordon (Cambridge), Catherine O’Rawe (Bristol) & Alan O’Leary (Leeds).

2010 SIS Postgraduate Colloquium, University of Warwick Postgraduate Colloquium organized for the Society for Italian Studies.

Guest Lectures (speaker)

'Jazz and the Beat Generation: An Intersemiotic Perspective' delivered in November 2002, Aula Magna, San Galgano, Universita' degli studi di Siena.

'The House of Mirth: Terence Davies' Adaptation of Edith Wharton's Novel'. Introduction to the screening and discussion, December 2007 at the Universita' degli studi di Siena.