Education

I studied Philosophy at the University of Pisa (BA, MA) and at the University Paris-Sorbonne (MA), completing a dissertation on L'ordine della natura in Leibniz e Spinoza. I was a visiting postgraduate student in Paris (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Collège de France) and at the University of Birmingham (Leopardi Centre). In 2011 I obtained a Ph.D in Aesthetics at the University of Pisa, and my doctoral thesis was published as Desiderio e assuefazione. Studio sul pensiero di Leopardi (Ets, 2014).

Research

I am currently working on a monograph that challenges the historical development of “distraction” in its philosophical and literary implications, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. The dominant Augustinian-Pascalian strain of Western thought has traditionally viewed distraction as an expression of human imperfection, which must be corrected in favour of concentration and logical thinking. By focusing on the French and Italian linguistic and cultural domains, my book reconstructs a different understanding of distraction in both the ethical and the aesthetic-cognitive spheres, paving the way to its revaluation as a productive resource, in literary and stylistic terms.

I work in the following main research areas:

• The intersection of Philosophy and Literature
• Modern Philosophy and Literature (notably French and Italian)
• Aesthetics
• Comparative Literature
• History of Ideas, Intellectual History

My research interests also include:

• Contemporary Philosophy (notably French and Italian)
• Animal Studies

Publications

Books (monographs)

Edited volumes

• The Archaeology of the Unconscious, Italian Perspectives (co-edited with Fabio Camilletti), which has recently been accepted by Routledge and will appear in the Warwick Series in the Humanities (forthcoming 2018).
• G. Leopardi, Il gallo silvestre e altri animali, anthology of texts, ed. by A. Prete and A. Aloisi (Manni, 2010).

Book chapters

• 'The Melancholy of the Revolution, Maine de Biran facing Napoleon's Hundred Days',
  in K. Astbury and M. Philp (eds.), Napoleon's 100 Days and the struggle for legitimacy (Palgrave, 2018), 61-80.
• 'Rivoluzione', in N. Bellucci, F. D'Intino, S. Gensini (eds.), Lessico leopardiano (Sapienza Università Editrice, 2016), 109-14.
• 'La Moda e la Morte: invenzione di una genealogia mitica', in P. Abbrugiati (ed.), Le mythe repensé dans l'oeuvre de Giacomo Leopardi (Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2016), 317-27.
• ‘L’infinito come condizione di un’esperienza possibile’, in F. Camilletti and P. Cori (eds.), Ten steps. Critical Inquiries on Leopardi (Peter Lang, 2015).
• ‘Leopardi e l'idea di sistema’, in D. Manca (ed.), Il velo scolpito. Dialoghi tra filosofia e letteratura, afterword by A. Prete (Ets, 2014), 27-39.
• 'Limite/confine', in N. Bellucci, F. D'Intino, S. Gensini (eds.), Lessico leopardiano (Sapienza Università Editrice, 2014), 65-72.
• ‘Pensiero e figue dell’animalità in Antonio Prete’, in C. A. Augieri (ed.), Pensiero poetante e poetica della lontananza (Milella, 2012), 125-35.
• ‘Esperienza del sublime e dinamica del desiderio in Giacomo Leopardi’, in C. Gaiardoni (ed.), La prospettiva antropologica nel pensiero e nella poesia di Giacomo Leopardi (Olschki, 2012), 243-58.

Articles

• ‘Una macchina dal nome infernale in arrivo da un paese romantico', Intersezioni. Rivista di storia delle idee, n. 2 (August 2017), 163-83.
• ‘Elogio dell’inopersosità. Agamben e Leopardi’, Italian Studies, vol. 72 (2017), Issue 3, 282-91.
  
• 'Maine de Biran’s Conception of Melancholy, Between Medicine and Philosophy', in Melancolia. Metamorfosi dell'umor nero, special issue of Odradek. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics and New Media Theories, ed. by V. Serio, vol. 3, n. 1 (forthcoming: 2018).
• ‘Immagini della natura nello Zibaldone’, in R. Bruni and A. Camiciottoli (eds.), 'Il laberinto della natura'. La questione della filosofia in Giacomo Leopardi, a special issue of La Rassegna della letteratura italiana, anno 117, serie IX, n. 2, luglio-dicembre 2013, 427-41.

• ‘“Disfare e rimutare di continuo le cose di quaggiù”: appunti su moda, morte e civiltà in Leopardi’, Leussein. Rivista di studi umanistici, n. 2-3/maggio-dicembre 2012, 127-36.

• ‘Memoria e attenzione involontaria nello Zibaldone’, Rivista Internazionale di Studi Leopardiani, 7/2011, 83-94.
• ‘Memoria e infanzia in Agostino’, Rivista di filosofia, 2/2010, 187-208.
• 'Fisica e metafisica della noia nelle Operette morali di Leopardi’, Rivista internazionale di studi leopardiani, 6/2010, 61-78.

Journal special issues

• The Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy, a special issue of Odradek. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics and New Media Theories, vol. 1, n. 2 (2016), ed. by D. Manca and A. Aloisi.

Reviews

• Understanding Rancière, Understandng Modernism, ed. by P. M. Bray (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), Modern Language Review (forthcoming: 2018).
• M. C. Corballis, The Wandering Mind. What the Brain Does When You are Not Looking (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), Philosophical Inquiries, Vol. 4, n. 2 (2016).
  
• C. Bingham and G. Biesta, Jacques Rancière. Education, Truth, Emancipation, with a new essay by J. Rancière (London/New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), Social Theory Applied
  
• C. Colaiacomo, Il poeta della vita moderna. Leopardi e il Romanticismo (Roma: Luca Sossella Editore, 2013), Appunti leopardiani / Notes on Leopardi, 7/2014.
• F. Camilletti, Leopardi's Nymphs: Grace, Melancholy, and the Uncanny (Oxford: Legenda, 2013), O.b.l.i.o. IV, 16, 111-15.

• G. Polizzi, Giacomo Leopardi. La concezione dell’umano, tra utopia e disincanto (Milano: Mimesis, 2011), Appunti leopardiani / Notes on Leopardi, 4 (2012/2).

• P. Cristofolini, L’uomo libero. L’eresia spinozista alle radici dell’Europa moderna (Pisa: Ets, 2007), La società degli individui, 32 (2008/2), 175-79.

Translations

• Italian translation from French of M. de Beistegui, Proust e la gioia. Per un’estetica della metafora (Pisa: Ets, 2013).

• Italian translation from French of P. Steiner, Le ricchezze oscene (Pisa: Ets, 2012).

• Italian translation from French of M. de Beistegui, ‘Per un'estetica della metafora’, in P. Godani and D. Ferrari (eds.), La sartoria di Proust. Estetica e costruzione nella Recherche (Pisa: Ets, 2010), 17-46.

• Italian translation from French of D. Zabunyan, ‘Michelangelo Antonioni, un nietzscheano accanito’, in P. Godani and D. Cecchi (eds.), Falsi raccordi. Cinema e filosofia in Deleuze (Pisa: Ets, 2007), 113-25.

Professional associations

• Society for Italian Studies (SIS)
• American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)

Qualifications

• PhD (Aesthetics), Università di Pisa, 2011
• BA and MA (Philosophy), Università di Pisa, 2007 (MA research stay at Université Paris IV - Sorbonne, ERASMUS programme)