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Ms Linde Luijnenburg

PhD Student
Part-Time Teaching Assistant

Email: L dot M dot E dot Luijnenburg at warwick dot ac dot uk

H4.13
Humanities Building, University Road
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL

Academia website

About

I started my PhD (fully funded by a Chancellor's Scholarship) in the Department of Italian in October 2013 under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer Burns and Dr. Loredana Polezzi. My research centres on the representation of the Black Other in the commedia all’italiana, a group of films by critically and politically engaged Italian film directors who both ridicule and question the concept of ‘Italianness’ by exaggerating it in their films, pointing out a constructed Otherness through physically distinguishing characters which mark them as different from the ‘italiano medio’. The imperial narrative and the accompanying prejudices about former colonies, as well as former colonised people, were never refuted in Italy. The research examines the deconstruction of this narrative in several films of the commedia all’italiana. In my thesis, I aim to demonstrate that filmmakers criticise the lack of a national debate about Italy’s colonial past through the caricatures of the other in the commedia all’italiana.

Research interests

My broader research interests include:

  • Postcolonial Theory and the notion of 'National Identity'
  • Film Studies and Film Making
  • Comedy Studies
  • Comparative Literature
  • The concept of 'Migrant literature'

Teaching and supervision

IT309 Comparative Literature: Italian and English Short Fiction

Cineforum: Modern Italian Cities/ Italian Insiders and Outsiders

Selected publications

Academic Memberships

Qualifications

  • MA in Comparative Literature (Leuven)
  • MA in History of Art (Amsterdam and New York)
  • BA in Italian Studies (Amsterdam and Rome)
  • BA in History of Art (Amsterdam)

Awards

  • HRF Award for funding a conference trip to the US (2016) and to Durham, England (2015)
  • HRC Doctoral Fellowship Competition for organisation of a conference on the Short Story Cycle (2016)
  • Postgraduate Award: Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Learning Development Centre, University of Warwick (2015)
  • Chancellor's Scholarship (now CADRE)

Organised Conference

The Short Story Cycle: Circling Around a Genre?, 6 February 2016, Warwick University, co-organised with Dr. Elio Baldi

Documentary project

Between 2014-2016 I produced the documentary Africa is You on the Somali-Dutch community in Birmingham, UK, together with Ahmed Magare, Dennis Mulder and Anna van Winden. © BrollB Productions, 2016.
The spoken word performance of Somali-Dutch artist Ahmed Magare brings its viewers to the Somali-Dutch community in Birmingham, UK. In the shape of a short story cycle, and through the poetry of Ahmed Magare, we hear various voices sharing their stories of migrating in and through Somalia, the Netherlands, England, and possibly back to Somalia.

Teaching

IT309 Comparative Literature: Italian and English Short Fiction

Cineforum

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