Marco Ruggieri

Teaching Fellow in Italian

  • Italian Section
  • Department of European Languages and Cultures
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

Address

Street

Room 2.08
50 George Square

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9LH

Availability

  • Office Hour: Thursdays, 15.30-16.30

Biography

Background

Marco Ruggieri holds a PhD in Italian Studies from The University of Edinburgh (2023). His doctoral thesis, entitled 'The Young Eco's Library: Mass Culture and Interpretive Freedom in the Fascist Period', obtained the John Orr Award in 2018. Prior to moving to The University of Edinburgh, Marco got his MA at the University of Naples Federico II with a dissertation in History of Literary Criticism. After completing a MHRA-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Marco took on the role of Teaching Fellow in Italian in 2024.

Qualifications

PhD in Italian Studies - The University of Edinburgh, 2023

MA in Modern Philology - Università di Napoli 'Federico II', 2017

BA in Modern Literatures - Università di Napoli 'Federico II', 2015

Responsibilities & affiliations

Marco is Course Organiser for Foundation Italian 1 and Foundation Italian 2. He also teaches in several courses in the programme in Italian.

He is also the Website and Social Media Coordinator of the Society for Italian Studies.

Undergraduate teaching

2024/2025:

  • Italian 1 (Language)
  • Module 'Gramsci and the South' in Italian 1, 'Cultural Studies'
  • Module 'Umberto Eco and Fascist Culture' in Italian 2, 'Texts in Context'
  • Foundation Italian Language 1 and 2

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

No

Research summary

Marco has extensively worked in the field of Italian Literature and Culture, with a focus on the work of Umberto Eco and Antonio Gramsci. His further research interests include Semiotics, Media Studies, Gender Studies, and fascism.

Current research interests

Marco's current research has two main strands. The first strand investigates the media's representations and self-representations of non-cisgender subjects in the area of Naples (Italy) and explores questions of intersectionality and media visibility. The second strand examines the use of intermediality made by the fascist regime and its impact on the creation of the Italian national identity. These two strands offer different and yet intertwined contributions to Marco's long-standing interdisciplinary research on how the media represent and shape identities, and on the interpretative mechanics underlying the audience’s different responses to mass culture and its underlying ideology.

Past research interests

Marco's PhD research, entitled 'The Young Eco's Library: Mass Culture and Interpretive Freedom', studied the work of Umberto Eco and (a) sheds new light on the author’s critical theory, its connections with the field of Cultural Studies in Italy and beyond, and its interplay with his fictional writings and the 20th-century Italian history; (b) carries out the first comprehensive analysis of Eco’s novel ‘The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana’ (2004); (c) investigates the novel’s peculiar representation of the fascist Italy through the mass cultural products of that period, with a focus on gender stereotypes in fascist mass culture and their relations with those conveyed by cultural products created abroad but widely circulating in Italy in that period. Marco has also published an article in Italian Studies (2021) on the connections between Eco, Gramsci, and British Cultural Studies scholars such as Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall.

Conference details

  • SIS Biennial Conference, 2024, Royal Holloway London. Organiser and Speaker in the Roundtable: 'Fascism at 100+. An Interdisciplinary Re-Interpretation'; Organiser and Chair of the Panel 'Italian Social Media'

  • New Queer South, 2023, Oxford: ‘Femminiell*/Napoletan*: “Benevolent Mythologies and Mediatic Hyper(in)visibility.

  • ISIS Conference, 2022, Trinity College Dublin: ‘Twitch as a Rhizome: Political Discourse across the Media’.

  • SIS Biennial Conference, 2022, Warwick. Organiser and Chair of the Panel ‘Remembering and Forgetting Inter Media: Re-presentations of Italian Collective Memories’.

  • ‘Twice-Told Stories’ Conference, 2021, University of Cambridge: ‘Amnesia as a Narrative Device in Umberto Eco's La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana’.

  • AAIS Conference, 2021, online: ‘Fascist Mass Culture in Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana’.

  • NeMLA Convention, 2020, Boston (MA): ‘Personal Memories and Collective Identities: Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana’.

  • SIS PG Colloquium 2019, Durham: ‘Antonio Gramsci and Umberto Eco: Subalternity, Mass Communication, and Cultural Hegemonies’.

  • SIS Biennial Conference 2019, Edinburgh. Organiser of the Panel ‘Hegemony and Literature in Contemporary Italian Culture’. Paper: ‘Eco and Gramsci: Unexplored Connections’.

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