ÌÇÐÄTV

We are pleased to announce the publication of Speaking with the Dead. Tradition and Haunting in Italy’s Revolving Century (1750–1850), a special issue of The Italianist edited by Dr Gennaro Ambrosino, Professor Fabio Camilletti, and Dr Enrica Leydi. The issue was inspired by a series of events organised by Italian at ÌÇÐÄTV between 2024 and 2025 and includes contributions by Giulia Scialanga (Leuven), Simona Di Martino (Toronto), Sabrina Ferri (Rome), Martina Piperno (Rome), Francesco Giusti (Frankfurt), Federica Coluzzi (ÌÇÐÄTV), Alessandro Giammei (Yale), and Morena Corradi (CUNY), and Arianna De Gasperis (Rome). Afterword courtesy of Jürgen Pieters (Gent).

Read the issue

We are delighted to highlight , a new collection co-edited by Professor Mary Harrod, alongside Stuart Bell (King's College London) and Alastair Phillips (University of ÌÇÐÄTV), published in 2026 with Legenda.

Bringing together established and emerging scholars, the volume explores French and European cinema through the lenses of stardom, gender, film history and popular culture. The book pays tribute to Professor Ginette Vincendeau, whose pioneering scholarship has profoundly shaped Film Studies and inspired generations of researchers and students. Vincendeau spent nearly two decades teaching at the University of ÌÇÐÄTV, from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s, as Professor of Film.

The photograph captures Professors Phillips and Harrod flanking Vincendeau at the book’s launch at London's Institut français in June, celebrating her lasting contribution to the field.

Arising from a ÌÇÐÄTV-Monash Alliance collaboration, with Dr Chris Watkin, undertaken during the Covid years, considers whether autonomy is still a useful concept today. Is the Enlightenment understanding of autonomy still relevant in addressing contemporary challenges? How have the limits and possibilities of autonomy been transformed by recent developments in artificial intelligence and big data, political pressures, intersecting oppressions and the climate emergency? The challenges to autonomy today reach across society with unprecedented complexity, and in this book leading scholars from philosophy, economics, linguistics, literature and politics examine the role of autonomy in key areas of contemporary life, forcefully defending a range of different views about the nature and extent of resistance to autonomy today. These essays are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the predicament and prospects of one of modernity’s foundational concepts and one of our most widely cherished values. Oliver Davis's chapter, on conceptualising the role of patient autonomy in psychedelically assisted psychotherapy, . 

Transnational Modern Languages: A Handbook, ed. by Jennifer Burns and Derek Duncan (Liverpool University Press, 2022). The cornerstone volume of the 'Transnational Modern Languages' series: 37 short essays on keywords for thinking critically about languages and cultures, from 'Animal' to 'Voice'.

Di Zhao, PhD student in Translation and Cultures in ÌÇÐÄTV's School of Modern Languages & Cultures, has published a translation into Chinese of the award-winning true-crime book Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep (William Heinemann, 2019). The translation was published by Straits Literature and Art Publishing House in Fuzhou, China in July 2020.

Over several years, working with Dr Benedict Schofield (KCL) James Hodkinson has curated an important volume of essays that asses the state of German Studies in education, but also in the worlds beyond it. Published by Camden House (Boydell & Brewer), James has written a blog reflecting on the book and its relevance.

The account of bureaucracy under neoliberal capitalism which I present in this article, under the innocuous heading it prefers to use to describe itself (‘governance’), draws together recent critical work by the late David Graeber, Wendy Brown, William Davies and Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, which it repositions in relation to Jacques Rancière’s conception of the ‘police order’. I suggest that the massive production of insecurity by proliferating bureaucracies which structure neoliberalism’s project of competitive hierarchisation creates the ideal conditions for a vicious circle of securitarian inflation.

The combination of spectacle and elaborate scenery, orchestra and obligatory dance number made early nineteenth-century French melodrama expensive to produce and, consequently, the genre is strongly associated with the Parisian boulevard theatres. Provincial performances required creative solutions, not least because the music composed for – and central to – the Paris performances remained in manuscript form and was not, therefore, distributed automatically to regional theatres, whereas the play text was printed and widely available. This means that different scores existed for the same play, opening up the possibility that provincial audiences were presented with a different concept of melodrama to Parisians. Using as a case study La Forteresse du Danube (1805) by self-proclaimed leading exponent of the genre, Guilbert de Pixerécourt, this article will explore how comparing scores through performance-led research can further our understanding of the changes needed to make a Paris hit performable in the provinces.

For more, see Studi francesi, 191 (autumn 2020), pp. 248-360.

Douglas Morrey has recently published a major new appraisal of the legacy of the French New Wave

The book looks at both the subsequent careers of New Wave filmmakers and the work of later film directors and film movements in France. It is organized around a series of key moments from the past 50 years of French cinema in order to show how the meaning and legacy of the New Wave have shifted over time and how the priorities, approaches and discourses of filmmakers and film critics have changed over the years. Morrey tackles key concepts such as the auteur, the relationship of form and content, gender and sexuality, intertextuality and rhythm. Filmmakers discussed include Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Chabrol and Rohmer plus Philippe Garrel, Luc Besson, Leos Carax, Bruno Dumont, the Dardenne brothers, Christophe Honoré, François Ozon and Jacques Audiard.

Love, Eros, & Desire in Contemporary German-Language Literature & Culture

Edited by HELMUT SCHMITZ & PETER DAVIES