CURRICULUM VITAE
Name: Gianluca Cinelli
Academic title: Dr
Place and date of birth: Rome, 10/06/1977
Nationality: Italian
Address: Rotteckstraße, 5 – 60316, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
e-mail: giancin77@yahoo.it
EDUCATION
10/2004 – 06/2008
Institution: National University of Ireland Cork.
Degree awarded: PhD.
Area of research: Contemporary Italian literature.
Main disciplines
covered: Second World War literary memoirs; autobiography; historical narratives; philosophical hermeneutics; ethics.
Title of the thesis: Memoria, soggettività e verità: una lettura ermeneutica delle opere autobiografiche di Primo Levi, Nuto Revelli, Rosetta Loy e Mario Rigoni Stern.
11/1996 – 11/2001
Institution: Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”.
Degree awarded: Laurea in Lettere cum laude.
Area of research: Italian studies.
Main disciplines
covered: Italian literature; literary theory; history of literary criticism; comparative literatures; aesthetics; philology; medieval, modern and contemporary history; English language and literature; geography.
Title of the thesis: Storia e romanzo storico alla fine del Novecento.
PRESENT POSITION
I am at present Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. My Fellowship is going on until 30/04/2014. In this period I am employed at the University of Frankfurt am Main “Johann Wolfgang Goethe”, in the Faculty of Modern Languages, where I also teach undergraduate students and will organise the research seminar “Manzoni: letteratura, storia e la questione del male”, which will take place at the University of Frankfurt on 18/10/2013. My project consists in an interdisciplinary study in Storia della colonna infame by Manzoni trhough the hermeneutic method, aimed at outlining the ethical function of literature as a combination of diverse rethorical modes of discourse such as the historical narrative, the likely representation and the dialectical confutation. My research project proposes Storia della colonna infame as an example of ethical literature, i.e. that formula by which I define the post-Enlightenment tradition of narratives that represent historical events by combining several rhetorical forms and that provide speculation and critique of ethics by means of narrative.
I am also holder of a research scholarship of the San Paolo Foundation employed at the Istituto Storico della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea in Provincia di Cuneo “Dante Livio Bianco”. In the framework of the project I am the main organiser of the research seminar “La memorialistica di prigionia dei militari italiani nella Seconda Guerra Mondiale. Origini, forme e significati di una tradizione fra storia e letteratura”, which will take place at the Centro di Documentazione Territoriale in Cuneo on 12/04/2013.
FELLOWSHIPS, SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS
2012
Institution: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Jean-Paul-Straße 12, 53173 Bonn, Germany.
Value of the award: 24 months (05/2012 – 04/2014) post-doc research fellowship worth €60.800 for the research project The problem of evil in Storia della colonna infame by Alessandro Manzoni. Foundations of a theory for the ethical literature.
2012
Institution: Compagnia di San Paolo, C.so Vittorio Emanuele II, 75, 10128, Torino.
Value of the award: 24 months (01/2012 – 12/2013) research scholarship worth €10.000 € for the research project La memorialistica italiana della prigionia sovietica e dell’internamento militare in Germania. Esperienze a confronto dall’universo concentrazionario del totalitarismo, to be developed at the Istituto Storico della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea in Provincia di Cuneo “Dante Livio Bianco”.
2010
Institution: Istituto Storico della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea in Provincia di Cuneo “Dante Livio Bianco”.
Value of the award: Scholarship worth €2.500 awarded to carry out academic research at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin and to write the essay “La memorialistica tedesca della campagna di Russia. Una tradizione fra storia e mito” (see Publications for details).
2006
Institution: National University of Ireland Cork.
Value of the award: Faculty of Arts PhD Scholarship worth €10.000 and President’s Scholarship worth €3.500.
2005
Institution: National University of Ireland Cork
Value of the award: Faculty of Arts PhD Students Special Award worth €2.500 and President’s Scholarship worth €3.000.
ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
2010-2011
Fellow researcher of the Istituto Storico della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea in Provincia di Cuneo “Dante Livio Bianco”, for a research project about the German literary memory of the war against the USSR 1941-1956. I analysed a broad range of literary (memoirs, autobiographies and novels) as well as non-literary (epistolaries, diaries and historiography) works by investigating the relationship between history and myth in war-memoirs. In particular I focused on the mith of guilt as the key-concept through which I interpreted the production and use of literary memoirs after the war as a means of atonement and of political and existential interpretation of the past. I based my theoretical speculation on the interpretation of existential philosophy (Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Sartre and Pareyson). La ricerca è stata condotta fra Cuneo, Berlino, Roma e Oxford.
2008-2009
As an independent scholar I carried out a research project devoted to the work of Nuto Revelli (Cuneo, 1919-2004), with the support of the Istituto Storico della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea in Provincia di Cuneo “Dante Livio Bianco” and of the Nuto Revelli Foundation. The project focused on a critical interpretation of Revelli’s works as an interdisciplinary attempt to interpret and critique the legacy of fascism and war in the history of the Italian republic. The project produced the monograph Nuto Revelli. La scrittura e l’impegno civile, dalla testimonianza della Seconda Guerra Mondiale alla critica dell’Italia repubblicana (see Publications for details).
2004-2008
Between 2004 and 2008 I studied for my PhD at the University College Cork, where I graduated on 19/06/2008. My project mainly focused on the theroeical investigation of the ethical function of autobiographical writing as a means to interpret the historical relationship between an individual and the world in which his experience takes place, including a theoretical questioning of issues such as identity, responsibility and self-interpretation. My thesis was published in 2008 as a book with the title Ermeneutica e scrittura autobiografica. Primo Levi, Nuto Revelli, Rosetta Loy, Mario Rigoni Stern (see Publications for details).
SEMINARS AND CONFERENCES ORGANISATION
12 April 2013
Main organiser of the research seminar “La memorialistica di prigionia dei militari italiani nella Seconda Guerra Mondiale. Origini, forme e significati di una tradizione fra storia e letteratura”, in the framework of the research project “La memorialistica italiana della prigionia sovietica e dell’internamento militare in Germania. Esperienze a confronto dall’universo concentrazionario del totalitarismo”. The event will take place at the Istituto Storico della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea in Provincia di Cuneo “Dante Livio Bianco”.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
October 2012-February 2013
Wintersemester main seminar “Letteratura e scienza fra il 1600 e il 1800” (30 hours) at the Institute for Modern Languages of the University Frankfurt “Goethe”.
Description: The seminar focuses on the influence of the scientific revolution of the XVI and XVII centuries on Italian culture and literature, by considering in particular Tommaso Campanella, Galileo Galilei and Giambattista Vico.
Giugno 2011
Lecturer in the postgraduate seminar (MA, 7 hours) “Nuto Revelli. I granai della memoria” at the Università di Scienze Gastronomiche di Pollenzo (Cn).
Description: The seminario was devoted to outline method, conception and techique of the oral interviews of Nuto Revelli.
10/2009 – 11/2011
Private tutor of Italian language.
10-11/2010
Part-time teacher of Italian at Cactus Language Training, Oxford, UK in intensive courses of 20 hours.
01/2010 – 12/2010
Teaching assistant in classes of English for Speakers of Other Languages at the Oxfordshire County Council, Oxford, UK in intensive courses of 36 hours.
01/2005 – 04/2005
Teacher of Italian at the Department of Italian, University College Cork, O’Rahilly Building, College Road, Cork, Ireland in the winter semester 2005
