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°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼

Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

 

Professor Robert S. C. Gordon

Robert Gordon
Position(s): 
Serena Professor of Italian
Department/Section: 
Italian
Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages & Linguistics
Contact details: 
Telephone number: 
+44 (0)1223 335032 (Faculty)
Location: 

Raised Faculty Building Sidgwick Avenue °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ CB9 3DA Ìý

About: 

Robert Gordon works on modern literature, cinema and cultural history, focussing in particular on Italy. He is the author or editor of over fifteen book-length works, including a monograph on the writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (Pasolini. Forms of Subjectivity), several volumes on the work of Primo Levi (e.g. Primo Levi's Ordinary Virtues, Auschwitz Report, The °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ Companion to Primo Levi, Innesti, Primo Levi magico), and a major study of the wider field of postwar cultural responses to the Holocaust (The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944-2010).ÌýHe is also the co-editor of the collection Holocaust Intersections, a special issue of the Jewish history journal Quest, and the volume Culture, Censorship and the State in 20th-Century Italy. His work on cinema includes the book on Pasolini, the BFI Film Classics volume Bicycle Thieves, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries, and articles and essays on diverse topics including Holocaust cinema, early film and literature, 'Hollywood on the Tiber', AntonioniÌýand Gianfranco Rosi. He hasÌýalso written a general account of modern Italian literature, A Difficult Modernity: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Italian Literature. He recently published a comparative study on the role and function of luck in modern narrative (Modern Luck). He has taught at the Universities of Oxford and °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼, is a former Senior Editor of the journal Italian Studies, a former member of the Council of the British School at Rome, and was electedÌýa Fellow of the British Academy in 2015.

Enquiries from potentialÌýMPhilÌýand PhD students are welcome.

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Published works: 

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Principal publications:

2024. Primo Levi magico. Meraviglia, mistero, cosmo, Rome: Carocci

2023 & C. Leavitt, V Montemaggi (eds).

2023. London: UCL Press

2020 & G. Cinelli (eds). Innesti. Primo Levi e i libri altrui. Oxford: Peter Lang

2016 & E. Perra (eds). special issue, Quest 10

2013 & A. Bangert, L. Saxton (eds). Holocaust Intersections. Genocide and Visual Culture at the New Millennium. Oxford: Legenda

2012 The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944-2010. Stanford: Stanford University Press

2010 ‘Sfacciata fortuna’. La Shoah e il caso / ‘Outrageous Fortune’. Luck and the Holocaust. Turin: Einaudi

2008 Bicycle Thieves. London: Palgrave / BFI Film Classics

2007 (ed.). °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ Companion to Primo Levi. °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼: °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ University Press

2006 (ed.). Leonardo De Benedetti & Primo Levi, Auschwitz Report. London: Verso

2005 A Difficult Modernity: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Italian Literature. London: Duckworth

2005 & G. Bonsaver (eds). Culture, Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy. Oxford: Legenda

2001 Primo Levi’s Ordinary Virtues: From Testimony to Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press

2000 & M. Belpoliti (eds). Primo Levi, The Voice of Memory. Interviews 1961-1987. New York: New Press

1996. Pasolini. Forms of Subjectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press

1994 (ed.).ÌýIgnazio Silone,ÌýFontamara, trans.ÌýEric Mosbacher.ÌýLondon: Everyman/ J. M. Dent