Olmo Calzolari

Research

I am interested in modern and contemporary italian literature, nineteenth-century medicine, and the presence of Leopardi in the Novecento. My DPhil research explored Leopardi’s and Svevo’s prose works from the perspective of the medical humanities, taking into consideration interdisciplinary themes such as ineptitude, life prolongation, disease, and the apocalypse. This project was possible thanks to the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

I coordinate, together with Prof Tandello, the research center Leopardi Studies at Oxford (founded in 2018), organizing events and running the Leopardi Reading Group.

I am one of the founders and conveners of Italian Poetry Today, an Oxford-based reading group which aims to discuss, appreciate, and problematise issues of contemporary italian poetry, dialoguing with living poets, writers, translators, and scholars.

Teaching

Literature

• Prelims — Ungaretti, Montale, Calvino, Scego, I cento passi; the Italian Sonnet (tutorials&seminars)
• Paper VIII — Nineteenth-century Italian poetry (lectures); Manzoni, Leopardi, Verga, Pirandello, Svevo, Calvino, Morante, Eco, Fo (seminars and tutorials)
• Paper XI — Leopardi, Manzoni (lectures&tutorials)
• Reading group coordination (graduates and undergrad.): Operette morali and Zibaldone reading sessions

Language

• Prose II — Transl. from English into Italian (seminars)
• Grammar (tutorials)
• Conversation (tutorials)

Publications

• ‘Dr Hufeland and the Book of Long Life. Errors and Horrors in Leopardi and Svevo’, in Scienza e follia, stravaganza, eccezione. Alchimisti, maghi, scienziati eslegi nella cultura italiana, ed. by Zangrandi, S., Bombara, D. & Patat, E. (Bologna: Patron, 2022) 
• ‘Franco Scataglini: Six poems translated by Caroline Maldonado and Olmo Calzolari, Italian poetry supplement, The High Window – Quarterly review of Poetry  (September 2021).
• ‘Su Franco Scataglini’, Formavera – Rivista di Poesia e Poetica (March 2021).
• ‘Metamorphosis and Nightmare in Leopardi and Svevo’, in The Archaeology of the Unconscious. Italian Perspectives, ed. by Camilletti, F. & Aloisi, A. (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 217–234. 
• Review of M. Piperno, Rebuilding Post-Revolutionary Italy. Leopardi and Vico’s «New science» in «La Rassegna della Letteratura Italiana», 123°, IX, 2 (Florence: Le Lettere, July-December 2019), pp. 491–492.

Conference organization

• Contaminations — Leopardi and the Modern Self from Romanticism to Modernism  — Leopardi Studies at Oxford (LEO) conference, University of Oxford, 9-11 September 2021 — in collaboration with: Laboratorio Leopardi (Università La Sapienza, Rome), Dipartimento Culture e Civiltà (Università di Verona), Leopardi Centre (University of Birmingham), and Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani (Recanati).

Conference papers/chairing

• Invited respondent: Franco D’intino, La caduta e il ritorno: Cinque movimenti dell’immaginario romantico leopardiano (Quodlibet, 2019) and L’ amore indicibile: Eros e morte sacrificale nei Canti di Leopardi (Quodlibet, 2022) — book launch, Gabinetto Vieusseux (Dialoghi leopardiani, sulla soglia dell’infinito series), Florence, 9 February 2023.
• Chair in: 100 Poems, Umberto Saba, edited e translated by Patrick Wornsip (Carcanet, 2022) - book launch at the Italian Cultural Institute, London, 11 Novembre 2022.
• Chair in: Conglomerates IV – in Conglomerati: Andrea Zanzotto’s Poetic Clusters, 19 Novembre 2021, in collaboration with The Society for Italian Studies, MHRA, Christ Church (Oxford), Italian Studies at Oxford, Italian Poetry Today.
• Chair in: Contamination V ‘Listening to the Self’ & Contamination VI ‘Poetry, Philosophy, Ultrafilosofia’ – in ‘Contaminations – Leopardi and the Modern Self from Romanticism to Modernism’ — Leopardi Studies at Oxford (LEO), University of Oxford, 10-11 September 2021
• The Archaeology of the Unconscious. Italian Perspectives (Routledge, 2019) — book launch - part of ‘La fabbrica dell’inconscio e l’industria dell’alienazione’, 13 September 2020, Revoltella Museum and Joyce-Svevo, Museum of Trieste”
• Madre mia senza storia’ — the making of Scataglini’s tradition’ — Reading Group on Contemporary Italian Poetry, 10 June 2020, The Queen’s College, University of Oxford.
• ‘Storie di pro-longevità. Gli errori di Hufeland in Leopardi e Svevo’ – XXIII Congresso ADI, 12-14 settembre 2019 – Università di Pisa, in collaborazione con la Scuola Normale Superiore. Con il patrocinio del Comune di Pisa.
• ‘Progresso e malattia in Leopardi e Svevo’ — Buon Compleanno Svevo 2018, 19 Dicembre 2018; Museo Sveviano, Trieste.
• ‘Progress and disease in Leopardi and Svevo’ — Literature and Psychology (Italian perspectives), 18 June 2018, Muirhead Tower, Room 121, University of Birmingham.
• ‘Birds against modernity: resistance, poetry, and nightmare in Leopardi and Svevo’ — SIS Themed Conference 2018 ‘Resistance in Italian Culture: Literature, Film and Politics’ 5-6 April 2018, University of Sussex.
• ”Tuto è corpo d’amore’. La poesia di Franco Scataglini” — ‘Leopardi e i suoi fratelli: Le Marche e la letteratura italiana’ A colloquium in support of historic towns in Le Marche and central Italy. 3 February 2017, London, IMLR, Senate House — ‘Con il patrocinio della Camera dei Deputati’