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Roberto Interdonato is a doctoral candidate in Medieval and Modern Languages (German & Italian) and the Michael Pragnell Scholar in Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, St John’s College (2022-25). He pursued studies in modern languages and literatures (German, English and Anglo-American, Russian) at the University of Messina, the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (as an Erasmus+ student), and the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where he obtained an MA in German Studies, completing a thesis on Heiner Müller. He worked as a trainee and collaborator at the German Centre for Venetian Studies and participated in projects at the German-Italian Centre for European Dialogue at Villa Vigoni on Lake Como (Vigoni Giovani 2021; Doctoral Colloquium 2022). He conducted research in Romance Studies at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz and then joined the University of Oxford to pursue a doctoral research project on the Italian author Anna Maria Ortese (1914-98) and the Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-73). His thesis examines a corpus of works by Ortese and Bachmann reinterpreted and brought into dialogue through contemporary theories of alienation. He conducted archival research at the State Archives in Naples (Archivio di Stato di Napoli) in July 2023 and at the Austrian National Library in Vienna (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) in July 2024, and was a visiting research student at the Institut für Germanistik (Institute of German Studies) at the University of Vienna. He has presented papers at international conferences in the UK, Germany, France, and Italy and has published in a variety of international journals in English, German, and Italian. He has been a coordinator of the Italian Research Seminar in the Sub-Faculty of Italian. 

Research outputs
Edited volumes
  1. Krise, Jugend und die Kritik am Erwachsensein/Crisi, giovinezza e critica all’adultità, eds. Florian H. Geidner and Roberto Interdonato (Loveno di Menaggio: Villa Vigoni Editore | Verlag, 2024) [funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of the Federal Republic of Germany]. Presented the volume at Villa Vigoni, upon invitation, on 11 November 2024.
Articles
  1. ‘From Milan to West Berlin: Spatial Alienation and the Post-1945 Anxiogenic Cityscape in Anna Maria Ortese’s Silenzio a Milano and Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Ein Ort für Zufälle”’, in German Life and Letters (forthcoming).
  2. ‘Anna Maria Ortese and Ingeborg Bachmann: Visual anxiety between Naples and Vienna’, in Austrian Studies, 32, pp. 159–73.
  3. ‘A different spirituality: On Lazzaro’s symbolic potency in Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro’, in Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, 11:1 (2023), pp. 145–61.
  4. ‘“Ich bin nicht erwünscht hier”: Heiner Müllers Medea zwischen Alterität, Totenkult und Atomkatastrophe’, in Links: Rivista di letteratura e cultura tedesca. Zeitschrift für deutsche Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, XXII (2022), pp. 75–84.
  5. ‘“Ha accise i picciriddi”: Emma Dante’s Sicilian Medea’, in K. Revue trans-européenne de philosophie et arts, 8:1 (2022), pp. 317–26.
Book reviews
  1. ‘Konstellationen österreichischer Literatur: Ilse Aichinger. Herausgegeben von Christine Frank und Sugi Shindo. Wien: V&R Böhlau, 2023. 550 Seiten + 4 s/w Abbildungen’, in Monatshefte (forthcoming 2025).
  2. ‘Büchners Pflanzen, eds. Roland Borgards, Friederike Middelhoff and Esther Köhring (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2024)’, in Journal of European Studies (forthcoming 2025).
  3. ‘Till Greite, Die leere Zentrale: Berlin, ein Bild aus dem deutschen Nachkrieg. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2024, 704 S.’, in Oxford German Studies (forthcoming 2025).
  4. ‘Insa Braun, Reden über Lyrik: Autorkonstitution in Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen von 1959 bis 1989. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2024, 288 S.’, in Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 35:1 (2025), pp. 213–15.
  5. ‘Daniela Padularosa (ed.), Pathographies of Modernity with Aby Warburg and Beyond: An Astral Map of Warburgian Constellations, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholar Publishing 2024, 329 pp.’, in Links: Rivista di letteratura e cultura tedesca. Zeitschrift für deutsche Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, 24 (2024), 116–18.
  6. ‘Daniele Gallo, Ellen Patat, Daniela Bombara, eds. Spazi e Tempi dell’Alterità. Mantova: Universitas Studiorum, 2022. Pp. 555’, in Annali d’italianistica, 42 (2024), pp. 727–29.
  7. ‘Parham, J. (ed.) (2021), The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene,’ in Journal of Ecohumanism, 2:2 (2023), pp. 205–07.
Conference reports
  1. ‘“ich lebe ich schreibe” Friederike Mayröcker (1924-2021), Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature & Culture, Lancaster University. An online conference, 4-5 July 2024’, in The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 100:1 (2025), pp. 159–61.
  2. ‘Ingeborg Bachmann Konstellationen in Rom: Internationale Tagung aus Anlass des 50. Todestages, Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, Rom in Kooperation mit dem Forum Austriaco di Cultura Roma und dem Goethe-Institut Rom. Rom, 17.-20. Oktober 2023’, in Links: Rivista di letteratura e cultura tedesca. Zeitschrift für deutsche Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, XXIII (2023), pp. 111–13.
Translations
  1. Marta Arnaldi, ‘Der translationale Turn in der narrativen Medizin: Eine Studie über Margherita Guidaccis Neurosuite [The Translational Turn in Narrative Medicine: A Study of Margherita Guidacci’s Neurosuite]’, in Encounters in Translation, 2 [Online] (2024), URL : https://publications-prairial.fr/encounters-in-translation/index.php?id=602. Translation of an extended abstract from English to German.
Other publications
  1. ‘La sola ragione non spiega la vita,’ review of Hermann Broch, L’incognita, trans. Luca Crescenzi (Carbonio: Milan, 2022), in L’Indice dei Libri del Mese, 39:3 (2022), p. 22.
  2. ‘sotto gli alberi di lacrime il mattino,’ Italian non-commercial translation of Friederike Mayröcker, ‘unter Bäumen Tränenmorgen’ (13 August 2003), in Gesammelte Gedichte. 1939-2003, ed. Marcel Beyer (Frankfurt o.M.: Suhrkamp, 2019), p. 779, in Poetarum Silva, 2 July 2020. URL: https://poetarumsilva.com/2020/07/02/friederike-mayrocker/ (CC license).
Conference papers
  1. ‘Aesthetic and Political Vision: Reassessing the Magazine Sud (1945-47) in light of Anna Maria Ortese’s editorial and creative collaboration'. Paper presented at Anna Maria Ortese tra scrittura epistolare e scrittura giornalistica. 5 and 6 December 2024, Chambéry, Université Savoie Mont Blanc.
  2. ‘Der gefallene Mensch: Topophobie und Topophilie in kulturkritischer Perspektive in Anna Maria Orteses L’Iguana und Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Wüstenbuch” und Das Buch Franza’. Paper accepted for ‘Bin ich’s oder bin ich’s nicht?’ Bachmanns Echos. Ein Nachwuchs-Kolloquium. 25 and 26 October 2024, Literaturhaus München.
  3. ‘Loss of Subjectivity, Psychoses and Economic Growth in Anna Maria Ortese’s Silenzio a Milano and Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Ein Ort für Zufälle”’. Paper presented at the Oxford Italian Research Seminar and at the Oxford Modern Languages Graduate Conference. 10 and 20 June 2024, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford.
  4. ‘From West Berlin to the North African Desert: Mobility and Ambiguous Attachments to the Desert Space in Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Wüstenbuch”’. Paper presented at a workshop organised by Oxford University Collective for Pastoralist and Nomadic People. 30 April 2024, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford.
  5. ‘Defective Vision: On Anna Maria Ortese’s “Un paio di occhiali” and Ingeborg Bachmann’s “Ihr glücklichen Augen”’. Paper presented at Reading Bachmann Now: A conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the writer’s death. 17–19 May 2023, University of London Senate House, and the Austrian Cultural Forum.
  6. ‘“Nass von Tränen”: Die Darstellung von Kindern in der Schweizer Literatur am Beispiel von Johanna Spyri und Adelheid Duvanel’. Paper presented at ‘Nüchtern wie Cellophan’: Die Schriftstellerin Adelheid Duvanel – Meisterin der kleinen Formen. 25 November 2022, University of Stuttgart/Literaturhaus Stuttgart.
  7. ‘Pflanzliche Elemente in Büchners und Herzogs Woyzeck’. Paper presented at Büchners Pflanzen. Jahrestagung der Büchner-Gesellschaft. 17–19 November 2022, Goethe University Frankfurt.
  8. ‘Looking for lightness: Enslavement, Martyrdom, and the Bach Motif in Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro’. Paper presented at Blood on the Leaves / And Blood at the Roots’: Reconsidering Forms of Enslavement and Subjection across Disciplines. 19–20 June 2021, University of Warwick.
  9. ‘Das Malvasia-Motiv zwischen Italien und England: Intertextuelle Beziehungen zwischen Matteo Bandellos Novelle und Shakespeares Richard III.’. Paper presented at Malvasier – Weinkultur in der Geschichte Venedigs und Europas. Von der Wirtschaft bis zur Medizin, von der Politik bis zur Kunst und Literatur. 29 August – 6 September 2021, German Centre for Venetian Studies (Venice).
Public engagement with research and dissemination
  1. ‘Cosmology, Ecology, Memory: New Comparative Perspectives on Ingeborg Bachmann’, with Dr Conor Brennan and Mrs Hannah Scheithauer, Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) discussion group, 2 December 2024, University of Oxford, St Anne’s College. 
Teaching

German Grammar (“Grammatikübung”), Sub-faculty of German at the University of Oxford, 2022/23 (20 hours of contact time over the course of Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity terms). 

Affiliations

2022-present: Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland (AGS).

2020-2023: Internationale Heiner Müller Gesellschaft (IHMG).

2020-2021: European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and Environment (EASLCE).

 

Last edit: 14 May, 08:47