Marco Ceravolo

Dr. Marco Ceravolo is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. He earned his PhD in Italian Studies from University College Cork in 2024, with a thesis funded by the Irish Research Council on non-human encounters in the works of Federigo Tozzi, Dino Buzzati, and Anna Maria Ortese.

His research adopts an interdisciplinary, comparative, and gender-based approach to investigate human/non-human relationships, hybridizations, and forms of dehumanization in contemporary literature.

He co-edited the special issue Italian Girlhoods and Other Brilliant Friends (2022) and the collection Italian Studies Across Disciplines (2022). His first monograph was published by Carocci Editore in 2024, under the title “Illuminare un po’ l’inferno”. Simbologie del non umano in Dino Buzzati e Anna Maria Ortese.

At the University of Toronto, while expanding his research interests at the intersection of Posthumanism, Biopolitics and Gender & Queer Studies, he is working on his second book on Anna Maria Ortese’s late ethical writings and unpublished materials from the “Fondo Ortese” (Archivio di Stato di Napoli). This collection includes approximately 50 documents – such as letters, unsent articles, handwritten notes – analyzed through the theoretical lenses of ecofeminism, biopolitics, and animal studies. The study will reveal a new dimension of Ortese’s ethical, antispecist and political thought.

He is an active member of the Emilio Goggio Study Group TICS – Toronto Italian Comics Studies, part of the editorial board of Notes in Italian Studies (specifically for the Women’s Writing section), and an editorial member of the peer-reviewed journal Studi Buzzatiani: Rivista del Centro Studi Dino Buzzati [Fascia A, Area 10].

Selected Publications

MONOGRAPH

“Illuminare un po’ l’Inferno”. Simbologie del non umano in Dino Buzzati e Anna Maria Ortese, Marco Ceravolo, Carocci Editore, Roma, 2024, pp. 204 (reviewed by Oblio; Testo&Senso).

(https://www.carocci.it/prodotto/illuminare-un-po-linferno)

EDITED VOLUMES

• Italian Studies Across Disciplines. Interdisciplinarity, New Approaches, Future Directions, Marco Ceravolo, Anna Finozzi eds., Aracne, Roma, 2022, pp. 324 (reviewed by Modern Italy; Bollettino ‘900)

(https://www.aracneeditrice.eu/it/pubblicazioni/italian-studies-across-di...)

• Italian Girlhoods and other Brilliant Friends, Olga Campofreda, Marco Ceravolo ed., in «Altrelettere», 2022, pp.115

(https://www.altrelettere.uzh.ch/article/view/3665)

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES

• “Io sono l’Inferno. Io sono la donna”, riflessioni ecofemministe su Il grande ritratto di Dino Buzzati, in «Italica», Sara Delmedico, Manuela Di Franco, ed., Italica, Vol. 100.3, 2024, pp. 371-385.
• "Il mondo fatto della carne di lei", un'analisi ecofemminista del 'misterioso atto' di Federigo Tozzi, in Italian Studies Across Disciplines. Interdisciplinarity, New Approaches, Future Directions, Marco Ceravolo, Anna Finozzi, ed., Aracne, Roma, 2022, pp. 233-266
• Anna Maria Ortese e Shirley Jackson. Maisons hantées, strani fatti, innocue presenze, in Fantastika! Terrore, Soprannaturale, Fantascienza, Utopia e Distopia a Firma Femminile, ed. by Daniela Bombara, Serena Todesco, special issue of «Italian Studies in Southern Africa», vol. 34, n. 1, 2021, pp. 72-99.
• Il caso ‘L’Iguana’: Scelte editoriali, scarti, misteri e soluzioni da un testo di Anna Maria Ortese, in «Altre Modernità», 2020, pp. 169-80

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

• "Avanzi di umanità, rottami del niente". Allucinazione e stordimento ne L'Iguana e La casa del bosco, di Anna Maria Ortese, in La grande Iguana. Scenari e visioni a vent'anni dalla morte di Anna Maria Ortese, Angela Bubba, ed., Aracne, 2020, pp. 125-136

FORTHCOMING

• La donna, la città e la morte nella pittura di Dino Buzzati, in «Studi buzzatiani», n. 30, XVI, 2026 (In press)
• Italian Studies Across Disciplines II: Transnationality, Intermediality, Sociopolitical issues, Marco Ceravolo, Anna Finozzi, eds. (Special Issue - under consideration by «Quaderni d’Italianistica»)
• “Ways of Seeing”. Intermediality and Remediation in Dino Buzzati’s works, Marco Ceravolo, Eloisa Morra, eds., in “Quaderni del Centro Studi Dino Buzzati”, Fabrizio Serra Editore (Special issue Accepted for Publication - 2026, 8 articles)

Selected Conferences

March 2025: Hybrid Children and Ecological Collapse in Italian Anthropocene Narratives | AAIS 2022 Conference, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, US

September 2023: “Spiriti! Folletti! Bestione in pena!” Dino Buzzati's and Anna Maria Ortese's Animalist Commitment in Fiction and Journalism production | 2023 SIS Themed Conference “Affect, sensation, emotion”, Selwyn College, Cambridge, United Kingdom

May/June 2023: “Io sono la donna. Io sono l’inferno”. Ecofeminism and psychosexyual elements in Dino Buzzati’s Il grande ritratto (1960) | Conference “La Fantascienza Italiana nell’Antropocene”, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

November 2022: ‘'E foglia fu!': An Ecofeminist analysis of Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio by Dino Buzzati" | PAMLA 2022 Conference, UCLA Luskin Conference Center, Los Angeles, Ca

May/June 2022: ‘Il mondo fatto della carne di lei’, una lettura ecofemminista del personaggio femminile in Paolo, di Federigo Tozzi” | AAIS 2022 Conference, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

March 2021: “‘Calabria and ‘Ndrangheta through fiction and reality’, from Gioacchino Criaco’s Anime Nere to Nicola Gratteri’s investigations” | NeMLA’s 52nd Annual Convention, University of Buffalo, Buffalo, US

November 2018: "Il caso ‘L’Iguana’: Scelte editoriali, scarti, misteri e soluzioni da un testo di Anna Maria Ortese”, Conference Sc[Arti]: Reflections on the remnant between selection and divergence, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

October 2018: “La passione del puma. Tracce cristologiche e psicanalitiche in Alonso e i visionari di Anna Maria Ortese”, Conference Literary Religions: the space of religion in the Italian literature (1989 – 2017), University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Organised Conferences, Panels and Roundtables

November 2025: L’altra Elsa. Convegno Internazionale di Studi su Elsa Morante (Conference), organizers Marco Ceravolo, Angela Bubba, Biblioteca Laurentina, Roma, Italy

June 2025: “Italian Studies at a Crossroads”: Overviewing Theory, Challenges, and Resistance (Roundtable), Marco Ceravolo, Marilina Ciaco, Canadian Association for Italian Studies, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

June 2024: “Italian Studies Across Disciplines: Tools and technologies” (Roundtable),  Marco Ceravolo, Anna Finozzi, Society for Italian Studies, Royal Holloway University of London, London, United Kingdom

March 2023: “Reading Italian Literature through Ecofeminist Criteria” (Panel), Marco Ceravolo, NeMLA’s 54th Annual Convention, University of Buffalo, Buffalo, US

May/June 2022: “Dino Buzzati at 50. New Research Perspectives” (Panel), Marco Ceravolo, Eloisa Morra | AAIS 2022 Conference, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

March 2022: “Italy and Post-Anthropocentric Studies: Nonhumanity in Italian Literature (1900-Today)” (Panel), Marco Ceravolo, Santi Luca Famà, NeMLA’s 53rd Annual Convention, University of Buffalo, Buffalo, US

Awards and Grants

• Premio “Per conoscere Dino Buzzati”, Associazione Internazionale Dino Buzzati (2024)
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Department of Italian, University of Toronto (2024)
• Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship, Irish Research Council, University College Cork (2020)
• Eduardo Saccone Scholarship in Italian Literature, Department of Italian, University College Cork (2019)