KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Federico di Chio

Federico di Chio is EVP Strategy and Corporate Marketing for Mediaset Group and he is currently Professor of Business Strategy of Media Companies at the Catholic University of Milan and of Media management at the University of Bologna.

He joined the Fininvest Group in 1989 and has held numerous managerial positions in the Group’s companies: Head of all Mediaset’ free-to-air channels, with responsability on portfolio startegy, programming, schedule-coordination,branding & promotion; Head of Content Strategy, Tv programming (in-house channels and third-parties channels) and Consumer Marketing for Mediaset Premium; responsible for the coordination of all activities (editorial, commercial, technical, regulatory,…) concerning the migration of Mediaset to the digital terrestrial television (dtt) environment; CEO of Medusa Film; he is also a board member of Auditel and TER-Tavolo Editori Radio.

His research interests include the relationship between Italian and American film cultures and industries in the twentieth century; on this topic, he recently wrote Il cinema americano in Italia. Industria, società, immaginari. Dalle origini alla Seconda Guerra Mondiale (Vita e Pensiero, 2021). Previously, he published L’illusione difficile, Cinema e serie tv nell’età della disillusione (Bompiani, 2011); in 2016, American Storytelling. Le forme del racconto nel cinema e nelle serie tv (Carocci); and in 2017, he edited the monographic volume Mediamorfosi 2 for Link-Idee per la televisione. With Francesco Casetti he wrote Analisi dei Film (Bompiani, 1990) and Analisi della televisione (Bompiani, 1998). With Giampaolo Parenti he wrote Manuale del telespettatore (Bompiani, 2003).

David Forgacs

David Forgacs holds the endowed Guido and Mariuccia Zerilli-Marimò Chair in Contemporary Italian Studies at New York University. He earned both his M.A. in English and his M.Phil. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Oxford (1975, 1977) and his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (1979). Previously, he taught at University College London, where he held the Panizzi Chair of Italian, established in 1828. Before that, he was Reader in Film Studies at the Royal Holloway University of London; a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge; and has taught at the University of Sussex.

His research focused on cinema and photography in Italian culture and on contemporary Italy’s cultural history, media, and politics. Among his publications, we would like to remember the following volumes he authored or edited: Messaggi di sangue. La violenza nella storia d’Italia (Laterza: 2021); Italy’s Margins. Social Exclusion and Nation Formation since 1861 (Cambridge University Press: 2014); Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (edited with Stephen Gundle, Indiana University Press: 2007); Rome Open City/Roma città aperta (BFI Publishing: 2000); Roberto Rossellini, Magician of the Real (edited with Sarah Lutton and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, BFI Publishing: 2000); and Italian Cultural Studies. An Introduction (edited with Robert Lumley, Oxford University Press: 1996).

Eugenia Paulicelli

Eugenia Paulicelli is Professor of Italian, Comparative Literature, and Women’s Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. At The Graduate Center, she is appointed faculty in the programs of Comparative Literature, The Italian Specialization, Women’s Studies, and The Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, where the concentration in Fashion Studies she created is housed. She has curated several exhibitions as part of The Fabric of Cultures Project, a research lab that aims to connect the relationship between fashion producers and consumers in new ways. Her research addresses the history and theory of fashion; the relationship between fashion, film, literature, and other media; the politics of gender and race; women’s history and the role of narrative in nation-building.

She has written and edited several books including The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies (co-editor, Routledge: 2021); Moda e Cinema in Italia. Dal Muto ai nostri giorni (Mondadori: 2020); Moda e Letteratura nell’Italia della prima modernità (Meltemi Press, 2019); Film, Fashion and the 1960s (co-edited with Drake Stutesman and Louise Wallenberg, Indiana University Press: 2017); Italian Style. Fashion & Film from Early Cinema to the Digital Age (Bloomsbury: 2016); and Fashion Under Fascism. Beyond the Black shirt (Berg: 2004).