Laura Di Bianco

Laura Di Bianco

Assistant Professor of Italian Studies, Affiliated Faculty with the Center for Advanced Media Studies, Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Environmental Science and Studies Program, Director of Graduate Studies, Italian

Contact Information

Research Interests: Italian Cinema, 20th and 21st Italian Literature, Women’s and Gender Studies, Environmental Humanities.

Education: PhD, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Modern Languages and Literatures > People > Laura Di Bianco

Laura Di Bianco is an Assistant Professor of Italian Studies, whose research and teaching lie at the intersection of twenty-first century Italian cinema, literature, and culture; Women’s and Gender Studies; and Environmental Humanities.

She is Director of Undergraduate Studies in Italian, affiliated faculty member at the Center for Advanced Media Studies (CAMS), and collaborator with the Programs for the Study of Women’s Gender and Sexuality (WGS), and Environmental Science and Studies. Her research on Italian cinema and ecology has been supported by the Lauro De Bosis Fellowship at Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award, and the Bogliasco Fellowship in the Humanities (2020).

Her book—Wandering Women. Urban Ecologies of Italian Feminist Filmmaking (Indiana University Press, 2023) explores the work of contemporary Italian women directors from feminist and ecological perspectives.

Professor Di Bianco is currently developing a second book project: Crumbling Beauty.  Adopting material ecocritical and post-human perspectives, and bringing film criticism into dialogue with environmental and cultural history, Crumbing Beauty traces a genealogy of Italian eco-cinema from the silent era to the present. Engaging with the classics, the forgotten, and the emergent, this study sheds light upon a contemporary cinema that addresses Italy's environmental conflicts, while also retrieving prophetic films from the archive that, in their time, when the Anthropocene had not yet been named, exposed social inequalities and abusive environmental practices, but also imagined the world and told stories from non-anthropocentric perspectives. Crumbling Beauty explores how film can help us grapple with global ecological crises and foster a culture of care and change.

At Hopkins, she teaches surveys of Italian cinema, freshmen seminars like Great Books, upper-level undergraduate classes such as Climate Change Narratives, and graduate seminars on modern and contemporary Italian literature.

She co-curates Global Ecologies a series of lectures, workshops, book talks, and film screenings that brings JHU faculty members and students in dialogue with scholars engaged in the field of environmental humanities and artists whose work explores the interplay of the human and non-human world.

Professor Di Bianco is co-editor for Modern Language Notes: Italian Issue and has collaborated with the online journal Gender| Sexuality| Italy.

Graduate Seminars

On Ruins and Ruination: A Material Ecocritical Exploration of Italian Cinema (Spring 2025)

Prospettive Decoloniali: Cinema e Letteratura Contemporanea in Italia (Fall 2024)

Italo Calvino: From the Woods to the Moon (Fall 2023)

Italy and the Environmental Humanities (Spring 2021)

Nomadic Narratives: Italian Women’s Literature and Cinema (Fall 2019)

Crumbling Beauty: Environmental Crises in Italian Literature and Cinema (Spring 2018)

First-Person Cinema: Ethics and Aesthetics of Italian Documentary Filmmaking (Fall 2017)

Dissolving Margins: Space and Female Subjectivity in the Work of Elena Ferrante (Spring 2017)

Flânerie and Female Authorship in Contemporary Italian Cinema (Fall 2016)

 

Upper-Level Undergraduate Courses (open to graduate students)

Black Italy:  Post-Colonial Literature and Cinema (Fall 2024, Fall 2021)

Climate Change Narratives (Spring 2023)

Elena Ferrante and Her Brilliant Friends (Spring 2022)

 

Undergraduate Courses

Great Books at Hopkins (Fall 2021)

Ecocinema: Framing Italy’s Environmental Crises (Fall 2019)

Italian Cinema: The Classics, the Forgotten, and the Emergent (Fall 2023, Spring 2021, Fall 2018, Fall 2017)

Italian Journeys: Modern and Contemporary Green Literature (Fall 2018)

Food for Thought: Identity, Politics and Gastronomy (Summer 2018, JHU Bologna)

Vagabonds and Ramblers: Space & Place in Women’s Cinema (Spring 2018)

Italian Eco-cinema: Inconvenient Truths from 1945 to 2015 (Spring 2017)

Italian Journeys: Landscapes of Memories and Desires (Fall 2016)

Books

Wandering Women: Urban Ecologies of Italian Feminist Filmmaking. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023.

Selected Reviews:

Peer Reviewed Articles

“Once Upon a Pandemic: Filelfo’s Cli-Fable.” ISLE Journal of Interdisciplinary Study in Literature and Environment. 20 November 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isae081

“Calvino and Cinema: Revisiting A Difficult Love, in Dialogue with Duccio Chiarini about his Documentary Italo Calvino lo scrittore sugli alberi.” Journal of California Italian Studies 12, no. 1 (2023): https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zn4s5mr.

“Toward an Italian Non-Anthropocentric Cinema: Pietro Marcello’s Lost and Beautiful.” Film and Philosophy, The Journal of the Society for the Philosophic Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts 27 (2023): 69–87.

“Erranze femminili e paesaggi dell’Antropocene nel cinema contemporaneo delle donne in Italia.” Arabeschi 21 (2023). http://www.arabeschi.it/erranze-femminili-e-paesaggi-dellantropocene-il-cinema-contemporaneo-delle-donne-in-italia/.

“Ecocinema Ars et Praxis: Alice Rohrwacher’s Lazzaro Felice.” The Italianist 40, no. 2 (2020): 151–164.

“Gomorrah: Imma’s Dream of Domination.” The Italianist Film 36, no. 2 (2016): 312–317.

“Francesca Comencini: Le città delle donne.” Le donne del cinema italiano: una mappa in divenire, edited by Lucia Cardone, Cristina Jandelli, and Chiara Tognolotti. Special Issue, Quaderni del CSCI 11 (2015).

“Naples’ City Views, Flat Space and Suspension of Time: Francesca Comencini’s Adaptation of Valeria Parella’s Lo spazio bianco.” Luci e Ombre (January 2014): 195–208.

“La funzione salvifica dell'immigrato. Into paradiso di Paola Randi e Mozzarella stories di Edoardo De Angelis.” Italia A\R: Migrazioni nel\del Cinema Italiano, edited by Daniela Aronica and Vito Zagarrio. Special Issue, Quaderni del CSCI (Centro Studi Cinema Italiano) 8 (2012): 119–121.

 

Book Chapters

“Enchanting Olive Trees: Cinema, Photography, Land Art, and Xylella Fastidiosa.” In Thinking Italian Plants, edited by Deborah Amberson and Elena Past. Leiden, Netherlands, Brill Publishers, (Forthcoming, 2026).

“Currents in Italian Cinema of the Wasteocene: Edoardo De Angelis’ The Vice of Hope.” In Waste and Discard Studies in the Mediterranean, edited by Graziella Parati, Damiano Benvegnù, Matteo Gilebbi, and Marta Cariello. Bern: Peter Lang, 2024.

“Arte e Pratica dell’Ecocinema Italiano: Lazzaro Felice di Alice Rohrwacher.” In Ecologia e lavoro. Dialoghi interdisciplinari, edited by Mauro Candiloro, Jim Carter, Paolo Chirumbulo, 375–392. Sesto San Giovanni (MI): Mimesis Edizioni, 2023.

“Quattro passi con Sarchiapone.” In Forme della Regia, edited by Christian Uva and Stefania Parigi, 73–76. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2022.

“Women’s Archiveology. Lost Mother Found Footage.” In Radical Equalities: Global Feminist Filmmaking, edited by Bernadette Wegenstein and Lauren Mushro, 285–306. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2022.

“Women in the Deserted City: Urban Space in Marina Spada's Cinema.” Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen, edited by Maristella Cantini, 121–147. London: Palgrave, 2013.

Interviews with directors Marina Spada, Paola Randi, and Alice Rohrwacher. In Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen, edited by Maristella Cantini, 237–261. London: Palgrave, 2013.

“Francesca Comencini: Women Outside the Polis.” In Italian Political Cinema: Public Life, Imagery, and Identity in Contemporary Italian Cinema, edited by Giancarlo Lombardi and Christian Uva, 173–184. Oxford:  Peter Lang, 2016.

Book and Film Reviews

The Beloved Face of the Country: The First Movement for Nature Protection in Italy, 1880–1934, by Luigi Piccioni. Translated by James Sievert. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews, October 2023. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=58903.

Le sorelle Macaluso by Emma Dante. Online Journal G/S/I Gender, Sexuality, Italy, December 31, 2022. https://www.gendersexualityitaly.com/16-le-sorelle-macaluso/.

“In questo mondo: Anna Kauber’s Ecocinema.” Film Review and Interview with the Filmmaker. Invited contribution to Gynocine Project: Women Filmmakers, Feminism, and Film Studies. Edited by Barbara Zecchi, 2020. https://www.gynocine.com/interview-kauber. 

“In questo mondo: Anna Kauber’s Ecocinema.” DVD booklet. Solares Fondazione, Aki Film, 2021.

Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human, by Elena Past. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 25, no. 2 (2020): 224–226.

Ninna nanna prigioniera (Imprisoned Lullaby), by Rossella Schillaci. Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies 6, no. 2 (2018): 249–251.

Lost Diva, Found Woman: Female Representations in New Italian Cinema and National Television from 1995 to 2005, by Rada Bieberstein. Annali d’Italianistica 31 (2013): 680–683.

“Come l'ombra di Marina Spada.” Italia A\R: Migrazioni nel\del Cinema Italiano, edited by Daniela Aronica and Vito Zagarrio. Special Issue, Quaderni del CSCI 8 (2012): 216.

Man in Disorder: The Cinema of Lina Wertmuller in the 1970s, by Grace Russo Bullaro. Modern Italy 15, no. 3 (2010): 387–389.

Michelangelo Antonioni. Interviews, edited by Bert Cardullo. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 14, no. 3 (2009): 380–381.