Carlotta Vacchelli
I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Plank-Institut in the program “Controcultura”, with a project on Pablo Echaurren's production in the context of Italian underground comics. After completing my Ph.D. (Italian Studies, Indiana University, 2020), with a dissertation on the influence of Italian artist Andrea Pazienza on comics, literature, cinema, and pop music, I was a Research Fellow at the Center for Italian Modern Art (NYC), studying the artistic relationship between Italian artist Mario Schifano and the countercultural magazine Frigidaire, as well as the visual and literary representations of Schifano and his works by other authors. I curated the exhibition "La funzione-Pazienza" at the Centro Fumetto Andrea Pazienza (Cremona), and the namesake catalogue. I was the inaugural Ragusa Foundation Fellow, with a project on Italian comics (NYC, 2021), and Associate Editor of the online peer-reviewed journal "Simultanea. A Journal of Italian Media and Pop Culture". I wrote about Italian literature, art, comics, and cinema for peer-reviewed journals such as Elephant & Castle, Studi Italiani, Italica, Italian Quarterly, Studi buzzatiani, International Journal of Comic Art, Cultura & Comunicazione. I am a founding member of the research group SnIF (Studying 'n' Investigating Fumetti), and member of the board of the association Arcicomics. I curate the section "Charlied Don't Surf" in the visual/literary culture blog "Quasi".
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Papers by Carlotta Vacchelli
Full article available: https://elephantandcastle.unibg.it/web/saggi/dall-uomo-scimmia-a-san-sebastiano-rappresentazioni-di-mario-schifano-tra-letteratura-musica-e-arti-visive/401
This brief essay is two-folded. First, it covers some of the major Social Media artistic initiatives proposed by Italian comics authors during the COVID 19 pandemic lockdown. In the second part, it focuses on a small number of comics authors, particularly active on their facebook pages, who have employed specific comic codes and strategies, in order to stress more in depth themes and topics caused by the pandemic.
Questo breve pezzo passa in rassegna alcune delle iniziative organizzate nell'ambito del fumetto italiano durante il lockdown della pandemia del 2020, aventi come principale veicolo di circolazione i social network. In seconda battuta, ci si concentra su una selezione di fumettisti, particolarmente attivi sulle proprie pagine Facebook durante il lockdown, che hanno impiegato strategie di riflessione e comunicazione afferenti ai modi del comico per affrontare la tematica legata al diffondersi del COVID-19.
My analysis retraces the role played by Dino Buzzati as an icon for the development of comics in Italy. I draw my considerations from the editorial history and the critical fortune of a group of works combining words and pictures: Poema a fumetti (Poem strip), Le storie dipinte, I miracoli di Val Morel and Il reggimento parte all’alba. A close examination of the editorial formats as well as an analysis of the scholarship emphasizes three interrelated aspects: the growing attention to the importance of the images in Buzzati’s hybrid works; the safeguard of the relationships between texts and images; the presentation of Buzzati as graphic novelist. Finally, I draw my conclusions by analyzing how Buzzati’s works are dealt with in contexts that are closer to comics’ elaboration and distribution, including comics magazines, collections and manuals, as well as spaces for comics culture.
Cet article retrace le rôle joué par Dino Buzzati en tant que figure centrale de la bande dessinée à travers l’aventure éditoriale et la réception critique d’un ensemble de travaux où texte et image cohabitent: Poema a fumetti, Le storie dipinte, I miracoli di Val Morel, et Il reggimento parte all’alba. L’analyse historique de la forme éditoriale et des recherches consacrées à ces œuvres permet de relever trois aspects étroitement liés: une attention croissante à la préparation de l’image; la conservation des rapports entre les éléments iconiques et textuels; la présentation de l’écrivain de Belluno au lecteur contemporain en tant qu’auteur de romans graphiques. Dans les conclusions nous allons rappeler aussi d’autres confirmations du rapport de Buzzati avec le monde de la bande-dessinée dans un contexte plus directement pertinent au cadre du genre, comme les magazines de BD, les recueils, les manuels et les espaces de diffusion et d’élaboration de la culture de la bande-dessinée.
After drawing a partial summary of the process of de-sacralization of Judeo-Christian motifs in American and Italian mainstream comics series, my article focuses on the analysis of specific features which occur in Garth Ennis’ and William Simpson’s Nativity Infernal (Hellblazer #60, DC Comics), Steve Dillon’s and Garth Ennis’ Preacher (1995-2001, Vertigo), and Luca Enoch’s Gea (1999-2007, Bonelli): the rejection of the prohibition of love between angels and devils, their sexual intercourse, and the consequent birth of a hybrid creature who becomes the epicenter of the narration. We will reflect upon the blatant profanation of sacred/biblical contents that took place in mainstream comics in both national traditions, in the 1990’s and 2000’s, supporting our conclusions through careful close readings of panels and frames, focusing on intertextuality and the use of Christian iconography – especially of Renaissance origin.
Il mio articolo svolge una parziale ricognizione del processo di desacralizzazione di contenuti religiosi di ascendenza giudaico-cristiana in fumetti seriali mainstream italiani e statunitensi, concentrandosi in seconda battuta sull’esame di un motivo che ricorre in Nativity Infernal di Garth Ennis e William Simpson (Hellblazer #60, DC Comics), Preacher di Steve Dillon e Garth Ennis (1995-2001, Vertigo) e Gea di Luca Enoch (1999-2007, Bonelli): l’impossibilita di non rifiutare la regola che proibisce l’innamoramento tra angeli e diavoli, il sesso fra di loro e la conseguente nascita di una creatura ibrida che viene a incarnare il fulcro della vicenda. L’analisi ravvicinata di una selezione di tavole da questi e altri fumetti, con attenzione a elementi di intertestualità e all’impiego di iconografia cristiana, in particolare di estrazione rinascimentale, permette di tracciare alcune considerazioni sulla definitiva profanazione di contenuti sacri che occorre, tra gli anni Novanta e gli anni Duemila, in entrambe le tradizioni fumettistiche nazionali.
Simultanea is now accepting contributions in English or Italian on any subject related to media and/or popular culture for the second issue, which will be published during the late fall 2020. All contributions should be sent by July 2020, following the procedures stated on the journal’s website (please see http://italianpopculture.org/contact-2/). For any inquiry please write to italpop@indiana.edu.
Marco Arnaudo & Andrea Ciccarelli, Editors
Carlotta Vacchelli, Assistant Editor
Siamo lieti di annunciare il primo numero di Simultanea: Rivista di media e cultura popolare in Italia, rivista peer-reviewed, online e ad accesso pubblico. Simultanea è interamente visitabile al sito http://italianpopculture.org/. Il primo numero ospita saggi su argomenti disparati, tra cui design, estetica dei giocattoli, rappresentazioni cinematografiche di malattia e meridionalismo, origine della Sitcom in Italia, ibridazioni bibliche nei graphic novels americani e italiani, metodi di lettura della musica pop, ecc; di seguito, il link di consultazione diretta dei contenuti della prima uscita: http://italianpopculture.org/simultanea-vol-1-no-1-2019/.
Pregando gli autori di attenersi alle norme editoriali presenti nella relativa sezione (http://italianpopculture.org/contact-2/), comunichiamo che l'invio dei contributi, in italiano o inglese, in vista del prossimo numero (autunno 2020), è aperto fino al luglio 2020. Per ulteriori informazioni è possibile contattare la redazione all'indirizzo email italpop@indiana.edu.
Marco Arnaudo & Andrea Ciccarelli, Co-direttori
Carlotta Vacchelli, Assistente di redazione
del sistema educativo. Questa operazione assimila i suoi fumetti a una delle pietre miliari dell’anticlassicismo rinascimentale, il Baldus di Teofilo Folengo, testo con cui il fumettista entra in contatto, quando studia al DAMS, durante la frequentazione dei corsi di letteratura tenuti all’Università di Bologna da Piero Camporesi, Gianni Celati e Ezio Raimondi. Il mio studio offre una lettura comparata dei motivi fondamentali delle opere di Pazienza e Folengo, anzitutto il dispositivo parodico.
My analysis focuses on Andrea Pazienza’s stern satire of the students’ life at the University of Bologna in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. His criticism derives from a clearly recognizable literary/cultural motif: the carnevalesque aesthetics. Through linguistic and visual parody, as well as the figure of the trickster, in his comics, Pazienza condemns the poor educational system of the time. I therefore argue that, in his parody of the students and the academic system, Pazienza recovers aspects of
anticlassical Italian tradition, especially that of Teofilo Folengo’s Baldus, a text with which the illustrator became familiar, while attending the courses held by Piero Camporesi, Gianni Celati, and Ezio Raimondi. My study compares the discourse developed by Pazienza and Folengo, especially in view of their parody of reality.
Ely share the same aesthetics of communication in book art. Both authors conceive their works as a book format, producing a clash between the unreadable content of the books – otherworldly images combined with invented indecipherable codes – and their intelligible material and visual characteristics, that imitate existing artefacts. This study draws a comparison between these two artists’ book production. It is my conviction that the books by Ely and Serafini convey the idea of a universal readability and can be interpreted as tools for accepting otherness.
Valuterò inoltre la collocazione dei tre film nella varietà della commedia di argomento storico, anche in rapporto alle più fortunate opere che si inseriscono in questa temperie, quali "Marcia su Roma" di Dino Risi (1962), "La grande guerra" di Mario Monicelli (1959) e "Tutti a casa" di Luigi Comencini (1960).
Talks by Carlotta Vacchelli
Simultanea, in collaboration with the Department of French and Italian at Indiana University-Bloomington, has organized a virtual conference in English and Italian, in the hope to offer an opportunity for debate about multiple themes emerging in the field of Italian media and pop culture. Like the rest of the contents of Simultanea, the conference is open access and entirely accessible online.
La redazione di Simultanea, in collaborazione con il dipartimento di Italianistica di Indiana University-Bloomington, ha organizzato una conferenza virtuale in inglese e italiano, nella speranza di offrire un'occasione di dialogo su diversi temi emergenti nell'ambito dei media e della cultura popolare nell'Italia contemporanea. Come il resto dei contenuti di Simultanea, l'incontro è ad accesso pubblico e interamente consultabile online.
Among the most noteworthy cases of this sub-genre, "L’intervista" ("The interview", 2014), by Manuele Fior, places the analysis of the generational change in a plausible future scenario set in 2048, a time that hosts the Bildung of a girl destined to revolutionize the world through the discovery of telepathic communication. Fior reformulates the meaning as well as the means of generational change, depicting the thoughts, fears, hopes, and wishes of the new generation that, in 2048, will collide with his own. My paper will analyze the relationship between the elliptical style of Fior’s ‘juxtaposition of images’ (McCloud 1991), and his management of the table or the paired tables (according to the theoretical frame of Molotiu 2011). My thesis is that Fior’s stylistic editing promotes a critical meditation about the two different, generational ways of conceiving change. As comics have their own ways for interpreting themes without recourse to verbal narration, my paper will also take into consideration Barbieri’s perspective on ‘enunciazione fumettistica’ (‘comics’ enunciation’ Barbieri 2017).
My presentation aims to illustrate the nexes between the usage of transtextuality and the theme of education to ethical responsibility in Gea. Starting from Franco Moretti’s perspective on Bildungsroman, I will argue how this coming of age comic strip redefines its protagonist’s quotidianity in relation to the cultures that she gets in touch with. By taking back to the common root of collective imagination, Enoch offers a low-fantasy and sci-fi representation of migration in Italy in the late 1990 and early 2000, and promotes the integration of otherness into a normality that defines itself through acceptance rather than marginalization.
Call for Papers by Carlotta Vacchelli
Full article available: https://elephantandcastle.unibg.it/web/saggi/dall-uomo-scimmia-a-san-sebastiano-rappresentazioni-di-mario-schifano-tra-letteratura-musica-e-arti-visive/401
This brief essay is two-folded. First, it covers some of the major Social Media artistic initiatives proposed by Italian comics authors during the COVID 19 pandemic lockdown. In the second part, it focuses on a small number of comics authors, particularly active on their facebook pages, who have employed specific comic codes and strategies, in order to stress more in depth themes and topics caused by the pandemic.
Questo breve pezzo passa in rassegna alcune delle iniziative organizzate nell'ambito del fumetto italiano durante il lockdown della pandemia del 2020, aventi come principale veicolo di circolazione i social network. In seconda battuta, ci si concentra su una selezione di fumettisti, particolarmente attivi sulle proprie pagine Facebook durante il lockdown, che hanno impiegato strategie di riflessione e comunicazione afferenti ai modi del comico per affrontare la tematica legata al diffondersi del COVID-19.
My analysis retraces the role played by Dino Buzzati as an icon for the development of comics in Italy. I draw my considerations from the editorial history and the critical fortune of a group of works combining words and pictures: Poema a fumetti (Poem strip), Le storie dipinte, I miracoli di Val Morel and Il reggimento parte all’alba. A close examination of the editorial formats as well as an analysis of the scholarship emphasizes three interrelated aspects: the growing attention to the importance of the images in Buzzati’s hybrid works; the safeguard of the relationships between texts and images; the presentation of Buzzati as graphic novelist. Finally, I draw my conclusions by analyzing how Buzzati’s works are dealt with in contexts that are closer to comics’ elaboration and distribution, including comics magazines, collections and manuals, as well as spaces for comics culture.
Cet article retrace le rôle joué par Dino Buzzati en tant que figure centrale de la bande dessinée à travers l’aventure éditoriale et la réception critique d’un ensemble de travaux où texte et image cohabitent: Poema a fumetti, Le storie dipinte, I miracoli di Val Morel, et Il reggimento parte all’alba. L’analyse historique de la forme éditoriale et des recherches consacrées à ces œuvres permet de relever trois aspects étroitement liés: une attention croissante à la préparation de l’image; la conservation des rapports entre les éléments iconiques et textuels; la présentation de l’écrivain de Belluno au lecteur contemporain en tant qu’auteur de romans graphiques. Dans les conclusions nous allons rappeler aussi d’autres confirmations du rapport de Buzzati avec le monde de la bande-dessinée dans un contexte plus directement pertinent au cadre du genre, comme les magazines de BD, les recueils, les manuels et les espaces de diffusion et d’élaboration de la culture de la bande-dessinée.
After drawing a partial summary of the process of de-sacralization of Judeo-Christian motifs in American and Italian mainstream comics series, my article focuses on the analysis of specific features which occur in Garth Ennis’ and William Simpson’s Nativity Infernal (Hellblazer #60, DC Comics), Steve Dillon’s and Garth Ennis’ Preacher (1995-2001, Vertigo), and Luca Enoch’s Gea (1999-2007, Bonelli): the rejection of the prohibition of love between angels and devils, their sexual intercourse, and the consequent birth of a hybrid creature who becomes the epicenter of the narration. We will reflect upon the blatant profanation of sacred/biblical contents that took place in mainstream comics in both national traditions, in the 1990’s and 2000’s, supporting our conclusions through careful close readings of panels and frames, focusing on intertextuality and the use of Christian iconography – especially of Renaissance origin.
Il mio articolo svolge una parziale ricognizione del processo di desacralizzazione di contenuti religiosi di ascendenza giudaico-cristiana in fumetti seriali mainstream italiani e statunitensi, concentrandosi in seconda battuta sull’esame di un motivo che ricorre in Nativity Infernal di Garth Ennis e William Simpson (Hellblazer #60, DC Comics), Preacher di Steve Dillon e Garth Ennis (1995-2001, Vertigo) e Gea di Luca Enoch (1999-2007, Bonelli): l’impossibilita di non rifiutare la regola che proibisce l’innamoramento tra angeli e diavoli, il sesso fra di loro e la conseguente nascita di una creatura ibrida che viene a incarnare il fulcro della vicenda. L’analisi ravvicinata di una selezione di tavole da questi e altri fumetti, con attenzione a elementi di intertestualità e all’impiego di iconografia cristiana, in particolare di estrazione rinascimentale, permette di tracciare alcune considerazioni sulla definitiva profanazione di contenuti sacri che occorre, tra gli anni Novanta e gli anni Duemila, in entrambe le tradizioni fumettistiche nazionali.
Simultanea is now accepting contributions in English or Italian on any subject related to media and/or popular culture for the second issue, which will be published during the late fall 2020. All contributions should be sent by July 2020, following the procedures stated on the journal’s website (please see http://italianpopculture.org/contact-2/). For any inquiry please write to italpop@indiana.edu.
Marco Arnaudo & Andrea Ciccarelli, Editors
Carlotta Vacchelli, Assistant Editor
Siamo lieti di annunciare il primo numero di Simultanea: Rivista di media e cultura popolare in Italia, rivista peer-reviewed, online e ad accesso pubblico. Simultanea è interamente visitabile al sito http://italianpopculture.org/. Il primo numero ospita saggi su argomenti disparati, tra cui design, estetica dei giocattoli, rappresentazioni cinematografiche di malattia e meridionalismo, origine della Sitcom in Italia, ibridazioni bibliche nei graphic novels americani e italiani, metodi di lettura della musica pop, ecc; di seguito, il link di consultazione diretta dei contenuti della prima uscita: http://italianpopculture.org/simultanea-vol-1-no-1-2019/.
Pregando gli autori di attenersi alle norme editoriali presenti nella relativa sezione (http://italianpopculture.org/contact-2/), comunichiamo che l'invio dei contributi, in italiano o inglese, in vista del prossimo numero (autunno 2020), è aperto fino al luglio 2020. Per ulteriori informazioni è possibile contattare la redazione all'indirizzo email italpop@indiana.edu.
Marco Arnaudo & Andrea Ciccarelli, Co-direttori
Carlotta Vacchelli, Assistente di redazione
del sistema educativo. Questa operazione assimila i suoi fumetti a una delle pietre miliari dell’anticlassicismo rinascimentale, il Baldus di Teofilo Folengo, testo con cui il fumettista entra in contatto, quando studia al DAMS, durante la frequentazione dei corsi di letteratura tenuti all’Università di Bologna da Piero Camporesi, Gianni Celati e Ezio Raimondi. Il mio studio offre una lettura comparata dei motivi fondamentali delle opere di Pazienza e Folengo, anzitutto il dispositivo parodico.
My analysis focuses on Andrea Pazienza’s stern satire of the students’ life at the University of Bologna in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. His criticism derives from a clearly recognizable literary/cultural motif: the carnevalesque aesthetics. Through linguistic and visual parody, as well as the figure of the trickster, in his comics, Pazienza condemns the poor educational system of the time. I therefore argue that, in his parody of the students and the academic system, Pazienza recovers aspects of
anticlassical Italian tradition, especially that of Teofilo Folengo’s Baldus, a text with which the illustrator became familiar, while attending the courses held by Piero Camporesi, Gianni Celati, and Ezio Raimondi. My study compares the discourse developed by Pazienza and Folengo, especially in view of their parody of reality.
Ely share the same aesthetics of communication in book art. Both authors conceive their works as a book format, producing a clash between the unreadable content of the books – otherworldly images combined with invented indecipherable codes – and their intelligible material and visual characteristics, that imitate existing artefacts. This study draws a comparison between these two artists’ book production. It is my conviction that the books by Ely and Serafini convey the idea of a universal readability and can be interpreted as tools for accepting otherness.
Valuterò inoltre la collocazione dei tre film nella varietà della commedia di argomento storico, anche in rapporto alle più fortunate opere che si inseriscono in questa temperie, quali "Marcia su Roma" di Dino Risi (1962), "La grande guerra" di Mario Monicelli (1959) e "Tutti a casa" di Luigi Comencini (1960).
Simultanea, in collaboration with the Department of French and Italian at Indiana University-Bloomington, has organized a virtual conference in English and Italian, in the hope to offer an opportunity for debate about multiple themes emerging in the field of Italian media and pop culture. Like the rest of the contents of Simultanea, the conference is open access and entirely accessible online.
La redazione di Simultanea, in collaborazione con il dipartimento di Italianistica di Indiana University-Bloomington, ha organizzato una conferenza virtuale in inglese e italiano, nella speranza di offrire un'occasione di dialogo su diversi temi emergenti nell'ambito dei media e della cultura popolare nell'Italia contemporanea. Come il resto dei contenuti di Simultanea, l'incontro è ad accesso pubblico e interamente consultabile online.
Among the most noteworthy cases of this sub-genre, "L’intervista" ("The interview", 2014), by Manuele Fior, places the analysis of the generational change in a plausible future scenario set in 2048, a time that hosts the Bildung of a girl destined to revolutionize the world through the discovery of telepathic communication. Fior reformulates the meaning as well as the means of generational change, depicting the thoughts, fears, hopes, and wishes of the new generation that, in 2048, will collide with his own. My paper will analyze the relationship between the elliptical style of Fior’s ‘juxtaposition of images’ (McCloud 1991), and his management of the table or the paired tables (according to the theoretical frame of Molotiu 2011). My thesis is that Fior’s stylistic editing promotes a critical meditation about the two different, generational ways of conceiving change. As comics have their own ways for interpreting themes without recourse to verbal narration, my paper will also take into consideration Barbieri’s perspective on ‘enunciazione fumettistica’ (‘comics’ enunciation’ Barbieri 2017).
My presentation aims to illustrate the nexes between the usage of transtextuality and the theme of education to ethical responsibility in Gea. Starting from Franco Moretti’s perspective on Bildungsroman, I will argue how this coming of age comic strip redefines its protagonist’s quotidianity in relation to the cultures that she gets in touch with. By taking back to the common root of collective imagination, Enoch offers a low-fantasy and sci-fi representation of migration in Italy in the late 1990 and early 2000, and promotes the integration of otherness into a normality that defines itself through acceptance rather than marginalization.