Damiano Benvegnu

|Senior Lecturer
Academic Appointments

Senior Lecturer of Italian

As an environmental humanist, my research ranges from critical animal studies and posthumanism to landscape theory, soundscape ecology, ecocriticism, and environmental history. I am an Association Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and the Creative Writing and Art Editor for Ecozon@: the European Journal of Literature, Culture and the Environment. My first book, Animals and Animality in Primo Levi, has been published in the Animal Ethics series by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. I am currently working on a new project at the intersection of digital and environmental humanities that in 2020 has been awarded a CompX Faculty Grant by the Neukom Institute for Computational Science. With Matteo Gilebbi, I oganize the meetings of the Anthropocene Group at Dartmouth College.

Personal Website

Contact

Damiano.Benvegnu@dartmouth.edu
Dartmouth Hall, Room 210
HB 6087

Department(s)

French and Italian

Education

  • Laurea in Lettere, La Sapienza University of Rome
  • Ph.D., La Sapienza University of Rome [italian Studies]
  • Ph.D., University of Notre Dame [Comparative Literature]

Selected Publications

  • a) Books

    Animals and Animality in Primo Levi’s Work. London: Palgrave McMillian [Animal Ethics Series], 2018; pp. 298.

     

    b) Peer-reviewed essays

    “The Dialogues Bioregional Project: Landscape Ecology in Central Italy from the Sixth Century to the Present.” Humanist Studies & the Digital Age 6:1 (2019), pp. 69-85

     “Il suon di lei: On the Poetic Ecology of Leopardi’s Soundscapes.” Costellazioni, Rivista di Lingue e Letterature 10 (2019), pp. 33-50

     “Deadly Mirrors. Animal Death in Tommaso Landolfi and Stefano D’Arrigo.” Paragraph 42.1 (2019), pp. 76-90

    “Birds Who Speak My Dialect: Poetry, Birds, and Landscape in Andrea Zanzotto.” In E. Cesaretti, S. Iovino, E. Past (eds.), Italy and the Environmental Humanities Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018: 39-49.

    “Language and Reality in Gian Mario Villalta’s Newdialect Poetry.” The Italianist 37.3 (2018): 436-448

    “The Tortured Animals of Modernity. Animal Studies and Italian Literature.” In D. Herman (ed.), Creatural Fictions, London: Palgrave, 2016: 41-63.

    “Toward a Minor Michelstaedter.” Italian Culture 34.2 (2016): 1-17.

    “Ti-Koyo and His Shark. Human-Animal Brotherhood from Clement Richer to Italo Calvino and Folco Quilici.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 7.1 (2016): 59-75.

    “Images of Narcissus: Figuring Identity in José Lezama Lima and Pier Paolo Pasolini.” Comparative Literature Studies 52.4 (2015): 818-842.

    “Witnessing Animal Suffering. Primo Levi on Animal Experimentation.” In A. Chapman & M. Vuohelainen (eds.), Interpreting Primo Levi: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London: Palgrave, 2015: 83-96.

    “Uno sguardo dalla periferia: appunti per una storia novecentesca della poesia in dialetto nel Triveneto.” Modern Language Notes (MLN) 126.1 (2011): 74-97.

     

    c) Essays in edited volumes

    “Primo Levi e Konrad Lorenz: Dei bellissimi libri di divulgazione.” In R. Gordon & G. Cinelli (eds.), Innesti. Primo Levi e i libri altrui, New York: Peter Lang, 2020: 197-213

     “Witnessing the Po River: Disorientation and Estrangement as Literary Strategies in Primo Levi and Gianni Celati.” In G. Celati & P. Barron (ed.), A Critical Edition of ‘Towards the River’s Mouth’ (Verso la foce), Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019: 153-164.

    “Contro il dolore: Primo Levi, Hans Ruesch e il dibattito sulla sperimentazione animale.” In M. Barenghi & M. Belpoliti (eds.), Riga 36: Primo Levi etologo e antropologo, Milano: Marcos y Marcos, 2018: 452-460.

    “Il sacrificio di Narciso: Pasolini friulano.” In E. Patti (ed.), La nuova gioventù? L’eredità intellettuale di Pier Paolo Pasolini, Genova: Edizioni Joker, 2009: 106-117.

     

    c) Editorials

    “2020 Ecocriticism: In Europe and Beyond.” Ecozon@ 11.2 (Editorial Creative Writing and Arts section), 2020: 234-237

     “Cultures of Climate.” Ecozon@ 11.1 (Editorial Creative Writing and Arts section), 2020: 170-173

    “Ecological In(ter)ventions in the Francophone World.” Ecozon@ 10.2 (Editorial Creative Writing and Arts section), 2019: 179-182

    “Toward an Ecopoetics of Randomness and Design.” Ecozon@ 10.1 (Editorial Creative Writing and Arts section), 2019: 196-200

     “Mythology and Ecocriticism: A Natural Encounter.” Ecozon@ 9.2 (Editorial Creative Writing and Arts section), 2018: 191-194

     

Works In Progress

- Book Project: Vernacular Voices: Nonhuman Soundscapes and the Defense of Place

- Digital Humanities Project: The Dialogues Bioregional Project

- Article: “Our Patagonia: Socio-Environmental Intersections in Two Colonial Narratives on Sardinia”

- Edited volume: “Gramsci’s Method Thirty Years Later.” A special issue of Italian Culture (2022)

- Edited volume: Italy and the Ecological Imagination. Ecocritical Theories and Practises. Forthcoming for Vernon Press (2022)