School of Modern Languages and Cultures
Academic & Teaching staff
Dr Alan O'Leary
Senior Lecturer
+44 (0)113 343 3633
Research interests
I work on Italian cinema and cultural studies. I've spent the last few years researching the representation of terrorism in Italian cinema, and am now working on a study of the critically despised genre of the Italian Christmas film, the 'cinepanettone'. I work closely with Catherine O'Rawe (Bristol) on the project 'Thinking Italian Film', which aims to put the study of Italian cinema on a firmer institutional and theoretical footing in the academy. I am co-director the Popular Cultures Research Network based at Leeds, and the editor of the annual film issue of the journal The Italianist.
Publications
Monographs
Fenomenologia del cinepanettone (Soveria Manelli: Rubbettino, forthcoming 2012)
Tragedia all'italiana: Cinema e terrorismo tra Moro e memoria (Tissi: Angelica Editore, 2007)
Tragedia all'italiana: Italian Cinema and Italian Terrorisms 1970-2010 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011)
Tragedia all'italiana studies the representation of the terrorisms of the 1970s in Italian cinema. Examining a wide range of genres - from thrillers to sex movies to auteurist films - the study analyses the ways in which film has played a part in constructing Italian cultural memory of the so-called anni di piombo (years of lead). The more recent English publication is a substantially revised and updated version of the Italian version.
Edited Volumes
I edit the annual Film Issue of the journal The Italianist.
Imagining Terrorism: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy, 1969-2006 (London: Legenda, 2009), with Pierpaolo Antonello (Cambridge)
Terrorism, Italian Style: Representations of Political Violence in Contemporary Italian Cinema (London: IGRS Books, forthcoming, 2012), with Ruth Glynn (Bristol) and Giancarlo Lombardi (CUNY)
'Thinking Italian Film', a dedicated issue of Italian Studies, 63: 2 (2008), with Catherine O'Rawe (Bristol)
Book Chapters and Journal Articles
'The Phenomenology of the Cinepanettone', Italian Studies, 66: 3 (2011), 431-43
'Italian Cinema and the "anni di piombo"', Journal of European Studies, 40: 3 (2010), 243-57
'Moro, Brescia, Conspiracy: the Paranoid Style in Italian Cinema', in Imagining Terrorism: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy, 1969-2009, ed. by Pierpaolo Antonello and Alan O'Leary (London: Legenda, 2009), pp. 48-62
'Terrorism and the anni di piombo in Italian cinema', ISLG Bulletin, 9 (2010), 40-48
'Violence and the wretched: The Cinema of Gillo Pontecorvo', with Neelam Srivastava (Newcastle), The Italianist, 29: 2 (2009), 249-64
'Sotto il segno della metafora: una conversazione con Giancarlo de Cataldo', with Pierpaolo Antonello, The Italianist, 29: 2 (2009), 350-65
'Marco Tullio Giordana, or the Persistence of "impegno"', In Postmodern Impegno: Ethics and Commitment in Contemporary Italian Culture, ed. by Pierpaolo Antonello and Florian Mussgnug (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 213-32. Previously published in in Intellettuali italiani del secondo Novecento, ed. by Angela Barwig and Thomas Stauder (Oldenbourg: Verlag für deutsch-italienische Studien, 2007), pp. 481-502.
'Film and the 'Anni di piombo': Representations of Politically-Motivated Violence in Recent Italian Cinema', in Culture, Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy, ed. by Guido Bonsaver and Robert S. C. Gordon (Oxford: Legenda, 2005), pp. 168-78
Reviews and short pieces
The Cinema of Nanni Moretti: Dreams and Diaries, by Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli (London: Wallflower Press, 2004). New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 3: 3 (2005), 208-11
Interviews
'Film di piombo', with Luca Peretti, Alias, 3 September 2011, ix
Blogs
Progetto cinepanettone. This is my research blog for the project 'Holiday Pictures: Ritual, Genre, and Italian National Cinema' on the series of films released in Italy every December and colloquially referred to as'cinepanettoni' ('film-Christmas-cakes').
Italian Cinemas/Italian Histories. This blog (now closed) is a record of the course I taught at the University of Mumbai in July and August 2011 entitled 'Italian Cinemas/Italian Histories: Genres, Modes, Politics and Society'.
Conference and Seminar Organisation
'"CineRoma", An International Graduate Summer Seminar on the Cinema and the City', Rome, 11-28 June 2012, convened with Zyg Baranski (Notre Dame) and Robert gordon (Cambridge)
'Defining Cultural Studies in a Modern Languages Context', symposium co-organized with Rachel Haworth, University of Leeds, 4 November 2011
'Poor text/ rich context? Approaches to popular film and television', symposium at University of Leeds, 25 June 2009
'National, Transnational, Cosmopolitan: The Locations of World Cinemas', Centre for World Cinemas (Leeds) virtual seminar series in association with the World Universities Network, 2008-09
'Memories of 1968: International Perspectives', 17-18 April 2008
'Thinking Italian Film', Seminar Series 2006-07, convened with Catherine O'Rawe
'La Violenza Illustrata: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy from 1968 to the Present', Cambridge, 19-20 November 2004
Cambridge University Film Seminar (2004-05), founded and convened with Isabelle McNeill
Graduate Film Seminar, 'Film and the City' (2002-03), Cambridge, Faculty of Modern Languages, convened with Emma Wilson
Teaching
Level 1 Italy from Fascism to the Present
Level 1 Italian Cinema and Film Studies: An Introduction
Level 2 Italian Cinema: Genre and Social Change
Level 2 Italy: Regions, Identities and Nation
Level 3 Cinema and Cultural Memory
Level 3 Culture, Crisis and Identity in Post-WWII Italy
Level 3 Italian Terrorisms/Italian Film
Level 3 Bad Christmas Films: The Italian 'cinepanettone'
Level 3 Translation into English
MA in Translation Studies
MA in World Cinemas
Research supervision
I am able to supervise research on Italian cinema and modern culture.