Francesco Bacci
Francesco Bacci is pursuing his PhD in American Studies at the Graduate School of North American Studies at the Freie Universität, Berlin. He has contributed articles to international online magazines focused on cinema, literature and related topics and has successfully participated and presented papers at international academic conferences across Europe. His research is grounded in Black studies, Literature and Cinema. He is especially interested in the experiences and in the representation of black students’ conditions on campuses, in colleges and in academia. His dissertation analyzes how campus novels convey sociological and historical views on the changes and evolution of racialized experience in academic spaces with an intermedial perspective.
Education
| 2014-2016 |
MA in in Languages, Cultures and Translation, University of Macerata MA Thesis: “The latest Fitzgerald’s short stories and essays between Modernism and Postmodernism”. |
| 2011-2014 |
BA in Languages and Cultures, University of Macerata BA Thesis: “Virginia Woolf and Time: “Moments of Being” in Mrs Dalloway and in To the Lighthouse”. |
Travel Grants
| 2018 | EAAS Conference Travel Grant. |
Conferences
| 2018 |
Contribution selected by Sapienza Graduate Forum conference: “The Times, are they a-changing?”, Rome, 17-19 May 2018, University of Rome, La Sapienza. Contribution selected by EBAAS 2018 UK “The 32nd European Association for American Studies and 63rd British Association for American Studies” Conference King’s College London, University College London, British Library, April 2018 Contribution selected by the 5th Conference of the International Association of Inter-American Studies, “Reinventing the Social: Movements and Narratives of Resistance, Dissension and Reconciliation in the Americas”, University of Coimbra, March 2018 |
| 2017 |
Contribution selected by the “The Future of the End - Narrations and Representations of the Apocalypse from the 20th Century Onward” International conference of the University of Warsaw, December 2017 Contribution selected by the International conference: “Invisible city: Avant Garde, Lettrism and Counterculture”, University of Lisbon, October 2017 |
Winter 2020/21
Lecturer, Bachelor Course: Racial Conflicts and Academia: Campus Novels in African American Literature, Literature, John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin
Education and Race: A Literary and Cultural Perspective on the Campus Novel (Dissertationsprojekt)
Dissertation in Literatur
Mentoring Team:
First supervisor: Prof. Ulla Haselstein
Second supervisor: N.N.
Third supervisor: N.N.
The connection between Black Studies and the campus novel is striking and rich in content. Delving into black representation and the evolution of black rights through a specific perspective, this PhD project analyzes how this genre conveys sociological and historical views on the evolution of racialized experience in academic spaces. I will explore the progress of this situation starting from the 1960s up to the contemporary years and I will focus my attention on novels, movies, and TV shows in order to create an overview of the portrayal of the black students’ conditions in American academia. The analysis of campus novels and cinematic stories set in colleges will highlight various socio-political issues such as racial anxiety and discrimination.
Delving into the history of black rights from a fresh and original angle, this research will discuss the changes and the evolution of black studies in relation to academia and campus novels, as well as create an innovative common ground between these two cultural fields that could expose the wide range of overlooked themes and elements of interests. The approach to this investigation is not limited to the analysis of literature, film and literary theory, but embraces a diverse choice of texts. This includes sociological and historical studies of the Black revolution and the Civil Rights Movement along with comparative texts that study literature and film that can also contribute to creating an interdisciplinary view on this conjunction.
In the investigation of the history of the Black academic experience, this project connects larger discourses of civil rights and Black liberation with American campus novel narratives, revealing undertheorized and overlooked experiences of American higher education. It uses lenses from literary theory, film studies, sociology and history. All in all, these stories could lead to exposing the complex cultural, social, and historical dynamics related to the struggles of African-American students and the affirmation of their rights in these fifty years.
Publications
| Forthcoming |
Contribution selected by the “The Future of the End - Narrations and Representations of the Apocalypse from the 20th Century Onward” International conference of the University of Warsaw. (Submitted for Publication) Publication of the conference “Invisible city: Avant Garde, Lettrism and Counterculture”, University of Lisbon. (Submitted for Publication) |
| 2017 |
“The Originality of The Handmaid’s Tale & The Children of Men: Religion, Justice, Feminism in a Dystopic Common Ground.” in Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, Issue N. 3.2 ISSN 2457 – 8827 “Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo e Altri libertini: la musica come elemento narrativo identitario”. N°2 ATeM, University of Innsbruck. ATeM Archiv für Textmusikforschung ISSN 1562-6490 |