Paola Bonifazio received her PhD in Italian Studies from New York University (2008) and M.A. in Italian and Film Studies from the University of Pittsburgh (2003). In 2011-12, she was National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew Mellon Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Bonifazio’s research interests focus on Italian cinema, film theory and history, cultural studies, and gender studies. Her book Schooling in Modernity: The Politics of Sponsored Films in Postwar Italy (University of Toronto Press, 2014) explores short film productions sponsored by state and non-state agencies to promote modernization and industry, and to govern the Italian people’s conduct. In her second book, The Photoromance: A Feminist Reading of Popular Culture (MIT Press, 2020), she examines the “convergence culture” of Italian media as photoromance magazines dispersed their content across multiple formats, narrative conventions, editorial and business strategies, and platforms. She is also one of the editors of the on-line open access peer review journal gender/sexuality/italy, which publishes research on gendered identities and the ways they intersect with and produce Italian politics, culture, and society by way of a variety of cultural productions, discourses, and practices spanning historical, social, and geopolitical boundaries.
Paola Bonifazio
