Appointment: Federico Luisetti

1 August 2018. Prof. Federico Luisetti was born on 5 May 1969 and is an Italian and US citizen.

He completed his studies in Aesthetics at the University of Turin, Department of Philosophy, in 1994. In 2000 he received his doctorate in Hermeneutics at the University of Turin, Department of Philosophy and, in 2001, his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, with a focus on Italian Literature, at the Graduate Center of the University of New York. The topic of his doctoral dissertations was the conceptual history of the totalizing paradigms initiated by Baroque encyclopedists such as J. H. Alsted (1588-1638) and Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680).

From September 2002 to August 2006, Prof. Federico Luisetti worked as a Research Assistant in the Communication Programme at the University of Turin and, in June of the same year, as an Adjunct Professor of Aesthetics. In 2005 Federico Luisetti started his career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as an Assistant Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Romance Studies. From 2013 to 2017 he has held the position of Full Professor of Italian Studies and Chair of the Department of Romance Studies. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill he has also been Affiliated Faculty in the Program in Cultural Studies and the Curriculum in Global Studies, Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, and Adjunct Professor of Communication Studies in the Department of Communication Studies. From. From May to August 2009 he has been Visiting Professor of Italian Studies at the School of Human and Environmental Studies at Kyoto University and, from October 2017, Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Institute, University College Dublin.

Research

Federico Luisetti is the author of books and essays on philosophy, critical theory, literature, visual studies, the Avant-gardes, and political thought.

He has published articles in several journals, including “Diacritics”, “Paragraph”, “Rethinking Marxism” and the “Revista de Estudios Sociales”. Among his books, he is the editor with John Pickles and Wilson Kaiser of the volume "The Anomie of the Earth: Philosophy, Politics, and Autonomy in Europe and the Americas".

His current research focuses on the genealogy and aesthetic and political implications of environmental narratives, from climate change to the Anthropocene. In this context, he is organizing at the University of St. Gallen, with Emmanuel Alloa, an interdisciplinary conference on the Politics of Nature (October 11-13. 2018).

In 2016, he has been a founding member of the "Italian Thought Network", for which he serves on the Advisory Board.

Teaching

Prof. Federico Luisetti has taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2005, mainly modern and contemporary Italian literature and culture, including film. At the University of St. Gallen, Prof. Federico Luisetti teaches classes in the field of Italian Studies and critical theory at the Bachelor and Master levels. With the Department of Italian Culture and Society, Prof. Federico Luisetti represents one of the Swiss national languages and its culture, both in Contextual Studies and in the Public Programme.