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Clodagh Brook Professor in Italian

Position: Professor in Italian, Fellow of Trinity College.

Office: 4040

Email: brookc@tcd.ie

Clodagh Brook is a Professor in Italian. She was educated at Oxford University (D Phil) and at University College, Dublin (BA and MA). She was Reader at The University of Birmingham (Russell Group) before taking up her position at Trinity College in 2017. Professor Brook was awarded Fellowship of Trinity College in 2022.

Research: Her research has two main strands:

The first strand explores identity and political voice. It assesses how minority or suppressed voices emerge in the public sphere, looking especially at the place of institutional and symbolic structures in supporting or blocking this emergence. Her third monograph, Screening Religions in Italy: Contemporary Italian Cinema and Television in the Public Sphere (University of Toronto Press, 2019) assesses how religions, including Islamic minorities, access the public sphere in Italy. Cultures of Opposition under Berlusconi (Continuum, 2009) explores oppositional practices in the media, arts and in protest movements (including gender and LGBTQ) when Italy’s media was dominated by a single politician: Silvio Berlusconi.

The second strand teases out questions of interconnectedness, intermediality and interdisciplinarity. Professor Brook led a large Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded grant, Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020: Interart/Intermedia (www.interdisciplinaryitaly.org), which continues to produce monographs, articles, a special issue, pedagogical materials and an exhibition. Through it, she has collaborated with galleries (Estorick Collection, London), artists and school teachers, as well as working with scholars from a range of disciplines. As part of this strand, she has a co-edited book on Transmedia (2014), a special issue on Intermedia in Italian Studies (2019), a co-written monograph (Intermedia in Italy: From Futurism to Digital Convergence), and several articles. She has co-organised the annual Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School at Trinity since 2018. In 2022 she co-organised the 6th International Conference of the International Society for Intermedial Studies at Trinity.

In addition, she has published widely on Italian poetry and cinema, including a monograph on early-twentieth-century poet, Eugenio Montale, for Oxford University Press (2002), and a monograph on a key Italian political filmmaker, Marco Bellocchio: The Cinematic I in the Political Sphere (2010).

She has organized workshops and given keynote addresses in the USA, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and the UK, and now serves on several editorial boards (including FMLS, Italica, and JICMS)

Postdoctoral and Doctoral Researchers
Professor Brook warmly welcomes expressions of interest on themes and ideas relevant or connected to her research. Simply email brookc@tcd.ie

Teaching: She lectures on cinema, twentieth and twenty-first century literature and Italian history and culture.
She is very interested in teaching methodologies and policies. She has published on, and organized conference panels about, interdisciplinary policies and practices. She has a strong interest in inclusive teaching methodologies:  in 2020 she set up Trinity’s Inclusive Curriculum programme (Trinity INC), and completed its microcredential in 2022.
She was Director of the cross-college Cultural Inquiry MA (University of Birmingham, 2003-2013). She was on the steering committee for Trinity’s SLLCS MA in Identities, and now teaches on the programme. 

Leadership:  She served as Trinity’s first Associate Vice Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (2019-21). She was Head of Modern Languages (University of Birmingham, 2012-15) and Head of Italian (2008-11; 2016-17; 2019-22) . She also sat on the Executive Committee of the UK and Ireland Society for Italian Studies (research portfolio holder). She has held positions as Co-Director, and founding member, of B-Film (The Centre for Film at the University of Birmingham) as well as being a member of the University of Birmingham Curriculum Review Group. She was also a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College (2012-17).

Books

  • Brook, Clodagh, Mussgnug Florian, and Pieri, Giuliana, Intermedia in Italy: From Futurism to Digital Convergence (Legenda, 2023)
  • Brook, Clodagh, Screening Religions in Italy: Contemporary Italian Cinema and Television in the Public Sphere (University of Toronto Press, 2019)
  • Brook, Clodagh, Marco Bellocchio: The Cinematic I in the Political Sphere (University of Toronto Press, 2010)
  • Brook, Clodagh, The Expression of the Inexpressible in Eugenio Montale's Poetry: Metaphor, Negation, and Silence (Oxford University Press, 2002)

Edited books

  • Brook, Clodagh, and Mussgnug, Florian; Pieri, Giuliana, Open Works: Italian Creative IntermedialityItalian Studies Special Issue (2019)
  • Brook, Clodagh, and Mussgnug  Florian, Pieri, Giuliana, The Making of Modern Italy; Art and Design in the Early 1960s, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art. Exhibition Catalogue (2019)
  • Brook, Clodagh and Patti, Emanuela, Transmedia. Storia, memoria e narrazioni attraverso i media, Milan: Mimesis, 2014
  • Brook, Clodagh, Albertazzi, Daniele, Ross, Charlotte, Rothenberg, Nina (eds), Cultures of Opposition under Berlusconi (2001-2006) (Continuum 2009)

Selected recent articles and chapters

  • Brook, Clodagh, Monica Jansen, ‘Transnational Perspectives on Postsecular Italy: Arts, Media, and Religion’, in Marco Cervolo and Anna Finozzi, Italian Studies Across Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity: New Approaches, Future Directions (Aracne, 2022) pp. 80-114.
  • Brook, Clodagh, Florian Mussgnug, Giuliana Pieri, ‘Introduction’, Special Issue. Italian Studies, 2019.
  • Brook, Clodagh, Giuliana Pieri and Florian Mussgnug, ‘Italian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Perspective’, Italian Studies: Cultural Studies (2017) 
  • Brook, Clodagh, ‘Post-Secular Identity in Contemporary Italian Cinema’, Modern Italy, 22: 2 (2017), pp. 197-211. 
  • Brook, Clodagh, and Giuliana Pieri, ‘Italianistica in Gran Bretagna: tra interdisciplinarità e tradizione’, Rassegna della letteratura italiana 120:1-2 (2016), pp. 207-17
  • Brook, Clodagh, and Pieri, Giuliana, 'Disciplines, Inter-disciplines and multimediality', in Marco Gargiulo (ed.), Lingua e cultura italiana nei mass media (Rome: Aracne, 2014), 13-32
  • Brook, Clodagh, 'Dissenso, potere e Chiesa cattolica nell'Italia contemporanea: un impegno anticattolico?', in Hope W.H., Serra, S. and d'Arcangeli, L., Un nuovo cinema politico italiano? Vol 2. 2014
  • Brook, Clodagh, 'The Spectacle of the Unseen: Marco Bellocchio and the Lure of the Catholic Church’, in Italian Studies 68: 3, (2013), pp.399-410
  • Brook, Clodagh, and Veronese, Cosetta, and Bertoni, Roberto (eds), 'Novecento', in The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, Maney Publishing:  Vol. 69 (pub. 2009) and 70 (pub. 2010); with Cosetta Veronese and Alex Standen Vol. 71 (pub. 2011), and 72 (pub. 2012)
  • Brook, Clodagh, 'The Cinema of Resistance: Nanni Moretti's Il caimano and the Italian Film Industry', in Cultures of Opposition (2009), pp.110-23
  • Brook, Clodagh, with Ross, Charlotte, 'Conclusions: Splinters of Resistance', Cultures of Opposition (2009), pp.231-40.
  • Brook, Clodagh, with Albertazzi, Daniele and Ross, Charlotte, ‘Italy’s Radical Left in the Age of Berlusconi’, in What is Radical Politics Today? ed. by J. Pugh (Devolve 2009), pp.1-24
  • Brook, Clodagh, with Albertazzi, Daniele and Ross, Charlotte, ‘From Parliament to Virtual Piazza: Opposition in Italy in the Age of Berlusconi’, in the Bulletin of Italian Politics, 1:1 (2009), pp.111-14
  • Brook Clodagh, ‘Beyond Dialogue: Silence and the Monologue in the Films of Ermanno Olmi’, Italianist 28:2 (2008), pp.268-80
  • Brook, Clodagh, 'Borderlines: Otto e MezzoSogni d'oro and the Real-Dream Continuum', Forum Italicum 41:1 (2007), pp. 1-15
  • Brook, Clodagh, 'The Oneiric in the Cinema of Marco Bellocchio', Italica 84:2-3 (2007), pp. 479-94
  • Brook, Clodagh, 'Beyond the Controversy: Marco Bellocchio and Fagiolian Psychoanalysis', Italian Quarterly (2005), 42: 163/64, pp. 55-66
  • Brook, Clodagh, 'The Hallucinating Eye: Fellini and Bellocchio', Italianist 24:1 (2004), pp. 63-76
  • Brook, Clodagh, 'Screening the Autobiographical', in William Hope (ed.), Italian Cinema: New Directions (Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 27-52

External research funding  

  • 2021-23: Irish Research Council (IRC). Mentor: Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr Adele Bardazzi. Title: A Textile Poetics of Entanglement
  • 2020-22: Irish Research Council (IRC). Mentor: Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr Cecilia Brioni. Title: (Trans)national Online Communities: Celebrity, Identity, and Reception on YouTube Italia
  • 2018-20: European Commission. Principal Investigator on Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr Eleonora Lima. Title: Mapping Remediation in Italian Literature Beyond the Digital Revolution
  • 2015-20: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) standard grant (Principal Investigator) for ‘Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020: Interart/Intermedia, with Prof Giuliana Pieri (Royal Holloway) and Dr Florian Mussgnug (UCL). (£680,000). See www.interdisciplinaryitaly.org
  • 2012-14: AHRC networking grant (Principal Investigator) for 'Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2015: Art, Music, Text’, with Dr Giuliana Pieri (Royal Holloway) and Dr Florian Mussgnug (UCL). (£31,554)
  • 2007-2009: British Academy 'Larger Research Grants' Scheme for 'Resisting the Tide: Cultures of Opposition during the Berlusconi Years' (CI with D. Albertazzi and C. Ross). (£84,891)
  • 2009: AHRC/Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies Grant (£3,000)
  • 2007: AHRC Research Grant for Marco Bellocchio for University of Toronto Press (£25,907)

Research Profile