Giorgio Bertellini

Giorgio Bertellini an Italian-American media historian who specializes in the ways national and racial diversity informed American cinema's representation of citizenship, stardom, and leadership during the era of migrations, fascism, and World War II. He is currently Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan.

Life Born in Mantua, Italy, Bertellini studied philosophy at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and earned his Ph.D. in cinema studies at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. He moved to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2001 as a Junior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows and is currently Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the same institution with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Romance Languages. He was the Sargent-Faull Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies (2007–08) and a Tiro a Segno Fellow in New York University's Italian Studies department.

Recognition

His work twice received the American Association of Italian Studies book award for film and media (2010 and 2020). His other book awards include the Robert K. Martin Best Book Prize (Canadian Association for American Studies, 2010), the Peter C. Rollins Book Award (Southwest Popular and American Culture Association, 2015), the IASA Book Award (Italian American Studies Association, 2020), and the Premio Internazionale di Letteratura Città di Como, 2023). His work has been supported by the American Philosophical Association, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. In 2022, he was selected as one of 180 Guggenheim fellows, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation-sponsored scholarship.

Works The Cinema of Italy. Wallflower Press, 2004/2007. . Early Cinema and the 'National': Early Cinema in Review: Proceedings of Domitor. (Co-edited with Richard Abel and Rob King). John Libbey Publishing, 2008. Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque. Indiana University Press, 2009. Emir Kusturica (Contemporary Film Directors). University of Illinois Press, 2015. Milan: Editrice Il Castoro, 1996. ; 2nd expanded ed., 2001 ; English Edition: Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015. ; Romanian Edition: Bucharest: IBU Publishing, 2017. Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader. John Libbey Publishing, 2013. The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America. University of California Press, 2019. Il Divo e il Duce. Fama, politica e pubblicità nell'America degli anni Venti. Florence: Le Monnier, 2022.