Laura Scuriatti

Prof. Dr. Laura Scuriatti obtained a degree in Modern Languages and Literatures (English and German) at Milan State University (Italy). In 1999-2002 she held an AHRB scholarship and received her PhD in English Literature from the University of Reading (UK). She has been teaching at Bard College Berlin since 2003; in 2023 she held a position of Visiting Professor at the University of Perugia (Italy).

Her research focuses on Anglo-American avant-garde and modernism from a comparative perspective, feminist aesthetics, and life-writing. 

Laura Scuriatti is a member of the research network Writing 1900.

Classes taught at Bard College Berlin

Foundational and Advanced Modules

• Forms of Life-Writing
• Virginia Woolf and the Modern in Literature
• Happy in Berlin? The Myth of Berlin in the 1920s
• Detective Fiction
• (Forced) Migration and Exile: Journeys into Imperial Spaces
• Realism, Naturalism, "Verismo", Magical Realism: The Metamorphosis of a Style
• Rewriting Shakespeare. The Case of The Tempest
• Writing the Self: Autobiography and/as Fiction?
• Theory of the Novel
• Words and Images: Manifestos of the Avant-Garde (co-taught with art historian Aya Soika)
• History and Theory of the Novel: Tristram Shandy
• Literature, Collections and Museums

Core Courses

• Global Modernisms
• Joyce's Ulysses: A Modernist Epic
• Renaissance Florence

Supervision interests: English and German modernist and contemporary literature; interdisciplinary projects in modernist and avant-garde literature and the visual arts; gender studies; critical theory.

Publications
Books

• Mina Loy's Critical Modernism (University Press of Florida, 2019)

Edited volumes

• (With Arunima Bhattacharya and Richard Hibbitt), Literary Capitals in the Long Nineteenth Century. Spaces beyond the Centres (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
• Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds. Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019) 
• (With Sara Fortuna), Dekalog 5. Dogville (London/New York: Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2012)
• (With Caroline Patey), The Exhibit in the Text: Museological Practices of Literature (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009)
• Berlin Babylon. Antologia di giovani scrittori tedeschi (Milan: Mondadori, 2004)

Book chapters

• "Untimely, Modern City. Literary Interventions on Florence as an Intellectual Capital at the Turn of the Century", in A. Bhattacharya, R. Hibbitt and L.Scuriatti, Literary Capitals in the Long Nineteenth Century. Spaces beyond the Centres (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), pp. 207-231.
• "Modernism and the Baroque: Two Strange Bedfellows in Mario Praz's Oeuvre", in Elisa Bizzotto (ed.), Mario Praz. Voice Centre Stage (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019)
• "Together, on Her Own: A Survey of Mina Loy’s Textual Communities", in L. Scuriatti (ed.), Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds. Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019).
• Sea changes: the Sea, Art and Storytelling in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Isak Dinesen's Tempests and Marina Warner's Indigo in: C. Ferrini, R. Gefter Wondrich, P. Quazzolo, A. Zoppellari, Civiltà del mare e navigazioni interculturali: sponde d'Europa e l' "isola" Trieste (Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2012).
• 'Dogville and the Problem of Objectification' in S. Fortuna and L. Scuriatti (eds), Dekalog 5. Dogville (London/New York: Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2012).
• (With Sara Fortuna), 'Introduction' and 'Interview with Lars von Trier', in S. Fortuna and L. Scuriatti (eds), Dekalog 5. Dogville (London/New York: Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2012).
• "The Autobiography as Collection, the Collection as Autobiography: Mario Praz's House of Life", in: C. Patey and L. Scuriatti (eds), The Exhibit in the Text: Museological Practices of Literature (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009).
• "Bodies of Discomfort: Mina Loy, the Futurists and Modernist Feminism" in: A. Kershaw and A. Kimyongür (eds.), Women in Europe between the Wars: Politics, Culture and Society (London: Ashgate, 2007).
• 'Walking the Tightrope: Sacheverell Sitwell's Rewriting of the Mediterranean in Southern Baroque Art', in: C. Patey, G. Cianci and F. Cuojati, Anglo-American Modernity and the Mediterranean (Milan: Cisalpino, 2006).
• "Designers' Bodies: Women and Body Hair in Contemporary Art and Advertising" in: K. Lesnik-Oberstein (ed.), The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).
• 'Looking for the Self in the City: Roma Tearne's Photographic Autobiography', in R. Colombo and D. Scudero (eds.), Nel corpo delle città: Roma Tearne (exhibition catalogue) (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2004).
• "Hiding the Narrative: the Spaces of Fiction in The Good Soldier" in: V. Fortunati and E. Lamberti (eds.), Ford Madox Ford and the Republics of Letters (Bologna: CLUEB, 2002).
   

Journal articles

• L. Scuriatti, "Strange Characters: Dialogic Selves and Cosmopolitanism in Carl Van Vechten's Peter Whiffle", Comparative Critical Studies, 18, Issue supplement (October 2021): 85–107.
• L. Scuriatti, "Transnational Modernist Encounters in the Provinces: Lacerba, Mina Loy and International Debates on Sexual Morality in Florence", Forum for Modern Language Studies, 53/3 (July 2017): 303–313.
• "Negotiating Boundaries: The Economics of Space and Gender in Mina Loy's Early Poems", Feminismo/s, 5 (June 2005): 71-84.
• (with Marina Della Giusta), " 'The Show Must Go On': Making Money Glamorizing Oppression", European Journal of Women's Studies, 12/1 (2005): 31-44.
• "A Tale of Two Cities: H. G. Wells's The Door in the Wall, illustrated by Alvin Landon Coburn", The Wellsian, 22 (1999): 11-28. Rpt. in: John Partington (ed.), The Wellsian. Selected Essays, 1976-2003 (Oss: Equilibris, 2003).

Contact
Prof. Dr. Laura Scuriatti
English and Comparative Literature
Phone: +49 30 43733 208
Email: l.scuriatti[at]berlin.bard.edu