ABOUT THE MAIN INVESTIGATOR
Stefano Serafini
Stefano Serafini is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown University and
the University of Padua (2024–27). He received a PhD in Comparative Literature and Cultures from Royal
Holloway, University of London (2019) and was Postdoctoral Fellow in Italian Studies at the University of
Toronto (2020–21), MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern
Languages at the University of Warwick (2021–22), and Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the
University of Padua (2022–24).
His research sits at the intersection of cultural and literary studies, gender
studies, and the history of medicine and criminal law, exploring how discourses on deviance, mental health,
and violence circulated across modern and contemporary Europe. His current project investigates
transnational and trans-medial flows of foundational discourses on mental health and violence in interwar
Europe (1918–1939), positioning Britain and Italy as key sites of medical and legal innovation and cultural
exchange. Through this work, he illuminates how cross-cultural representations of the traumatized veteran
reveal broader shifts in European understandings of masculinity, normality, and social order.
Selected Works
Literature and Medicine, Crime and the Gothic in modern Italy and Britain
Monographs
Italian Crime Fiction Revisited: Authority, Detection, and the Supernatural, 1861–1941 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
Gothic Italy: Crime, Science, and Literature After Unification, 1861–1914 (University of Toronto Press, 2024 American Association for Italian Studies best book in literary and cultural studies)
Edited Volumes
Complicity in the Second World War: Literature and the Memory of the Axis Occupation, co-edited with Guido Bartolini (forthcoming with Fordham University Press)
Time, Space, and Place: Revisiting Golden Age Crime Fiction, co-edited with Sarah Martin (forthcoming with Routledge)
Italian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, co-edited with Marco Malvestio (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles (selection)
“Atavism, Recidivism, and the Prison System: Cesare Lombroso in the British Popular Press, 1887–1896”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 30.2, 2025, pp. 150–167.
“Gotico e misteri nell’Italia post-unitaria”, Transalpina, 25, 2022, pp. 87–100.
“Immagini e criminalità nell’Italia di fine secolo tra stampa, letteratura e scienza”, The Italianist, 42.1, 2022, pp. 1–23.
“Un(suitable) Jobs: Female Detectives in Early Twentieth-Century Italian Literature”, Quaderni del ‘900, 21, 2021, pp. 11-22.
“Between Resistance and Canonization: A Critique of Italian Crime Criticism”, Italian Studies, 76.3, 2021, pp. 287-301.
“Giustizia, processo e opinione pubblica nella letteratura criminale italiana (1876-1889)”, RILUNE. Revue des littératures européennes, 14, 2020, pp. 37-50.
“Murder, Mayhem, and Madness: John Dickson Carr’s Gothic Detective Stories”, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 38.2, 2020, pp. 23-32.
“‘The Ghost of Dr Freud Haunts Everything Today’: Criminal Minds in the Golden Age Psychological Thriller”, Clues: A Journal of Detection, 37.2, 2019, pp. 10-20.