Afterwar(ds): Trauma, Violence, and Masculinity in 1920s Europe

The talk explores how interwar European literature grappled with the trauma of war and the pervasive fear of postwar violence, through a comparative analysis of a series of novels produced in Britain, Germany, and Italy during the 1920s.

Dr. Stefano Serafini is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown University and the University of Padua. He received a PhD in comparative literature and cultures from Royal Holloway, University of London, was postdoctoral fellow in Italian Studies at the University of Toronto, MHRA postdoctoral fellow in European Languages at the University of Warwick, and assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of Padua. He is the author of Gothic Italy: Crime, Science, and Literature after Unification, 1861–1914 (University of Toronto Press, 2024) and Italian Crime Fiction Revisited: Authority, Detection, and the Supernatural, 1861–1941 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

This talk is open to all UT members and the general public. Light refreshments will be provided!