Dr Sally Hill

Dr Sally Hill

Senior Lecturer
School of Languages and Cultures
address

Profile

Dr Sally Hill is a Senior Lecturer in Italian in the School of Languages and Cultures. Sally studied in Auckland, Italy and North America, and received her PhD in Italian Literature from the University of Chicago in 2004. Her research interests focus on twentieth-century Italian literature, cinema and visual culture, and the history and theory of interactions between the visual arts and literature, with a particular interest in photographic technologies. She also works on connections between Italy and New Zealand, especially in relation to Italian migrants and migrant writing, the image of Italy in literature and cinema, and Italian women writers, and representation of disability. In addition, she is an experienced translator and is associated with the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation.

Current Research Projects

• Photography and Death in Italian Literature (book project)

• Stillness in Motion: Italy, Photography and the Specter of Modernity  (edited volume, with Professor Giuliana Minghelli, Harvard University)

• Disability in Italian Cinema

Research Supervision

Secondary supervision:

• Francesca Calamita (PhD student): "The Theme of Anorexia in Contemporary Italian Women's Writings"

• Davide Manenti (PhD student): "Italian Translations of Katherine Mansfield's Journal"

Sally welcomes MA and PhD proposals on topics relating to:

• Contemporary Italian literature, cinema and visual arts, particularly photography

• Italian cultural studies

• Italy and New Zealand in literature and visual culture

• Italian women's writing

• Genre studies

• Translation theory and practice

• Representations of disability in Italy

Major achievements

• Victoria University of Wellington Early Career Research Award (2010)

• Victoria University of Wellington Research Fund Grant (2010)

• ISAT Travel Grant, Royal Society of New Zealand (2009)

• Victoria University of Wellington Research Fund Grant (2008)

• Co-organiser, Italian Studies in NZ Symposium (2008)

• Invited faculty lecture, John Cabot University, Rome (2007)

• Victoria University of Wellington Research Fund Grant, with Giacomo Lichtner (2005)

Teaching interests

Contemporary Italian literature, cinema and culture, European studies, Italian migrant writing, Italy-New Zealand connections, translation.

Selected publications

"Poems as Objects: The Visual Poetry of Giuia Niccolai," in Katherine Brown, The Art Book Tradition in Twentieth-Century Europe, Ashgate 2013 (forthcoming).

“Full circle? Renato Amato’s Literary Antipodes,”Studi d’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe, Vol. 24, N. 1 (2011): 31-57.

Italian Studies in New Zealand, Studi d’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe, Vol. 24, N. 1 (2011) (special issue co-edited with Claudia Bernardi and Giacomo Lichtner).

“Italiani agli antipodi: Italian Migrants in New Zealand” Migration Cultures. Ed. Graziella Parati and Anthony Tamburri. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011: 127-139.

“The Bigger Picture: A Re-evaluation of Giulia Niccolai’s Il grande angolo,” Italica. Vol. 87, N. 2, 2010: 209-28.

“Finzioni da abitare: Il paesaggio fantasticato di Gianni Celati e Luigi Ghirri.” Letteratura come fantasticazione. Ed. Marina Spunta and Laura Rorato. Edwin Mellen Press, 2009: 217-240.

"Family Photographs, Filial Texts: Re-Writing the Family Album in Works by Lalla Romano and  Dacia Maraini", L'anello che non tiene: Journal of Modern Italian Literature Vol. 21, n. 2, 2009: 129-155. 

"La morte e la memoria: Pasolini e la fotografia." Locus Solus n. 7, "Memoria e immagini" (a cura di Barbara Grespi), Bruno Mondatori, 2009: 119-149.

"Texts as Photographs, Photographs as Texts: Lalla Romano and the Photographic Image." Italian Culture. Vol. 24-25, 2006-2007: 45-62.

“‘Il grande enigma del vero’: Photographic and Literary Realisms in Late Nineteenth-Century  Italy.” Spunti e ricerche Vol. 19, 2004 (published in 2006): 64-70.

Translation: Sergio Zatti, The Quest for Epic: From Ariosto to Tasso.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006 (with Dennis Looney).