Dr. Federico Pacchioni

Dr. Federico Pacchioni

Professor, The Sebastian Paul and Marybelle Musco Chair in Italian
Founding Director, Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research
Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; Department of World Languages and Cultures
Expertise: Italian Studies; Italian Art Cinema; Puppetry Across Media; Aesthetics in Foreign Language Learning; Cross-Cultural Experiential Education; Poetic Quest of Place;
Office Location: DeMille Hall 120N
Office Hours: F 9-11and by appointment
Phone: (714) 744-7846
Website: https://federicopacchioni.academia.edu/research#books
Education:
Prescott College, Bachelor of Arts
Indiana University Bloomington, Master of Arts
Indiana University Bloomington, Ph.D.

Biography

A native of Emilia-Romagna, Italy, Federico Pacchioni graduated from the "Istituto Magistrale Immacolata" in Cesena in 1998 and completed his undergraduate studies at La Sapienza in Rome and Prescott College, Arizona, pursuing a unique academic path focused on the development of a humanistic, cross-cultural, and experiential pedagogy. Dr. Pacchioni’s early interests in education went hand-in-hand with his studies in literature and film, eventually leading to his Ph.D. in Italian Studies from Indiana University Bloomington in 2010. After holding posts at the University of Connecticut-Storrs and the Italian Immersion School of Middlebury College in Vermont, he won, in 2012, the Sebastian Paul and Marybelle Musco Endowed Chair in Italian Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California.

At Chapman University, he teaches interdisciplinary courses in Italian Studies, the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, and the University Honors Program, including several travel courses across the Italian peninsula. From 2012 to 2023, he directed the Italian Studies program, expanding curricular offerings and programming and facilitating the establishment of new endowments dedicated to the study of Italian language and culture. These developments led to the Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research, of which he became the Founding Director in 2023, the same year he was made Full Professor.

He is the author of 60+ publications, including scores of peer-reviewed articles and eight books. Reviewers have praised his scholarship for its originality of approach and capacity to unveil new cultural and artistic patterns and connections. Among his scholarly volumes, Inspiring Fellini: Literary Collaborations behind the Scenes (University of Toronto Press, 2014) provided the first systematic analysis of Fellini’s cinema as the product of a participatory creative process examining the director’s relationships with influential writers like Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Tonino Guerra, and Dino Buzzati. With The Image of the Puppet in Italian Theater, Literature and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), he revealed the deeper cultural associations and transmedia aesthetic potentials of Italy’s puppetry traditions intersecting a variety of artistic fields and new archival findings. He is also the co-author of the mainstay textbook of Italian film studies in the Anglo-American world, A History of Italian Cinema (2nd edition), first conceived by his mentor, the late Peter Bondanella.

Dr. Pacchioni’s scholarly work is rooted in the creative process itself, especially poetic practice, and his creative writings have been published by journals and presses in Italy and North America. Among these are the poetry collections La paura dell’amore (Raffaelli Editore, 2014) and I frutti del mio giardino (Manni Editore, 2022), and a work of lyrical travel prose Southwest of Italy: Stanzas for a Travel Memoir (Guernica World Editions, 2022).


pacchioni faculty books

Courses Taught at Chapman:
  • ITAL 301: Italian Conversation and Composition: Regional Culture and Tradition.
  • ITAL 341a: Italian Cinema: Great Film Directors.
  • ITAL 342: Advanced Italian Grammar and Stylistics.
  • ITAL 345: Italian Conversation and Composition: Introduction to Contemporary Society.
  • ITAL 353: Short Narrative in Italian Culture: Oral Tradition, Literature and Cinema.
  • ITAL 354: Songs of Italy: Voices of Yesterday and Today.
  • ITAL 375: Masterpieces of Italian Literature.
  • ITAL 101/102/201/301: Journey to Sicily: Immersion in Taormina.
  • ITAL 101/102/201/301: Journey to Salento: Immersion in Lecce.
  • ITAL 341/FS443f/FS543: Italian Cinema: Politics, Art and Industry.
  • ITAL 387/FS444m/FS544: Italian American Cinema.
  • HON 314: Narrating the Afterworld: Dante’s Spiritual Journey.
  • HON 315: Power and Imagination in the Italian Renaissance.
  • HON 371: Tales of a Creative Mind: Fellini, the Dream-Director.
  • HON 373: The Puppet Metaphor Across Media.
  • HON 455: Interpreting the Past: An Experience of Rome.
  • HON 448: The Beauty of Ideas: An Experience of Florence.
  • FSN 309/509: Food, Diet and Culture (with Dr. Anuradha Prakash).
  • FTV 361/561I: The Structure of International Film Festivals: Il Cinema Ritrovato (with Dr. Emily Carman).

Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications

"Perspectives on Tonino Guerra: Interviews with Rebecca West, Federico Pacchioni, Giame Alonge and Goffredo Fofi." Interviewed by Frank Burke. Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies 11.1 (2023): 77-97.
The Image of the Puppet in Italian Theater, Literature, and Film. London: Palgrave Mcmillan 2022.
I frutti del mio giardino. Lecce: Manni Editori, 2022.
The Extraordinary Life of Foreign Language Learners: Harnessing the Rewards of the Multilingual Experience. Coauthored with Gian Marco Farese. Languages and Literatures Series. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2022.
Southwest of Italy. Stanzas for a Travel Memoir. World Book Series. Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2022.
L’immagine del burattino: percorsi fra teatro, letteratura e cinema. Pesaro, Italy: Metauro Editore, 2020.
“Focus on Film: La strada”. The Total Art: Italian Cinema from Silent Screen to Digital Image Ed. Joseph Luzzi. New York City: Bloomsbury Academic. 2020. 323-328.
“Fellini and Esotericism: An Ambiguous Adherence”. Wiley Blackwell Companion to Federico Fellini. Eds. Frank Burke and Marguerite Waller. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020. 95-108.
“Illuminating Italian Studies: The Secrets of Peter Bondanella’s Success.” In The Italianist. Film Issue 38.2 (2018): 267-269.
A History of Italian Cinema (2nd edition). Co-authored with Peter Bondanella. New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
“Il pupo emigrato: dal teatro allo schermo”. Italian Canadiana. Vol. 31 (2017): 155-164.
“Lo schermo e il burattino: intermedialità e rimediazione tra teatro di figura e cinema muto”. California Italian Studies Journal. Vol. 7.1 (2017)
“Novecento tra poesia e politica: Bertolucci e il teatro popolare dei burattini.” Rivista Luci e Ombre. Trimestrale di informazione cinematografica e culturale. 4.1 (April-June 2016). Online journal.
“Italy at Your Fingertips: Integrating the Puppet Theater in the Italian Classroom”. Arts: Creative Thinking about FL Curricula and Language Program Direction. Eds. Colleen Ryan and Lisa Parkes. Issues in American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators. Boston: Cengage, 2015.
"Trent’anni di critica pasoliniana in Nord America (1982-2014)" Pier Paolo Pasolini: Prospettive americane. Eds. F. Pacchioni and F. Orsitto. Pesaro, Italy: Metauro, 2015. 15-45.
Pier Paolo Pasolini: Prospettive americane. Co-edited with Fulvio Orsitto. Pesaro: Metauro edizioni, 2015.
“‘È la vita anche la morte’ Il Purgatorio astrale del Mastorna” Fellini and Dante. L’aldilà della visione. Genova: Sagep Editori, 2016. 71-74 [Proceedings of the conference “Fellini and Dante. L’aldilà della visione,” Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna, May 29-30, 2015.]
“Pasolini a passo di danza: cortocircuiti est(etici) intorno alla figura di Fellini”. Rivista Luci e Ombre. Trimestrale di informazione cinematografica e culturale. 3. III (April-June 2015). Online journal.
“La contaminazione tra teatro di figura e cinema in Cosa sono le nuvole?”. Intersezioni: musica, arte, letteratura e cinema nell’Italia contemporanea. Eds. Simona Wright and Fulvio Orsitto. Roma: Vecchiarelli, 2014. 233-244.
La paura dell’amore. Rimini: Raffaelli Editore, 2014
Inspiring Fellini: Literary Collaborations Behind the Scenes. Toronto Italian Studies Series. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press. 2014.
"Poetry in Motion (Picture): Federico Pacchioni Reviews The 'Vigor and Originality' of Federico Fellini’s Films" Interview by Helena Bachman, Simply Charly (2014). Web.
“Le nuove avanguardie. Panoramica sul mondo della poesia contemporanea americana.” clanDestino 1 (2013): 15-17
“Giuseppe Tornatore in viaggio attraverso il padre.” Incontri cinematografici e culturali tra due mondi. Ed. Antonio C. Vitti. Pesaro: Metauro Edizioni, 2012. 205-215.
“Volgarità e grazia: il cinema di figura di Lina Wertmüller.” L'ANELLO che non tiene: Journal of Modern Italian Literature. 24.12 (Spring-Fall 2012): 147-160.
“Remembering the Italian-American Pioneering Spirit.” Il Leone (November 2012): 10
Carlo Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio. A Bilingual Edition (Caserta: Spring Edizioni, 2007). In L’anello che non tiene. Journal of Modern Italian Literature 23.1-2 (2011): 166-169.
Francesca Turini Bufalini, Autobiographical Poems. A Bilingual Edition (New York : Bordighera Press, 2009). In Italica 88.2 (2011): 301-302.

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