Research Expertise and Interest

feminist theory, psychoanalysis, gender studies, comparative literature, Italian studies, narrative, European decadence, travel writing

Research Description

Barbara Spackman works on nineteenth and twentieth century Italian literature and culture, with special interests in decadence, the cultural production of the fascist period, feminist theory, travel writing and Italian Orientalism. Her books include Decadent Genealogies: The Rhetoric of Sickness from Baudelaire to D'Annunio (Cornell University Press, 1989), Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), and Accidental Orientalists: Modern Italian Travelers in Ottoman Lands (Liverpool University Press, 2017.