Silvia Valisa

Books

Her first book, Gender, Narrative, and Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel (published in 2014 by the University of Toronto Press) offers a new analytical framework to understand how novels are built through gender, and how gender permeates the structures, not just the characters, of narrative. Single chapters focus on Alessandro Manzoni, Neera, Marchesa Colombi and Giovanni Verga, Paola Masino, and Elsa Morante’s works.

In 2021 she co-edited (with Morena Corradi, CUNY Queens) a volume on 19th-century journalism: La carta veloce. Figure, temi e politiche del giornalismo italiano dell’Ottocento (Milan, FrancoAngeli 2021). This collection features original contributions (Loredana Palma, Patrizia Landi, Massimo Castellozzi, Alessandra Palidda, Bianca Maria Antolini, Maurizio Punzo and Sara Boezio) on the rich landscape of periodicals and journalists that contributed to the Italian modernity (sample reviews in English and Italian).

In 2023 she published the Italian translation of Juan Carlos Galeano’s poems Amazzonia (Rome, Del Vecchio).

Her second monograph, The Periodical Life of Modernity: Sonzogno’s (First) Century (1804-1909) was published by University of Toronto Press in 2026. The book is organized around the cultural trajectory of Milan-based publisher Sonzogno, among the most important pioneer of periodical culture and print modernity in Italy. Positioning Sonzogno as both exceptional in its commercial success and emblematic of an entire cultural landscape, The Periodical Life of Modernity investigates the emergence of modern print culture in Italy and underscores the significance of periodicity as a key lens for understanding this transformative period.

Advance Reviews:

“A brilliant exploration of Italian print modernity, this book charts Sonzogno’s visionary innovations in newspapers, serializsed fiction, and periodicals. Valisa shows how nineteenth-century media practices–shaped by technology, ideology, and readership–anticipate today’s digital information systems. Insightful and rigorously argued, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins and enduring dynamics of modern media culture.”

Stefano Bragato, Independent Researcher

“The Periodical Life of Modernity is a monograph for our times, a rare instance of insight into the evolution of media that explains the present moment through a clear-headed understanding of the past.”

Clorinda Donato, professor of French and Italian, and director, The Clorinda Donato Center for Global Romance Languages and Translation Studies, California State University, Long Beach

“Silvia Valisa is the leading authority on publisher Sonzogno. The Periodical Life of Modernity fills a significant gap in Italy’s intellectual history and moves beyond encyclopedic volumes to set a new standard for scholars studying individual publishers.”

Ombretta Frau, Dorothy Rooke McCulloch Professor of Italian, Mount Holyoke College

“Silvia Valisa’s in-depth study of Il Secolo, along with some of its ancillary content, is dedicated to a nuanced study of the vast and varied production of the publishing firm Sonzogno. The Periodical Life of Modernity provides a unique vantage point from which the complexities of Italian culture during the turn of the century can be gleaned. Valisa offers a groundbreaking interrogation of nineteenth-century print culture that far exceeds national limits and that will prove to be seminal to scholars of the history of publishing across Europe.”

Giancarlo Lombardi, professor of Italian and comparative literature, College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center, City University of New York

With Gabriele Belletti and Jess Beasley, she co-edited the special issue (40.1) of Delos: Journal of Translation and World Literature devoted to “Italian Poetry and Ecology” (2026). This original anthology presents some of the most significant voices in contemporary Italian poetry (in the original Italian and in English translation). Through their poetry and practices, they reflect on art, the environment, and the need to cultivate renewed forms of attention toward more-than-human worlds.

Featured poets: Prisca Agustoni, Antonella Anedda, Franco Arminio, Bianca Battilocchi, Ilaria Boffa, Dome Bulfaro, Giorgiomaria Cornelio, Massimo D'Arcangelo, Tiziano Fratus, Mariangela Gualtieri, Paola Loreto, Teodora Mastrototaro, Francesca Matteoni, Matteo Meloni, Fabio Orecchini, Cristiano Poletti, Laura Pugno, Fabio Pusterla, Ivan Schiavone, Francesco Maria Terzago e Italo Testa. Preface by Ann Fisher-Wirth, Postface by Forrest Gander; artworks by Debora Antonello, Silvia Scaringella, and Ruggero Maggi.

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

• “What Did Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Women Write?: The Italian Contribution to the Woman’s Building Library of the World Fair in Chicago (1893)” Global Voices from the Women’s Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition: Feminisms, Transnationalism and the Archive. Marija Dalbello and Sarah Wadsworth Eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, 33-52.
• “Wanda Wulz.” A World History of Women Photographers, Luce Lebart, & Marie Robert (Eds.), Thames & Hudson 2022.
• “Les voyages les plus intéressants: La “Raccolta de’ viaggi” de Giambattista Sonzogno (Milan, 1815-1832).” Miriam Nicoli, Christine Rivalan-Guégo, Patricia Sorel and Francois Vallotton eds. Espaces, formes et métissages de la collection éditoriale (Europe/Amériques XIXe-XXIe siècles). Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2021. 231-245.
• “Il Secolo torna alla luce” (Pretext 12, April 2020, 114-116)
• "Making News: the Sonzogno Affair (1875) and the Print Networks in Liberal Italy." California Italian Studies 8:2 (2019).
• "Corpo and Corpus: Paranoid and Reparative Writing in Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna andIl passaggio." Italian Culture, 36:1 (2017). 18-31.
• "Sulla preparazione di un campione di catalogo digitale aumentato delle edizioni Sonzogno: Sample 1885 - Campione 1885." La fabbrica del libro. Bollettino di storia dell'editoria in Italia. XX: 1. (2014).
• "An Imaged Life: Wanda Wulz and the Familiar Archive." In Rossella Riccobono (Ed.), A 'Window' on the Female Modernist 'I': from Neera to Elsa Morante. (2013). 45-77.
• "Casa editrice Sonzogno: Mediazione culturale, circuiti del sapere ed innovazione tecnologica nell'Italia unificata." In Gabriella Romani, & Ann H. Caesar (Eds.), Technology and the Printed Media in Italy between 1870 and 1914. (2011) 90-106.
• "Still Figures: Neera's Fotografie matrimoniali and The Epistemology of Photography." The Italianist -supplement on"Rethinking Neera", 30 (2010). 26-49.
• "Corpi estranei and Moving Stereotypes: Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Trauma of the Other in L'odore dell'India." MLN. Modern Language Notes - Italian Issue, 124:1 (2009). 269-292.
• "Gendered Quests: Analysis, Revelation and the Epistemology of Gender in Neera's Teresa, Lydia and L'indomani." The Italianist, 28:i, 92-112.