Saskia Ziolkowski

Website: https://sites.duke.edu/saskiaziolkowski/

I work on Italian literature and culture from a comparative perspective, especially in terms of the connections between Italy and German-language countries. My research topics include modernism, the novel, animal studies, world literature, Jewish studies, migration, literary history, and issues of identity. My book Kafka’s Italian Progeny (University of Toronto Press, awarded the American Association of Italian Studies 2020 Book Prize in Literary Studies) explores Franz Kafka’s sometimes surprising connections with key writers — from Massimo Bontempelli, Lalla Romano, and Italo Calvino to Antonio Tabucchi, Paola Capriolo, and Elena Ferrante — who have shaped Italy’s literary landscape.

I am currently working on a monograph on Jewishness in modern Italian literature and have published related articles “Jewish Images and Transnational Histories in Italian Writing, from Elsa Morante to Helena Janeczek” in Annali d'italianistica (2024), “Italian Ghetto Stories: A Transnational Literary History" in Forum Italicum (2023), and “For a Jewish Italian Literary History: From Italo Svevo to Igiaba Scego” in Italian Culture (2022), and a chapter "Neither Rich, Nor Poor, Neither Jewish, Neither Catholic: The Legacies of Natalia Ginzburg’s Negations" in Natalia Ginzburg's Global Legacies (2024). In addition to "For a Jewish Italian Literary History: From Italo Svevo to Igiaba Scego," I have two other recent pieces that focus on Svevo: "Italo Svevo and Women's Writing" in I mondi di Zeno and "Who's Afraid of Italo Svevo? Routes of European Modernism between Trieste and Virginia Woolf’s London" (MLQ).

On Leave Spring 2025 & Fall 2025
Languages 217A