Dr. Elio Baldi studied History and Italian Literature and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, followed by a six month stay in Bologna to study Italian History and Literature. Thereafter, he went on to do a Masters in Literature and Cultural Criticism at the Utrecht University and a Research Masters in Literary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. From 2013 to 2016 he was a PhD-candidate and part-time teaching assistant at the University of Warwick.
The monograph The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino's Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom focuses on the reception of the works of Italo Calvino in a comparative perspective. By combining insights from paratextual studies, discourse analysis, metacriticism, reception theory, Bourdieu's sociology of culture and celebrity studies the research investigates the dynamics of modern authorial representation and self-representation, which is especially relevant in the case of Italo Calvino, who besides being a respected and quickly canonized author, is also well-known as critic, editor and journalist. This multiplication of roles has provided him with a quasi-omnipresent voice in Italian literary criticism which is highly significant; investigation thereof sheds light on the way even dead authors (as well as The Dead Author) can shape their authorial image by contributing directly or indirectly to it through different media. Moreover, on a more general level, the research is aimed towards a better understanding of the factual ways in which reception, canonization and institutionalization take place.
Dr. Baldi's broader research interests include:
The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, March 2020).
'Italo Calvinoʼs Colour Blindness and the Question of Race among Einaudi Intellectuals', Modern Languages Open (2019).