Beatrice Melodia Festa (Université de Vérone)
“Urban Aesthetics, Flâneurism, and the Pandemic Landscape in Colson Whitehead’s Post-9/11 Fiction”
Discutante : Pascale Antolin
After introducing Colson Whitehead's urban fiction, the seminar offers a re-reading of Zone One through the lenses of flâneurism and urban studies. It examines how the novel redefines the flâneur against the backdrop of 9/11 and a health crisis, while also reimagining the zombie as a metaphor for urban walking.
Beatrice Melodia Festa holds a PhD in American Literature from the University of Verona and a Master’s Degree in American Studies from the University of New York (CUNY). She is an Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Verona and has taught American Literature at the Universities of Verona, Parma, and Bari. Her research interests include the intersection of American literature and new media, intermediality (adaptation studies), American literature and cinema, as well as disability studies in post-apocalyptic fiction and narrative medicine. She has published numerous essays in books and journals and authored two monographs: The Evolution of Virtual Identity in American Literature (2022) and William Faulkner sul grande schermo (2023). She is currently working on a third book on representations of the flâneur in post-9/11 American literature, to be published by Frank & Timme. She is a member of the Editorial Board of “Iperstoria” – a Journal of American and English Studies.