Events

Federico Pacchioni
Italian Studies
Chapman University

This talk explores Italian puppetry as a technology of wonder, a set of material practices through which inanimate matter is animated with significant impact on imagination across the arts. Beginning with a philosophical reflection on puppetry as crafted animation rather than illusion, the talk introduces major traditions of Italian puppetry—burattini, Pulcinella, opera dei pupi, and marionettes—noting their material nature and their migration into literature and cinema. Pinocchio serves as a conceptual hinge within this trajectory: a figure emerging from Italian puppetry culture and reaching transnational circulation across media.

Federico Pacchioni is Professor of Italian Studies and the Sebastian Paul and Marybelle Musco Chair in Italian, as well as the Founding Director of the Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research at Chapman University. His scholarly inquiries into film include Inspiring Fellini: Literary Collaborations Behind the Scenes (U. Toronto Press, 2014), A History of Italian Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2017; co-authored with Peter Bondanella), and The Image of the Puppet in Italian Theater, Literature and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

Sponsored by IHC Global Media Childhood studies, Comp Lit, French and Italian and the Department of Film and Media Studies