Angela Dalle Vacche

Angela Dalle Vacche is a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her professional area of expertise is in film studies, with a focus on world cinema. Vacche is a world renowned expert on Italian cinema, with numerous books and publicized materials on the subject. She is especially interested in exploring the role of gender in Italian cinema. Her book “Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema” delves into the topic of the Italian diva and the “emancipation and self-discovery” that the role offers to its female audience.

Education

Vacche received her M.S. in American Studies in 1980 from Mount Holyoke College. In 1985, she went on to receive her doctorate in Films Studies from the University of Iowa. Her dissertation received honorable mention from the Society for Cinema Studies Dissertation Contest.

Career

Vacche has worked as an associate professor at such institutions as Yale University (from 1987-1997) and Emory (from 1997-2001), the latter of which she was nominated for Phi Beta Kappa’s Excellence in Teaching award in 2000. In 2001, she joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as a tenured professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, where she continues to reside as a professor of film studies. Vacche also frequently lectures internationally, having spent the Summer of 2016 lecturing on Cinema and the Museum at the Institute for Marketing and Technology in Lucca, Italy and traveling throughout Europe, Asia, and Australia on similar topics. She has taught classes on a vast selection of film related topics, including “Identity in Film”, “Vampires, Modernity, Technology in Literature and Film”, and “Cinema and Architecture, Space and Landscape”.

In her own studies and works, Vacche dedicates herself to studying international film. She is a well renowned expert on Italian cinema, having published numerous works exploring the topic. Two of her own books, “Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema” and “The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema”, delve into the roles that gender, culture, and history have played in this genre. She has had dozens of articles published on this topic in various publications, such as “Le Paysage du cinema italien” in CinemAction and “The Diva-Image in 1911: Visual Form, Cultural Paradigm, Perceptual Model” in Cinema and Other Arts. Vacche also has directed a number of films on Italian cinema. The 2000 New York Film Festival showing of her “Passion and Defiance: Silent Divas of the Italian Cinema”, a 15 minute retrospective film on the Italian diva, received “Best Event of the Year” by Art Forum.

Select works

• Dalle Vacche, Angela. André Bazin's Film Theory. Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Dalle Vacche, Angela. Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema. University of Texas Press, 2008.
• Dalle Vacche, Angela. "Andre Bazin and The System of the Arts" inOpening Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and Its Afterlife, edited by Andrew, Dudley et al. Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Dalle Vacche, Angela. The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema. Princeton University Press, 1992.
• Dalle Vacche, Angela. What is a Diva? What is a Diva-Film?. Vienna Film Museum, 2007.

External links

• Dalle Vacche's Homepage