Massimo Schilirò

Massimo Schilirò is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the Department of Humanities, University of Catania, where he has taught since the 2002–2003 academic year. His teaching portfolio includes Sociology of Literature, Italian and European Literatures, Italian Literature, and Literary Theory. He has also contributed to the Catania School of Advanced Studies (SSC) and the doctoral program in Modern Philology.

His research focuses on autobiographical writing, particularly in the works of Vitaliano Brancati and Italo Calvino, and on the essay as a hybrid genre blending personal experience with public discourse. He has extensively studied diaristic and travel writing by Emilio Cecchi, Tommaso Landolfi, and Gianni Celati. Currently, his work centers on the representation of place in narrative, especially the themes of return and sentimental pilgrimage as intersections of travel and memory, with emphasis on authors such as Elio Vittorini, Elsa Morante, and Gianni Celati. He also investigates oedoperic literature and the literary portrayal of intellectual migration, including figures like Grazia Deledda and Elio Vittorini.

His recent publications reflect these interests, including Catania di carta (2015), The Measure of the Other (2017), and Returning to the Mother's House (2019). These works explore regional identity, travel narratives, and the emotional geography of memory.

Schilirò is an active member of the research community, participating in the PRIN 2020 project "Phototexts: Rhetoric, Poetics and Cognition," focusing on phototextual practices related to gender and subjectivity. His academic contributions include supervising numerous theses on major 20th-century Italian authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante, Cesare Pavese, and Goliarda Sapienza.

• Scientific Awards: No awards mentioned in the provided text.

Schilirò advises a wide range of graduate theses and continues to contribute to literary scholarship through research, teaching, and collaborative projects. He is affiliated with ongoing funded research and maintains an active scholarly presence in Italian literary studies.