Event

Stefania Benini

The Passion of Stracci: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La Ricotta

In this presentation, I will analyze the Passion of Stracci, the poor film extra in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s La ricotta. I will focus on his characteristics as homo sacer and point out the visual dynamics of his Passion, in contrast to his counterpart, the cynical director of a mannerist movie on the Crucifixion who observes his death as the subproletarian Flesh, watching on as impotent as God himself.

Stefania Benini is an Assistant Professor of Italian and Undergraduate Chair of Italian at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Italian Laurea from the University La Sapienza in Rome and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her research focus in Italian literature involves the sacred, from literature to cinema and theatre. Other topics of interests include Dante, Italian women’s writing and cinema, literary translation, and Italophone literature. She has published essays on Dante, Tommaso Landolfi, Amelia Rosselli, Benedetta Marinetti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pietro Germi, Ornela Vorpsi, Roberta Torre, Alina Marazzi, and Igiaba Scego. She is currently working on a volume on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Sacred Flesh. She has edited an anthology on cyberpunk writers and translated in Italian works by Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Kerouac.