Victoria Surliuga

 

victoria.surliuga@ttu.edu

Victoria Surliuga is Associate Professor of Italian Studies, World Cinema, and Italian Program Coordinator at Texas Tech University. She is a scholar working on Italian cinema; Italian actresses; stardom and public persona studies; Federico Fellini; modern and contemporary Italian art.

Interviews: A significant part of Victoria Surliuga’s most recent research involves interviews on topics such as public persona and image, stardom, celebrity culture, New York in the ‘70s and Studio 54, with key figures in architecture, contemporary Italian art, film, popular culture, theater, fashion and Italian contemporary poetry, such as Marc Balet (Creative Director for Warhol’s Interview in the 70s), writer and humorist Fran Lebowitz (star of Scorsese’s two productions: Pretend It’s a City, Netflix, 2021, and Public Speaking, HBO, 2010), Studio 54 make-up artist Sandy Linter, make-up artist and TV host Diego Dalla Palma, Italian artists Ezio Gribaudo and Max Pellegrini, Italian poets Franco Loi, Giancarlo Majorino, and Giampiero Neri, theater actress Eva Robin’s, fashion personality Giorgina Siviero, singer and actress Ornella Vanoni.

Grants and curatorial work: Victoria Surliuga was awarded twice The 1905 Fellowship of the Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Association; a CH Foundation grant to the Italian Program at Texas Tech University to curate the exhibition Ezio Gribaudo’s Theaters of Memory at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts of Lubbock (2016); and Scholarship Catalyst Program grants from Texas Tech University. She has been twice a Humanities Fellow at the Humanities Center of Texas Tech University. She has also curated the exhibitions Ezio Gribaudo: Life and Art at the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures, Texas Tech University (2019), and Ezio Gribaudo: A Lifetime in Art at the Texas Tech University Libraries (2018). 

Selected publications: Victoria Surliuga’s publications include articles on Fran Lebowitz (such as “The Fran Lebowitz Series in Scorsese’s Pretend It’s a City and Public Speaking”, Series: International Journal of TV Serial Narratives, vol. 8, n. 1, 2022, pp. 33-43; “The Art of Fran Lebowitz's Public Persona,” The Journal of American Culture, vol. 45, issue 5, March 2022, pp. 3-17), on Federico Fellini and his actors (“Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni: Blurring the Animus/Anima Archetypes,” in: Blackwell Companion to Federico Fellini. Edited by Frank Burke, Marguerite Waller, and Marita Gubareva. Wiley Blackwell, 2020, pp. 191-204), on Peggy Guggenheim and art patronage (“Collector, Art Patron, and Creator of Museums: Peggy Guggenheim in Venice,” Rivista di Studi Italiani, January-April 2018, pp. 359-372), and the book Ezio Gribaudo: The Man in the Middle of Modernism (New York-London: Glitterati, 2016; First Place, President’s Faculty Book Award, Texas Tech University, 2017-2018), as well as five poetry books, the most recent being Shadow (Las Cruces, NM: Xenos Books, 2018, in collaboration with the Raiziss-Giop Foundation with artwork by Ezio Gribaudo).

Education: Victoria Surliuga received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Mount Holyoke College, an M.A. in Italian Studies from Brown University, with a thesis on the relationship between painting and poetry (ut pictura poesis) in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque, from Botticelli and Politian to G.B. Marino; and a Ph.D. in Italian from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, with an Excellence Fellowship and a dissertation on the second so-called Lombard line in Italian poetry and the contemporary Italian poets Franco Loi, Giampiero Neri, and Giancarlo Majorino.

Photo Credits: © Daniela Foresto