University of Bologna

Gabriella Elina Imposti has been Full Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Bologna since 2016, where she has taught since 1992. Her main research interests include gender studies and contemporary Russian fiction, with particular focus on women writers and representations of the body in post-Soviet culture; Russian Futurism, especially the work of Velimir Khlebnikov; translation theory and practice; the fantastic in Russian literature; versification and metrics; and Russian Romanticism in dialogue with European traditions. She has also devoted numerous studies to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and the cinema of Andrzej Wajda. Her research is marked by a comparative and interdisciplinary approach that interweaves literary theory, cultural studies, and the history of literary forms. Her publications include Le Nuove Amazzoni: l’affermarsi della letteratura al femminile nella Russia post-sovietica (2009), Aleksandr Christoforovič Vostokov: dalla pratica poetica agli studi metrico-filologici (2000), Velimir Khlebnikov’s Early Dramatic Production (2019), Khlebnikov and Science: Time, Space and the Fourth Dimension (2018), as well as numerous essays on Dostoevsky, including Il paradosso del mentitore in Memorie dal sottosuolo (2019), and on translation studies, such as Le traduzioni in russo della Divina Commedia come parte della “World Literature” (2024).

Irina Marchesini is Associate Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Bologna. Her primary research interests focus on experimental and avant-garde narratives in 20th- and 21st-century Russian literature, with particular attention to the works of Nabokov, Kharms, Sokolov, and Bitov. She is the author of a monograph on the theme of “absence” in contemporary Russian literature (Molded by Absence, 2018), and a study on Church Slavonic in Soviet and post-Soviet novels (The Mirror of Time, 2018). In 2023, she published Weaving Myths. Two Women’s Voices From The Caucasus. She also edited the volume Faces of the October Revolution (2022), dedicated to the centenary of the Russian Revolution, and co-edited Women’s Voices Between Russia and Poland. Myths, Nature, and the Creation of a New Identity (2024), which explores the role of myth in contemporary Russian and Polish women’s writing.

Maria Gatti Racah earned her PhD at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice with a dissertation on the Jewish Question in émigré journalism between the two world wars. She is currently a research fellow at the University of Bologna, where she focuses on eco-critical themes in contemporary Russian women’s literature. Her research interests include hybrid and diasporic identities, the construction of personal and collective memory, and the theory and practice of translation.