Maria DiBattista
· Professor of Comparative LiteraturePrinceton University · Comparative Literature
Active 1977–2025
About
Professor Maria DiBattista is a faculty member in the Department of Comparative Literature, serving as Professor of English and Comparative Literature. She is also the Chair of the Committee for Film Studies and is involved with the women’s studies faculty. Her research interests encompass twentieth-century literature and film, the European novel and narrative theory, British literature, contemporary literature and culture, film studies, and modernism. Professor DiBattista has written extensively on modern literature, popular and pulp fiction, and film, contributing significantly to these fields through her scholarly work. Her published works include edited volumes such as the Cambridge Companion to Autobiography and Modernism and Autobiography, as well as influential books like Novel Characters: A Genealogy, Imagining Virginia Woolf: An Experiment in Critical Biography, and Fast Talking Dames, a study of American film comedy of the thirties and forties. She has also contributed to the study of Virginia Woolf’s major novels and has served as an associate editor for the Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies. Her academic engagement extends to working with graduate students whose research interests align with her own, fostering scholarly growth in her areas of expertise.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Computer Science
- Literature
- Social psychology
- Psychology
- Seismology
- Art
- Geology
- History
- Aesthetics
Selected publications
Liliana Cavani’s ‘Francesco trilogy’
Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies · 2025-04-08
article1st authorCorrespondingThe introduction surveys this volume’s varied approaches and assessments of Liliana Cavani’s three representations of St Francis Assisi while considering Cavani’s idea of cinema as a form of knowing and an instrument of exploration. It focuses on her formative years at RAI, in particular her investigative historical documentaries, and on her singular vision of the revolutionary social experience of Francis and Clare of Assisi. The only director to film three versions of Francis’s life, Cavani conceived of his story as a testament to how a single individual can transgress conventional social boundaries and undertake a life adventure attuned to the realities of modernity. Her two feature films (1966, 1989) and a TV miniseries devoted to Francesco (2014) present Francis not as a man of the past but a prophet whose vision and example of solidarity inspires us with a vision for a future peace.
8. Miriam Hopkins Learns to Wink
Amsterdam University Press eBooks · 2024-03-20
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding2024-07-10
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThe art of the wink encapsulates and epitomizes Miriam Hopkins’s comedic skill, a virtuosity that proved of singular importance in Lubitsch’s transition from the gestural language of silent films to the vociferous ideologies of talking pictures. In three successive, increasingly inventive, morally adventurous films—The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932), and Design for Living (1933)—Hopkins modernized Lubitsch’s Old World sophistication in physically and vocally inflected performances that announced a new comic figure: the woman who winks, we might call this screen avatar of openly desirous, exuberantly modern, morally reckless (even cheerfully larcenous!) womanhood.
2024-03-01
other1st authorCorrespondingThe art of the wink encapsulates and epitomizes Miriam Hopkins's comedic skill, a virtuosity that proved of singular importance in Lubitsch's transition from the gestural language of silent films to the vociferous ideologies of talking pictures. In three successive, increasingly inventive, morally adventurous films—The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932), and Design for Living (1933)—Hopkins modernized Lubitsch's Old World sophistication in physically and vocally inflected performances that announced a new comic figure: the woman who winks, we might call this screen avatar of openly desirous, exuberantly modern, morally reckless (even cheerfully larcenous!) womanhood.Keywords: Woman who winks, impersonation, sexual triangle, law of thirds, caricature, cash
New Approaches to Ernst Lubitsch
Amsterdam University Press eBooks · 2024
- Computer Science
- Computer Science
This exciting collection of unpublished essays on Ernst Lubitsch addresses multiple gaps in scholarly and critical engagement with the director. His understudied early German films shed light on Jewish culture, on the relation of comedy to gender and the influence of theatre on his filmmaking. The popular historical epics brought Lubitsch an invitation to Hollywood in 1922. There, Lubitsch helped develop the film musical and notably contributed to the genre of Hollywood romantic comedy. The well-known scholars - film historians, archivists, and theorists - whose essays appear in this volume expand our knowledge of the set designers, actors, directors and members of the emigré community who contributed to Lubitsch's vibrant films. An emphasis on the role of material objects opens up a new dimension of critical engagement with the director. Light is shed on neglected films, and the antifascist dimension of his oeuvre brings his political stance clearly to light. As these essays make clear, Lubtisch's cinema is elusive and deserving of our close attention.
Amsterdam University Press eBooks · 2024-02-29
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingLife Writing · 2024-05-13
article1st authorCorrespondingMcGill-Queen's University Press eBooks · 2024
1st authorCorresponding- History
- Psychology
- Seismology
Behind the times: Virginia Woolf in late Victorian contexts
Nineteenth Century Contexts · 2021 · 4 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Art
- Sociology
Few, if any artists like to think of themselves as behind the times, but to modernists in the avant rather than rear garde of creative innovation the characterization would have seemed as ludicrous...
11. Lawrence Durrell: Diplomacy as Farce
University of Toronto Press eBooks · 2020-10-28
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 11 shared
Deborah Epstein Nord
- 10 shared
Adam H. Becker
- 5 shared
Patrick Madden
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
- 5 shared
Trudier Harris
- 5 shared
Alfred J. MacAdam
- 5 shared
Lawrence D. Kritzman
Dartmouth Hospital
- 5 shared
John V. Fleming
Princeton University
- 5 shared
Frances Wilson
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