Philip Balma

Associate Professor

Italian Literary and Cultural Studies

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Education

PhD, Indiana University, 2007

Areas of Expertise

Modern Italian Literature and Cinema, Translation Studies,  Postcolonial Studies, The Jewish Experience in Contemporary Italophone Literature and Film.

Bio:

Philip Balma is Associate Professor of Italian Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut-Storrs, where he also serves as the Coordinator of the Italian language program. He teaches modern Italian literature and cinema, as well as courses on the Italian-American experience. His research interests include the Jewish experience in contemporary Italophone literature and film, artistic representations of World War II, the theory and practice of literary translation, Italian literature in dialect, the influence of English on the Italian language, and the postcolonial question in Italy. He was previously a member of the Italian faculty at Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Georgia. His work has been published in several academic journals, including Italica, Forum Italicum, Italian Quarterly, Italian Poetry Review, Translation Review, Saggi di ‘Lettere Italiane’, and Italianistica Ultraiectina. He is the co-author of Streetwise Italian: the User Friendly Guide to Italian Slang and Idioms published by McGraw-Hill in 2005. He was awarded the Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship in 2009, by the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. In the summer of 2011 Prof. Balma was awarded a Visiting Scholarship for the Study of Italian Jewry by the CDEC (Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea) in Milan, Italy.

 

Recent publications:

Giacomo Matteotti and the Birth of Anti-Fascism: Selected Journalistic Writings (1901-1924) (2025).

TRANSLATING FOR (AND FROM) THE ITALIAN SCREEN: DUBBING AND SUBTITLES (2020).

The Jewish Experience in Contemporary Italy. Spec. Iss. of Nemla Italian Studies 37 (2015).

Edith Bruck in the Mirror: Fictional Transitions and Cinematic Narratives (2014).