Dr Mara Josi is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor at University College Dublin. Since completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge, she has specialised in Italian 20th and 21st-century literature and culture. Her work reflects an interest in innovative research methodologies and cultural approaches to the study of literature and it is rooted in memory studies, with a particular emphasis on commemorative landscapes—both physical and medial—, women’s literature and history, and Holocaust culture, including Jewish literary texts from the Nazi occupation of Italy.
Bringing together notions of cultural memory and Holocaust studies, Mara’s first book, Rome, 16 October 1943. History, Memory, Literature, explores the influence of literature on individual and collective memory – in other words, on the reader and society. Her interest in such a field is the result of a decade of research into Italian Holocaust culture and literary writings dealing with the processes of discrimination and persecution in Italy during the Fascist dictatorship, the Italian Social Republic, and the Nazi occupation. Her research agenda is in line with the commitment of the few remaining survivors of this period to ensure that society keeps the memory of discrimination, persecution, deportation, and mass murder alive and relevant, even—or especially—in the absence of direct witnesses.
Mara’s current project reorients the study of Italian Holocaust-related literary production by defining and investigating a new category of it: "the literature of hiding", which consists of texts by Jewish authors testifying to their experience of living in hiding to escape deportation. Her project which has received national and international funding, explores the extent to which the "literature of hiding" can reshape the understanding and memory of discrimination and persecution in Italy and broaden the discourse on the transmission and memory of Holocaust-related experiences in Italy.
Before joining UCD, she was an IRC and FWO Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin and Ghent University, respectively, and a lecturer at the University of Manchester.
Contact:
Email: mara.josi1@ucd.ie(opens in a new window)