Senior Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Literary Studies
Before joining Ghent University, Stefano Bellin was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick and a Visiting Research Fellow at University College London's Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS). He has taught at the University of Warwick, King’s College London, and University College London (UCL).
Education:
PhD (University College London), Comparative Literature
MA (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Contemporary Art Theory
MA (University of Padua, Italy), Philosophy
BA (University of Padua, Italy), Philosophy
Stefano Bellin is a comparative literature scholar who focuses on 20th and 21st century literature and culture. Broadly speaking his work explores questions of historical and political responsibility by building mutually illuminating dialogues between literary texts and theoretical frameworks. Most of his research approaches literature as a site of theorisation to address ethico-political and aesthetic questions (e.g., the shame of being human, political affects, the politics of memory, war and political violence, international migration, global responsibility, the power of literature, what does it mean to "begin" something in art and politics, what are the criteria for considering something "new").
He is currently completing a monograph titled The Shame of Being Human: A Philosophical Reading of Primo Levi (Peter Lang) an edited book, Levi Beyond Levi: Creative Engagements with Primo Levi (Liverpool University Press); and two special issues (of Comparative Critical Studies and Literature Compass).
During his postdoctoral fellowship he will work on a project titled "Literature and Political Imagination: Expanding the Sense of the Possible".
Bellin has edited five special issues of Literature Compass, Paragraph (with Kevin Inston and Florian Mussgnug), Parallax (double special issue; with Michael Rothberg, Jennifer Noji, and Arielle Stambler), and Italian Culture (with Guido Bartolini)
His articles have appeared in journals including Parallax, Literature Compass, Paragraph, Comparative Critical Studies, NeMLA, Italian Culture, OpenDemocracy, and Close Encounters in War Journal.
Besides his scholarly work, Bellin is also putting together a collection of poems (provisionally titled "Peratallada").
Fields of Specialisation:
Comparative literature; literary theory; modern and contemporary world literature (especially Anglophone, Hispanophone, Francophone, and Italian literatures); literature and political imagination; Primo Levi; cultural memory; affect theory; theories of collective responsibility; modern and contemporary art; the intersections between literature and continental philosophy.
