Allie Gamble

I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Italian, with a minor in French. I work primarily on the 19th and 20th centuries, with particular interests in the novel, masculinity, marginality, feminist and political philosophy, writing for others, and reading for oneself.  
 
My dissertation research focusses on the various political and philosophical implications of the novel as a para-social environment and stage for appearance or interaction between subjects. By looking at the way in which different writers negotiate these implications, I aim to trace a series of different approaches to the question of how individuals might relate to one another within, and beyond the space of text - and in what ways the novel presents itself as a particularly effective tool to manipulate these relations.
 
In the past, I’ve written and presented on topics including masculinity and ineptitude in Svevo and Joyce, stylistic and narrative extravagance in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso; failed heroism and writing in D’Annunzio and Foscolo; interpellation, reflection and social interiority in Maraini; and solidarity, sacrifice, and the sea in Conrad.
 
Before my time at Stanford, I worked for some years as a translator, director of an ESL language school, barman, and full-time carer. I hold an undergraduate degree in Italian from University College London, and an MPhil in Comparative Literatures and Cultures from the University in Cambridge. My MPhil thesis, titled 'Islands and Peninsulas', explored the figure of the inetto as mode of masculinity and survival in Joyce’s Ulysses and several novels by Italo Svevo.
 
I’m currently involved in the co-ordination of the Center of Studies for the Novel, the Italian Modernities Lecture Series, and the Romance Languages Reading Group (RLRG).

pronouns - he/him/his