Valentina Romanzi is a Postdoctoral Researcher in American Studies at the University of Torino and an Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Verona. She holds a PhD in Transcultural Studies in the Humanities from the University of Bergamo. Her research interests lie in US speculative fiction, the posthuman and more-than-human in literature, and ecocriticism (with a focus on the Blue Humanities). She is also researching the interplay of video games and American culture, queerness and fandom, and has an invested interest in the application of Care Theory to literary studies. Her latest book is American Nightmares: Dystopia in Twenty-First-Century US Fiction (Peter Lang, 2022). She is an editor at Iperstoria: Journal of American and English Studies and collaborates with RSAJournal and ContactZone.
EDUCATION
PhD in Transcultural Studies in the Humanities, University of Bergamo, 2021
MA in European and Extra-European Comparative Literatures and Languages, University of Verona, 2017
BA in Foreign Languages and Cultures for International Commerce, University of Verona, 2014
RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS
Literature and Literary Theory, Language and Linguistics, Arts and Humanities
Play Me for a Fool: Horror-Inducing Madness from Edgar Allan Poe to The Dark Eye (1995) Valentina Romanzi American British and Canadian Studies, 2025 Madness often serves as the driving force behind the actions of Edgar Allan Poe’s protagonists, making their psyche a central component of his horror stories. Theme, however, is only one element that contributes to the horror affect/effect in Poe’s oeuvre: his talent for evoking horror through narrative structure and tone (Punter 1996) positions form as another crucial aspect of his poetics. When adapting Poe’s tales for a different medium, authors and artists need to confront both the thematic clusters that Poe favored and the stylistic choices that he deployed in conjunction with his themes. This contribution explores how the 1995 video game The Dark Eye adapts several works by Poe, focusing on the transposition of madness-induced horror. The game is of particular relevance because it approaches Poe’s stories in four different manners: first, the game adapts three of Poe’s best-known stories (“The Cask of Amontillado,” “Berenice,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”) for interactive gameplay. Second, it features full or abridged versions of Poe’s poems and stories (“Annabel Lee” and “The Masque of the Red Death,” recited, and “To Helen” and “The Premature Burial,” in written form). Third, it constructs a framing narrative which retrieves Poe’s themes, merging several stories, and proceduralizes his horror-inducing style for the video game environment. Fourth, it makes ample use of Poe’s Gothic atmosphere to induce horror and terror not only narratively, but also visually and aurally. The contribution thus argues that The Dark Eye serves as an all-encompassing attempt to adapt Poe’s madness-related stories beyond the mere thematic dimension, showing that Poe’s innovations can persist across different media.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: ANIMAL VALUE(S) WITHIN AND BEYOND NECROPOLITICS IN THE ONLY HARMLESS GREAT THING Valentina Romanzi Enthymema, 2025 This essay investigates the conflictual and oppressive relationship between humans and animals in the context of late capitalism in ‘western/ized’ societies and how speculative fiction can imagine and inspire alternative ways for interspecies coexistence. It focuses especially on the representation of animal labor, i.e. the way animals are involved in the contemporary production system. The essay takes Brooke Bolander’s 2018 novella The Only Harmless Great Thing as a case study, analyzing it through the lens of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics (2003), and arguing that the author provides an attempt at ‘necropolitical and post-necropolitical imagination’ that, despite not always being successful, shows how to envision an alternative future without straying too far from the present.
Playful Literature, Literary Play:(Video) Games and American Fiction V Romanzi, S Schubert 2026
Reflections and refractions: Anglophone fiction and the Atlantic poetics of water A Carosso, V Romanzi Atlantic Studies, 1-6 , 2026 2026
Queer Lasting: Ecologies of Care for a Dying World. Sarah Ensor V Romanzi Iperstoria , 2025 2025
Atlantic reckonings:(Capitalist) man vs. the sea in twenty-first-century disaster narratives V Romanzi Atlantic Studies, 1-13 , 2025 2025
Beyond Human-Centric Play: A Review of Commercial Video Games to Inform More-than-Human Serious Game Design F Bonetti, L Gabrielaitis, S Bassanelli, F Gini, P Chambers, R Belliato, ... Engineering Educational Games for a Sustainable Society: Play, Learn and … , 2025 2025
Apocalyptic Narratives: Science, Risk and Prophecy V Romanzi Utopian Studies 36 (1), 356-359 , 2025 2025
Editors' Note: American Narratives and Video Games F Razzi, V Romanzi American, British and Canadian Studies 45 (1), 1-6 , 2025 2025 Citations: 1
Play Me for a Fool: Horror-Inducing Madness from Edgar Allan Poe to The Dark Eye (1995) V Romanzi American, British and Canadian Studies, 157-179 , 2025 2025
Le distopie anticapitaliste da Philip K. Dick a Cory Doctorow V Romanzi Immaginari distopici contemporanei.-(Studi storici e politici; 17), 161-174 , 2025 2025
The Elephant in the Room: Animal Value (s) within and beyond Necropolitics in The Only Harmless Great Thing V Romanzi Enthymema 37 (37), 1-17 , 2025 2025
La letteratura nell’Antropocene. Il progetto “Narrare il cambiamento climatico” V Romanzi, A Giacosa, M Mamone LEND. LINGUA E NUOVA DIDATTICA 1, 20-32 , 2025 2025
Mattia Petricola, I mondi dell’Oltremondo. Dante e la Commedia dal fantasy alla fan fiction, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 2023, pp. 143,€ 15, 00 V Romanzi Status Quaestionis , 2024 2024
Tarantino, mitopoiesi e retrotopia V Romanzi C'era una volta (uno scrittore) a Hollywood, 86-100 , 2024 2024
Staying human in the post-apocalypse: The frontiers of individualism in the last of us and its sequel V Romanzi JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRIAN ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES 4 (2), 311-330 , 2023 2023 Citations: 2
Parental Androids: An Analysis of Non-normative Care Discourse in Contemporary Televised Science Fiction V Franceschi, V Romanzi Iperstoria 22, 215-239 , 2023 2023
An Interview with Jenny L. Davis and Four Poems from Trickster Academy V Romanzi Iperstoria 22, 409-429 , 2023 2023 Citations: 1
Love Is a Thing with Feathers: Posthuman Metamorphoses in “This Is How You Lose the Time War” V Romanzi RSA JOURNAL 34, 137-155 , 2023 2023
The Fractured States of America V Romanzi, BWR Toscano JAm It!(Journal of American Studies in Italy), 5-15 , 2022 2022
JAm It!(Journal of American Studies in Italy), Núm. 6 (2022): The Fractured States of America V Romanzi, BWR Toscano JAm It! Journal of American Studies in Italy , 2022 2022
Da distruttore di mondi a salvatore dell'umanità. Le due facce della scienza in The Oppenheimer Alternative di Robert J. Sawyer V Romanzi What's Popping? La storia degli Stati Uniti nella cultura popolare del nuovo … , 2022 2022
MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
Ready Player One: Levels of Reality V Romanzi JAm It!(Journal of American Studies in Italy), 163-173 , 2020 2020 Citations: 9
American Nightmares: Dystopia in Twenty-First-Century US Fiction V Romanzi Peter Lang , 2022 2022 Citations: 7
Staying human in the post-apocalypse: The frontiers of individualism in the last of us and its sequel V Romanzi JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRIAN ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES 4 (2), 311-330 , 2023 2023 Citations: 2
Let the Plan (e) t Speak for Itself: Agency, Empathy, and Subjectivity in Sue Burke's Semiosis V Romanzi Iperstoria 19, 346-360 , 2022 2022 Citations: 2
La cultura selfie in uno stato diviso tra interessi economici e sorveglianza H Giroux, V Romanzi Iperstoria , 2015 2015 Citations: 2
Editors' Note: American Narratives and Video Games F Razzi, V Romanzi American, British and Canadian Studies 45 (1), 1-6 , 2025 2025 Citations: 1
An Interview with Jenny L. Davis and Four Poems from Trickster Academy V Romanzi Iperstoria 22, 409-429 , 2023 2023 Citations: 1
Coin-operated doors and pirated toasts: reflections on capitalism from Philip K. Dick’s Ubik to Cory Doctorow’s Unauthorized Bread V Romanzi Bibliomanie 54, 1-12 , 2022 2022 Citations: 1
God says ‘gay rights’: queering Christian theology in the Good Omens fandom V Romanzi Culture and Religion 22 (1), 64-83 , 2021 2021 Citations: 1
Plural Identities in Sam J. Miller's Blackfish City V Romanzi ContactZone: Rivista dell'Associazione Italiana per lo Studio della … , 2020 2020 Citations: 1
The Testaments V Romanzi The Literary Encyclopedia , 2019 2019 Citations: 1
Playful Literature, Literary Play:(Video) Games and American Fiction V Romanzi, S Schubert 2026
Reflections and refractions: Anglophone fiction and the Atlantic poetics of water A Carosso, V Romanzi Atlantic Studies, 1-6 , 2026 2026
Queer Lasting: Ecologies of Care for a Dying World. Sarah Ensor V Romanzi Iperstoria , 2025 2025
Atlantic reckonings:(Capitalist) man vs. the sea in twenty-first-century disaster narratives V Romanzi Atlantic Studies, 1-13 , 2025 2025
Beyond Human-Centric Play: A Review of Commercial Video Games to Inform More-than-Human Serious Game Design F Bonetti, L Gabrielaitis, S Bassanelli, F Gini, P Chambers, R Belliato, ... Engineering Educational Games for a Sustainable Society: Play, Learn and … , 2025 2025
Apocalyptic Narratives: Science, Risk and Prophecy V Romanzi Utopian Studies 36 (1), 356-359 , 2025 2025
Play Me for a Fool: Horror-Inducing Madness from Edgar Allan Poe to The Dark Eye (1995) V Romanzi American, British and Canadian Studies, 157-179 , 2025 2025
Le distopie anticapitaliste da Philip K. Dick a Cory Doctorow V Romanzi Immaginari distopici contemporanei.-(Studi storici e politici; 17), 161-174 , 2025 2025
The Elephant in the Room: Animal Value (s) within and beyond Necropolitics in The Only Harmless Great Thing V Romanzi Enthymema 37 (37), 1-17 , 2025 2025