Simone Brioni

Simone Brioni (born 16 March 1982, in Brescia) is a literary scholar, documentary maker, and academic. He is associate professor in the Department of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He lectures in film studies, comparative literature, migration literature, translation studies and colonial and postcolonial literature. His research and publications are primarily concerned with the representation of migrants and the legacy and memory of colonialism, with a particular focus on contemporary Italian culture.
== Early Life ==
Brioni completed his B.A. in Modern Languages at the University of Bologna in 2005, and an M.A. at University of Trento in 2008, with a thesis on Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991) and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (novel) (1996). He completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Warwick in 2013 on Somali Italian Literature, supervised by Dr. Jennifer Burns. Between 2013 and 2014, he was visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing, University of London.
== Career ==
Brioni is the author of The Somali Within: Language, Race and Belonging in Minor Italian Literature, a monograph that analyses "the processes of linguistic and cultural translation and self-translation, the political engagement with race, gender, class and religious discrimination, and the complex strategies of belonging and unbelonging at work in the literary works in Italian by authors of Somali origins", such as Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Igiaba Scego, and Cristina Ali Farah. In this book, "Brioni proposes that the ‘minor’ Somali Italian connection might offer a major insight into the transnational dimension of contemporary ‘Italian’ literature and ‘Somali’ culture". 
Brioni has collaborated with writer Shirin Ramzanali Fazel to write a book about islamophobia in Italy, Scrivere di Islam: Raccontare la diaspora (2020, Islam and Me. Narrating a Diaspora). He has also edited a bilingual edition of Fazel's Lontano da Mogadiscio/Far from Mogadishu (2013), a bilingual collection of poems by Ribka Sibhatu, Aulò! Aulò! Aulò! Poesie di nostalgia, d’esilio e d’amore di Ribka Sibhatu. / Aulò! Aulò! Aulò! Poems of Nostalgia, Exile and Love by Ribka Sibhatu (2012), and the second edition of Genevieve Makaping’s book Traiettorie di sguardi: E se gli altri foste voi? (2022, Reversing the Gaze: What if the Other were you).
His work as a documentary maker and writer has produced three films about immigration to Italy: Aulò: Postcolonial Rome (2012; awarded the Mediaeducazione Prize at the Premio Libero Bizzarri, co-directed with Graziano Chiscuzzu and Ermanno Guida), The Fourth Road: Mogadishu Italy (2012; shortlisted at Docucity Film Festival and A Film for Peace-Film Festival, co-directed with Graziano Chiscuzzu and Ermanno Guida), and Maka (2012, directed by Elia Moutamid). These films focus respectively on writers Ribka Sibhatu, Kaha Mohamed Aden, and Geneviève Makaping. 
Brioni has also written on science fiction literature and cinema, including a book on J. G. Ballard novel The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), and two monographs, co-written with Daniele Comberiati, which focus on Italian Science Fiction movies and literature: Italian Science Fiction: The Other in Film and Literature (2019) and Ideologia e rappresentazione: Percorsi attraverso la fantascienza italiana (2020). These texts analyze literature written by Lino Aldani, Tullio Avoledo, Enrico Brizzi, Paolo Mantegazza, Emilio Salgari and Wu Ming. Italian Science Fiction explores "Italian science fiction from 1861, the year of Italy’s unification, to the present day, focusing on how this genre helped shape notions of Otherness and Normalness". Ideologia e rappresentazione was presented in TV program such as Rai 4 Wonderland, and at several Italian literary festivals including the Festivaletteratura, the Palermo Book Festival-Una Marina di Libri, and at the Loving the Alien Fest at Museo del fantastico e della fantascienza.
== Publications ==
* L’Italia, l’altrove: luoghi, spazi e attraversamenti nel cinema e nella letteratura sulla migrazione. Venezia: Cà Foscari University Press, 2022. ISBN 978-88-6969-626-8 http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-625-1 
* Simone Brioni, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel. Scrivere di Islam: Raccontare la diaspora. Venezia: Cà Foscari University Press, 2020.ISBN 978-88-6969-410-3 http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-411-0
* Simone Brioni, Daniele Comberiati. Ideologia e rappresentazione: Percorsi attraverso la fantascienza italiana. Milan: Mimesis, 2020. ISBN 9788857560960
* Simone Brioni, Daniele Comberiati. Italian Science Fiction: The Other in Literature and Film. New York: Palgrave McMillan,2019. ISBN 9783030193256
* Simone Brioni, Shimelis Gulema, ed. The Horn of Africa and Italy: Colonial, Postcolonial and Transnational Encounters, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2018. ISBN 9781787079939
* The Somali Within: Language, Race and Belonging in “Minor” Italian Literature. Cambridge: Legenda, 2015. ISBN 9781909662643
* Simone Brioni, ed. Somalitalia: Quattro vie per Mogadiscio. Roma: Kimerafilm, 2012. ISBN 9788890771415
* Il futuro quotidiano: Saggi su James Graham Ballard. Siena: Prospettiva, 2011. ISBN 9788874186563
Category:1982 births
Category:People from Brescia
Category:Literary scholars
Category:Documentary filmmakers
Category:University of Bologna alumni