APHRA BEHN TRA PAGINA E TEATRO

International conference

20th and 21st March 2025

Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies in the Faculty of English at Oxford University and Professorial Fellow of English at Mansfield College, Oxford. She has published widely in the field of eighteenth-century literature and has particular research interests in women’s writing, the novel, theatre history, and oriental fiction. She is the editor of several volumes and author of three monographs. Additionally, she is preparing an edition of ‘The Fair Jilt’ by Aphra Behn for the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn (scheduled for publication in 2026).

A researcher in the disciplines of the performing arts, and lecturer on History of the Theatre and the Performing Arts for the Humanities for Communication degree course and History of Theatre Theory for the DAMS degree course. Since 1995, she has been a member of the research group for the Dionysos Project – an archive of theatre iconography founded by Cesare Molinari. She has authored numerous essays on English actors and actresses of the Restoration, en travesti roles, and biographical profiles of Italian opera singers active in early 18th-century London.

Full professor of English language and literature at the University of Roma Tre until his retirement, and since then external lecturer at the Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples. A theatre critic for La Stampa since 1987, a contributor to Tuttolibri since its first issue, he has worked in the film industry as a scriptwriter and as translator-adapter of film dialogues. He has also translated many American and English classics – with a special focus on Shakespeare – and more than 80 of his theatre translations have been staged.

Professor of Seventeenth-Century Studies at Loughborough University. She first wrote about Aphra Behn in 1980, when working on her PhD thesis. She has subsequently taught courses focusing on women’s writing, supervised doctoral research in this area and published a number of books and journal articles on the subject. She also edited the volume of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn.

She has taught Aesthetics at Università di Bologna. A founding member of the Italian Virginia Woolf Society, her publications for Il Saggiatore include Il canto del mondo reale. Virginia Woolf, la vita nella scrittura and she edited the introduction to Virginia Woolf, Voltando pagina. Saggi 1904-1941 (2011), Virginia Woolf e i suoi contemporanei (2017) and Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Se vedi una luce danzare sull’acqua. Lettere tra sorelle 1904-1941 (2024). For Racconti edizioni she curated and introduced Virginia Woolf, Oggetti solidi. Tutti i racconti e altre prose (2016); for Ponte alle Grazie Momenti di essere. Scritti autobiografici (2020). She also edited the series ‘Mondadori Meridiani’ dedicated to Jane Austen, Romanzi e altri scritti (vol. 1, 2022; vol. 2 is forthcoming) and Jane Austen. Romanzi incompiuti.

Full Professor of English Literature at Università degli Studi della Tuscia, since 2017 she has been Senior Research Associate at Lucy Cavendish College (University of Cambridge). She is co-convenor of the TaPS caucus of the American Association for Eighteenth-century Studies. She is the author of numerous publications, which have won her international recognition. In particular, she specializes in theatre from the Restoration to the late 19th century, and was Principal Investigator of a project on the tragedies of Frances Burney, funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action at the University of Edinburgh.

Full Professor of English Literature. His interests include Romantic period-literature, Orientalist exoticism and Gothic imagery, Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century theatre, women’s literature and drama in the Romantic era, as well as authors such as Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Walter Scott and Felicia Hemans. He is the current director of the Inter-University Centre for the Study of Romanticism (CISR). His most recent publications include European Literatures in Britain, 1815-1832: Romantic Translations (2019), Modernità del Romanticismo: scrittura e cambiamento nella letteratura britannica 1780-1830 (2023), and I mondi di Jane Austen (2024).

Writer, playwright for theatre and music, storyteller, performance artist, exhibition curator. His recent books include: Lustrini per il regno dei cieli (Bollati Boringhieri), Sacre sfilate (Guanda), Un paese in ginocchio (Guanda), La sindrome di Michael Jackson (Bompiani), Andy Warhol superstar (Johan and Levi), Siviero contro Hitler (Skira), Memorie di un’opera d’arte (Skira), Ziggy Stardust. La vera natura dei sogni (Add), Bianco tenebra. Serpotta di notte e di giorno (Sellerio), Teatri d’amore (Nottetempo), L’ultima regina di Firenze (Bompiani), Le vacanze dell’arte (Pacini), L’uccello del paradiso (Fandango), Rinascimento Babilonia (Marsilio), Bompiani Story (Bompiani), Le streghe non esistono (Bompiani), Cocteau A-Z (Electa), Vanessa Bell (Electa).

Janet Todd was formerly President of Lucy Cavendish College where she started the Lucy Cavendish Prize for Fiction. She is now an Emeritus Professor of the University of Aberdeen and an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College. Her latest books are the novel, Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden (2021) and the literary memoir, Living with Jane Austen (2025). Her biography of Aphra Behn was reprinted in 2016. Hew new 8-volume edition of Jane Austen for the general reader will be published in May from Cambridge University Press.

with the support of