Raffaella Bianchi, PhD

I am a cultural historian. My research focuses on the history of theatres, music(s) and politics, identities (national, gender, religious). I also enjoy engaging in archive research and projects of public history.

My monograph: A Cultural History of La Scala during the Risorgimento (1814-1848) analyses original archival sources I discovered from a cultural studies perspective.

The latter was a discipline I discovered while writing my Ph.D in Politics, History and IR at Loughborough University (UK, 2010). After that, I taught Modern European History and Political Science in Gaziantep (Turkiye) and Istanbul until 2015; and I published an article on Popular Music on the role of music for constructing political identities in the Gezi Park movement.

Upon my return to Milan, I assumed a teaching position at MIM and am currently in charge of a public history project that is focused on assembling an archive of oral sources concerning the commercial development of the Internet in Italy.

I am Italian native speaker, fluent in English and French and I have a working knowledge of Spanish and Turkish.

Books:

• A Cultural History of La Scala in the Risorgimento (1814-1848), Brepols, 2022.

Articles:

• L’esportazione di modelli femminili nelle serie turche: Noor e Fatmagül tra violenza e desiderio, in Genesis Rivista della Società Italiana delle Storiche, XXII, 2, pp. 105-129.
• Il punto di interscambio di Roma: dalla rete universitaria a NAMEX (1995 - 2020), in Ricerche storiche, anno LI, numero 1, gennaio-aprile 2021, pp. 113-130.
• Palchi, chiavi e barricate: la sfera pubblica al Teatro alla Scala nella Milano della Restaurazione (1814-1848), in libretto di sala "Attila di Giuseppe Verdi, stagione d'opera 2018/19, Edizioni del Teatro alla Scala, Milano".
• Istanbul Sounding like a Revolution: the Role of Music in the Gezi Park Occupy Movement, in Popular Music, Vol. 37, no. 2, May 2018, pp. 212-236.
• Reworking the Sense of Belonging: The Ritual of N'Deep in Nonno Dio e gli Spiriti Danzanti by Pap Khouma, in Logan Sparks and Paul Post (eds.), The Study of Culture through the Lens of Ritual. Netherlands Studies in Ritual and Liturgy 15. Groningen University of Gronigen, 2015.
• Il sistema di potere di Erdoĝan, in Antropologia Politica, No.11, December 2015.
• Vestire l’Uniforme: mascolinità nel melodramma e costruzione dell'eroe risorgimentale, in Atti del VI Congresso SIS, 2015.
• Space and Hegemony at La Scala, 1776-1850s, in The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms, Vol.19, No. 6, 2014 (doi:10.1080/10848770.2014.949942).
• I discorsi di cuori migranti in Italia: la rappresentazione dell’amore nei racconti degli scrittori migranti pubblicati da El-Ghibli (Discourses of Migrant Hearts: Representation of Love in Short Stories of Migrant Literature Published by El-Ghibli), in El-Ghibli, Vol. 10, No. 41, September 2013.
• The Politics of Disarray in Nanni Balestrini: Poetics, Referent and Musical Structure, co-written with Raffaele Taddeo, in Mosaici, No. 4, April 2013.
• La Scala's Risorgimento: Conspiracy, 'Arias da Belisario' and barricades, in Roberto Illiano (ed.), Studies on Italian Music History Vol. 8, Brepols Publishers, 2013.
• Introduzione a "Che Genere di Nazione"?, section of the IV volumes book by Laura Guidi and Maria Rosa Pellizzari (ed.), Nuove Frontiere per la Storia di Genere (New Frontiers of Gender History), Vol 1. Salerno: Editrice Universitaria e Università degli Studi di Salerno, 2014.
• Was Opera in Italy the Nineteenth Century's Pop Music? Diverse Aspects of Opera in Milan before Italian Unification, in Katalinic, V. Tuksar, E., White, H, eds., Musical Theatre as High Culture? The Cultural Discourse on Opera and Operetta in the 19th Century, Zagreb: HMD (Croatian Musicological Society), pp. 125-142, 2011.
• Opera across Borders: the construction of Italian and Turkish National Identities, co-written with Bezen Coskun, in Anglistica, special issue Guarracino, S. And Vitale, M., eds, "Music across borders", Vol.13, No. 2, pp. 59-70, 2009.

My ORCID iD is 0000-0002-5523-5785.

Radio Interviews:

• Turkish Prime Minister Davutoğlu Resignations, Radio RAI 1, "Le Voci del Mattino", 06/05/2016.
• The Attack to Dolmabahce Palace. Radio RAI 3, Rome, 2015.
• A Kurdish Female Singer and Honour. Radio Popolare, Milan, 2015.
• Elections in Turkey, Radio RAI 1, Rome, 2015.
• The New Kurdish Party, Radio Popolare, Milan, 2015.
• A Diffuse Mobilisation after Gezi Park Protest, Radio Radicale, Rome, 2013.
• Gezi Park Protest, Radio Radicale, Rome, 2013.
• The Syrian Crises seen from Turkey, Radio Radicale, Rome, 2012.

Articles:

• La Crisi Siriana da una Finestra sul Confine Turco (Syrian Crises from a Window at the Turkish Border), in Notizie Radicali, February 14, 2012.

I am editor of the journal of migration literature El-Ghibli. My own blog is http://www.el-ghibli.org/raffaella-bianchi-3/.