Leonardo Cabrini earned his Ph.D. in Italian Studies from Indiana University Bloomington, with a dissertation on cinephilia and Italian public television. He also holds an M.A. in Film and Television Studies from the University of Bologna. His main research interests include film and television history and theory, film criticism, cinephilia, popular music and countercultures, audiovisual serial narratives, and second-language pedagogy.
He currently works on the relationship between audiovisual media and Italian language teaching through an arts-integrated curriculum that brings together media education and second-language acquisition. More broadly, he investigates the role of culture in Italian language courses, content-based approaches to language teaching, and the teaching of Italian cinema, with particular attention to the relationship between cinematic canons and counter-canons.
At the University of Chicago, Leonardo teaches Italian language and culture at all levels and co-organizes cultural events. He serves as a reviews editor of the peer-reviewed journal gender/sexuality/italy and a contributing editor for the “Italian Film” section of The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies.
Selected Publications
- “Teen Series in the Italian Language Classroom: Integrating Audiovisual Media Studies into Second Language Pedagogy in English-Speaking Higher Education Contexts” Scholé: Journal of Education and Cultural Studies, Vol LXIII, no 2, 2025, pp. 240-257.
- “Cine-TV Experiments: La magnifica ossessione and Beyond.” Italian Experimental Cinema and Moving-Image Art: New Paths, New Perspectives. Edited by Jennifer Malvezzi and Rossella Catanese. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2025, pp. 317-324.
- “Pratiche sociali e culturali della critica cinefila italiana: una casistica.” Simultanea – Journal of Italian Media and Pop Culture. Vol 1, no 2, 2020, online.
- “Marco Bellocchio.” Twentieth Century Italian Directors. Edited by Manuela Gieri, and Donato Santeramo. Rome: UniversItalia, 2020, pp.88-96.
- “Italian Vulgar Criticism and Cinephilia: The Case of ‘i400Calci – Cinema da combattimento’.” Offstream: Minority and Popular Culture. Edited by Paola Bernardini, Paolo Frascà, and Sara Galli. Firenze: Franco Cesati, 2019, pp. 119-132.
- “Televisione, critica e analisi del film. Il caso Studio cinema (1978).” Atti critici in luoghi pubblici. Edited by Michele Guerra and Sara Martin. Parma: Diabasis, 2019, pp. 81-96.
Recent Courses in RLL
- ITAL 10100 Beginning Elementary Italian I (Autumn 2022, Autumn 2023, Autumn 2024, Autumn 2025)
- ITAL 10200 Beginning Elementary Italian II (Winter 2023, Winter 2024, Winter 2026)
- ITAL 10300 Beginning Elementary Italian III (Spring 2024)
- ITAL 12200 Italian for Speakers of Romance Languages (Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2025, Winter 2026, Spring 2026)
- ITAL 20200 Language, History, and Culture II (Winter 2026)
- ITAL 20222 Italian for Speakers of Romance Languages II (Spring 2024, Spring 2025, Spring 2026)
- ITAL 20300 Language, History, and Culture III (Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2026)
- ITAL 20400 Corso di perfezionamento (Autumn 2024)