Áine O'Healy profile photo

Áine O'Healy

Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures - Italian

  • Los Angeles CA UNITED STATES

Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts

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Biography

Áine O’Healy, professor of Italian, teaches Italian literature, audiovisual culture, and cinema in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. Initially trained in literary studies, she published the first English‑language monograph on the twentieth‑century Italian writer Cesare Pavese. Her research then turned to film history and theory, with particular attention to how audiovisual representation shapes constructions of gender, sexuality, and national identity. She has published widely on these topics, including the coedited volume "Transnational Feminism in Film and Media" with Katarzyna Marciniak and Anikó Imre. Her subsequent work has been informed by postcolonial and migration studies, examining the hybrid cultural identities emerging in contemporary filmmaking in Italy and the broader Mediterranean. Acknowledging Italy’s unresolved colonial legacies, her most recent book, "Migrant Anxieties: Italian Cinema in a Transnational Frame," analyzes how Italian filmmakers have explored the tensions surrounding the country’s transformation from an emigrant nation into a destination for more than five million immigrants. Her current research investigates questions of ethics and aesthetics in documentary cinema, focusing on the challenges inherent in the representation of precarious lives.

Education

University of Wisconsin

Ph.D.

University College Galway, National University of Ireland

B.A. and M.A.

Areas of Expertise

Italian Cinema
Italian Cultural Studies
Transnational Film Studies

Articles

Migrant Anxieties: Italian Cinema in a Transnational Frame

Indiana University Press, 2019.

Transnational Feminism in Film and Media

(Editor with Anikó Imre and Katarzyna Marciniak). Palgrave, 2007. [Paperback edition, 2011]

Cesare Pavese

Twayne, 1988.