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.