Manuela Gieri is Professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature and theatre in the Department of Italian Studies, and Professor of film studies in the Cinema Studies Program at the University of Toronto. She is also an Associate member of the Centre for Comparative Literature. Professor Gieri’s main areas of interest are: I. Modern and contemporary Italian literature and theatre; II. Italian cinema; III. Pirandello; IV. Visual and cultural semiotics: issues of identity and representation; V. Contemporary Italian women’s studies. In recent years, Professor Gieri co-edited Luigi Pirandello: Contemporary Perspectives (University of Toronto Press, 1999), and authored, Contemporary Italian Filmmaking: Strategies of Subversion (University of Toronto Press, 1995). She also published extensively in learned journals and edited volumes on Italian cinema, Pirandello, and contemporary Italian women’s writing. Professor Gieri is presently working on a SSHRC funded three year research project on contemporary Italian women writers, on a new volume on strategies of oblivion and historical memory in contemporary cinema, and on a book on issues of representation and desire in cinema, television and advertising.