FRIT is very excited to welcome Jonathan Mullins to the department this fall as an Assistant Professor of Italian Film and Media Studies! In fact, we will be welcoming him back, as he previously spent two years with us as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Most recently, Mullins was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of French and Italian at the University of Southern California.
Mullins takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of twentieth and twenty-first century Italian culture, looking at it from the vantage points of performance studies, visual culture, media studies and theories of affect, queerness and everyday life. The main concerns of his research are the history of the Italian left, the use and representation of the body and the way media facilitate the creation of mass, sub, and countercultures.
During his time at USC, Mullins really enjoyed working with students in the Cinema School, where he lectured on representations of love in Italian cinema from silent films to the present. Most recently he also taught an advanced undergraduate seminar on contemporary Italy, focusing on problems of the present such as polarization and the eco crisis. As the Covid-19 pandemic struck Italy, Mullins augmented the course with readings of Italian philosophers who have written about the crisis on topics of privacy, viral spread, and human rights.
Outside of teaching, Mullins has developed a new research area in environmental humanities. A publication on the topic is forthcoming in Italian Studies Journal later this year. He is also preparing a book manuscript, Ephemeral Media, Everyday Dissent: the Radical Left in 1970s Italy, which tracks how radical leftists turned to ephemeral cultural forms—street performance, alternative radio broadcasts, photography, graffiti, and print marginalia—to invigorate their political practice.
At Ohio State Mullins is looking forward to working with the university’s diverse undergraduate student population. “I’m really interested in the value of public education in this century,” he says, “I’m interested in what it means to teach broad fundamental skills like critical thinking to undergraduates from such a diverse range of communities. It’s what brought me to Ohio State in the first place.”
Columbus is near and dear to Mullins. He is ready to enjoy his favorite things in the city again – Clintonville, riding the bike on the Olentangy River Trail, watching films at the Gateway, local breweries, and his old crossfit gym. Even more so, he is excited to be part of FRIT again. “FRIT is such a dynamic place,” he says.
We look forward to seeing you in our classrooms and hallways, Professor Mullins!
