Faculty

Alessandro Carrera, Ph.D.

John and Rebecca Moores Professor
Chair, Department of Modern and Classical Languages
Director of Italian Studies

612 Agnes Arnold Hall
Phone: (713) 743-3069
Email:acarrera@central.uh.edu
View CV

Alessandro Carrera was born in Lodi, Italy in 1954. He has a Laurea in Philosophy from the Università degli Studi in Milan and a Ph.D. by Publications in Music, Humanities, and Media from the University of Huddersfield, U.K. From 1975 to 1982, he was a music critic, a performing songwriter, and worked in the Milanese musical milieu. From 1982 to 1987, he worked as an executive editor of scientific magazines and pursued scholarly and creative interests. In 1987, he came to the United States as a Lettore d’italiano, a teaching position sponsored by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In that capacity, Carrera taught Italian Language and Literature at the University of Houston (1987-1991), McMaster University (1992-1994) and New York University (1995-2001). As a Visiting professor, he also taught graduate courses in Italian Literature (Columbia, CUNY, SUNY), Comparative Literature (Rutgers), and Aesthetics (New School University). In 2001, the University of Houston hired him as Director of Italian Studies. He is now Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages. In addition to his scholarly and creative books in Italian, Carrera has published several articles and edited volumes in English. He has edited Massimo Cacciari’s The Unpolitical: For a Radical Critique of Political Reason (New York: Fordham UP, 2009), Italian Critical Theory (“Annali d'Italianistica” 29, 2011, Monographic Issue), Music and Society in Italy (“Forum Italicum,” 49, 2, 2015, Monographic Issue), Massimo Cacciari’s Europe and Empire: On the Political Forms of Globalization (New York: Fordham UP, 2016), Massimo Cacciari’s Philosophy, Mysticism, and the Political: Essays on Dante (SUNY Press, 2021), and Carlo Sini’s On Political Virtue: Plato’s Republic and the Politics of Desire (SUNY Press, 2025). He has co-edited Emanuele Severino’s The Essence of Nihilism (London: Verso Books, 2016, with Ines Testoni). Carrera has also translated into Italian six novels of Graham Greene (The Third Man, The Quiet American, The Honorary Consul, Stamboul Train, Brighton Rock, The End of the Affair), and all the songs and prose of Bob Dylan (Lyrics 1962-2020, Tarantula, Chronicles Vol. 1, The Philosophy of Modern Song). Carrera has been the recipient of the Montale Prize for Poetry (1993), the Loria Prize for short fiction (1998), the Bertolucci Prize for Literary Criticism (2006), the Flaiano Prize for Italian Studies Abroad (2019), and the Marazza Prize for his work as translator (2022). He is Visiting Professor at the Università degli Studi in Brescia, Italy in the Master Program in Artificial Intelligence, Mind, and Enterprise and Visiting Professor in the Master Program in Music Publishing and Production at IULM University in Milan, Italy. Since 2019, he is Editor-in-Chief of “Gradiva: International Journal of Italian Poetry,” a bi-annual peer-reviewed journal (Olschki Publisher, Florence, Italy).

Education

Laurea in Filosofia, Università degli Studi, Milan, Italy, 1980. Ph. D. by Publications in Music, Humanities, and Media, University of Huddersfield, U.K., 2016.

Research Interests

Dante; 18th century-21st century Italian Literature
Comparative Literature
Italian and Continental Philosophy
Critical Theory
Music and Philosophy
Cultural Studies with Emphasis on Popular Music
Film and Philosophy
A.I. and Philosophy

Selected Publications

Selected Articles in English

Every Child Is a Severino Scholar: The Stubborn Persistence of the Past and the Contradiction of Being Born in Time.” Eternity and Contradiction: Journal of Fundamental Ontology, Vol. 4, No. 7, December 2022, pp. 61-73 [ISSN 26127571© Pensa MultiMedia DOI: 10.7346/e&c07202205].
Eternity – in the Nick of Time: A Reading of Paradiso XXIX.” Gradiva. International Journal of Italian Poetry, No. 60, Fall 2021, pp. 65-88.
Emanuele Severino versus Western Nihilism (A Guide for the Perplexed),” in Open Borders: Encounters between Italian Philosophy and Continental Thought, ed. by Silvia Benso and Antonio Calcagno, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2021, pp. 45-64.
Bob Dylan Is Going Home.” Dylan Review 3.1 (Summer 2021), pp. 21-25; BOB DYLAN IS GOING HOME – The Dylan Review (Open Access Journal).
Il viaggio di G. Mastorna’: Fellini Entre Deux Morts,” in A Companion to Federico Fellini, ed. by Frank Burke, Marguerite Waller, and Marita Gubareva. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2020, pp. 129-139.
Rocco Rubini. The Other Renaissance.” Italica, 97, 2, Summer 2020, pp. 426-429 [Review].
The Restless Mind of Italian Humanism: On Massimo Cacciari’s La mente inquieta.” Trópos. Rivista di ermeneutica e critica filosofica. XII, 1, 2019, pp. 21-27 (published in 2020).
The Geopolitics of Nihilism.” Giornale critico di storia delle idee. Critical Journal of History of Ideas. 2019, 1, pp. 123-138 (published in 2020).
Jacopo Tomatis. Storia culturale della canzone italiana.” Peer-reviewed review. ATeM. Archiv für Textmusikforschung, 3, 1, 2019 [ATeM I ISSN 2707-4102 I www.atem-journal.com]. (Published in 2020.)
Music and Criticism toward the 1980s: A Time to Revisit.” Vox Popular. Journal of the Italian Branch of IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music), 2 (1-2), 2019: 127-144.
I Can’t get No Satisfaction’: Giacomo Leopardi’s Theory of Pleasure,” in Mapping Leopardi: Poetic and Philosophical Intersections. Ed. by Emanuela Cervato, Mark Epstein, Giulia Santi, and Simona Wright, London, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, pp. 260-284.
Nihilism and the Mediterranean: Ancient Roots a Modern Obsession.” In The Idea of the Mediterranean. Ed. by Mario B. Mignone. Stony Brook, NY: Forum Italicum Publishing, 2017, pp. 60-80.
One-word Poems: On Poetic Philosophy.” In Agorapoetics: Poetics after Postmodernism. Ed by Rolando Pérez. Aurora, CO: The Davies Group, 2017, pp. 71-95.
Knowledge Design: A Much-Needed Discipline.” Nóema. Rivista online di filosofia, 7-1. Monographic issue: “La conoscenza al lavoro,” (2016). pp. 20-35 [noema.filosofia.unimi.it].
Rossellini’s Holy Mountain: Cinema and the Aesthetics of the Sublime.” In Attraversamenti culturali. Cinema, letteratura, musica e arti visuali nell’Italia contemporanea. Ed. by Fulvio Orsitto and Simona Wright. Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 2016, pp. 23-53.
The Transcendental Limits of Politics: On Massimo Cacciari’s Political Philosophy.” In Contemporary Italian Political Philosophy. Ed. by Antonio Calcagno. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015, pp. 119-138.
The Logic of Poetic Genealogy: On Paolo Valesio’s The Dark Flame.” In Discourse, Boundary, Creation (Logos Topos Poiesis). Ed. by Peter Carravetta. New York: Bordighera Press, 2014, pp. 55-75.
“The Consistency of Nothingness: Leopardi’s Struggle with ‘solido nulla’.” RISL (RivistaInternazionale di Studi Leopardiani) 8 (2012): 69-88.
“Franca Ghitti: Nailing the Page.” In Franca Ghitti, The Grammar of Nails – Opere-Works 1963-2010 (New York: OK Harris Works of Art, 2010), 8-23.
Schönberg and Petrarca – Petrarch Project, Fall 2009
"Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837),” Literary Encyclopedia, November 7, 2009;
“Oh, the Streets of Rome: Dylan in Italy,” in Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan from Minnesota to the World. Ed. by Colleen J. Sheehy and Thomas Swiss (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P., 2009), pp. 84-105.
“The Rise and Fall of Reality: Socrates, Virtual Reality, and the Birth of Philosophy from the ‘Spirit of Writing’,” in Between Philosophy and Poetry: Writing, Rhythm, History. Ed. by Massimo Verdicchio and Robert Burch (New York-London: Continuum, 2002), pp. 27-39.
“Blanchot’s Gaze and Orpheus’s Singing: Seeing and Listening in Poetic Inspiration,” in Panorama: Philosophies of the Visible. Ed. by Wilhelm S. Wurzer (London-New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 45-54.
"Folk Music and Popular Song from the Nineteenth Century to the 1990s," in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture. Ed. by Zigmunt Baranski and Rebecca West (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001), pp. 325-335.
"Consequences of Unlimited Semiosis: Carlo Sini's Metaphysics of the Sign and Semiotical Hermeneutics," in Cultural Semiosis: Tracing the Signifier. Edited by Hugh J. Silverman (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 48-62.
"Frail Identities along the Canadian Shield." Differentia, 6-7, Spring-Autumn 1994, pp. 283-296.
"Toward a Post-Democratic Society. On the Conflict between Ethnicity and Democracy," RLA Romance Languages Annual 1991, III. Ed. by Jeanette Beer, Charles Ganelin and Anthony J. Tamburri (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue Research Foundation, 1992), pp. 175-181.
"What Happened to Being? On Hermeneutics and Unlimited Semiosis in Carlo Sini and Gianni Vattimo," RLA (Romance Languages Annual) 1989, I. Ed. by Ben Lawton and Anthony J. Tamburri (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue Research Foundation, 1990), pp. 94-97.

Scholarly Books

Polvere di stelle. Dall’armonia delle sfere ai concerti negli stadi (Sesto San Giovanni: Mimesis, 2023).
Sapere (Bologna: il Mulino, 2022).
La voce di Bob Dylan. Un racconto dell'America (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2021).
Maria Anita Stefanelli, Alessandro Carrera, Fabio Fantuzzi (eds.) Bob Dylan and the Arts: Songs, Film, Painting, and Sculpture in Bob Dylan’s Universe (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2021).
Anatomia degli Sati Uniti. Diario di un amore difficile (Rome: Sossella, 2021).
Fellini, o della vita eterna. Da Gelsomina a Mastorna (Milan: MC edizioni, 2020).
Il principe e il giurista. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa e Salvatore Satta, new and expanded edition (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2020).
Fellini’s Eternal Rome: Paganism and Christianity in the Films of Federico Fellini (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2019).
Il colore del buio (Bologna: il Mulino, 2019).
Filosofia del minimalismo. La musica e il piacere della ripetizione (Monza: Casa Musicale Eco, 2018).
La memoria delle canzoni. Popular music e identità italiana (ed.) (Pasturana: puntoacapo, 2017).
Benedetto Croce in Texas. Storie di filosofia italiana in Nord America (Bergamo: Moretti&Vitali, 2017).
La ballata del Nobel. Bob Dylan a Stoccolma (Rome: Luca Sossella, 2017).

Scholarly

Il corpo tra volontà e rappresentazione. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bloch (Milan: Greco&Greco, 2015)
Musica e pubblico giovanile. L’evoluzione del gusto musicale dagli anni Sessanta agli anni Ottanta. New and expanded edition (Bologna: Odoya, 2014)
Il ricatto del godimento. Contributo a un’antropologia italiana (Verona: QuiEdit, 2014)
La distanza del cielo. Leopardi e lo spazio dell'ispirazione (Milan: Medusa, 2011)
La voce di Bob Dylan. Una spiegazione dell'America. New expanded edition (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2011)
La consistenza della luce. Il pensiero della natura da Goethe a Calvino (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2010)
Canzoni d’amore e misantropia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2008)
L’America al bivio della democrazia (Rome: Vertigo, 2008)
La consistenza del passato. Nietzsche Heidegger Severino (Milan: Medusa, 2007)
I poeti sono impossibili. Come fare il poeta senza diventare insopportabile (Rome: Il Filo, 2005)
Lo spazio materno dell’ispirazione. Agostino, Blanchot, Celan, Zanzotto (Fiesole: Cadmo, 2004)
La voce di Bob Dylan. Una spiegazione dell’America (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2001)
Il principe e il giurista. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa e Salvatore Satta (Rome: Pieraldo, 2001)
L'esperienza dell'istante. Metafisica, tempo, scrittura (Milan: Lanfranchi, 1995)
Musica e pubblico giovanile. L'evoluzione del gusto dagli anni Sessanta ad oggi (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980)

Fiction

Lo studente di medicina (Firenze: Passigli, 2021).
Librofilia (Milan: Cairo, 2010)
Skyline (Lecce: Manni, 2009)
La vita meravigliosa dei laureati in lettere (Palermo: Sellerio, 2002)
A che punto è il Giudizio Universale (Faenza: Mobydick, 1999)
La torre e la pianura (Udine: Campanotto, 1994)

Poetry

Il tempo dei morti. Mistero di voci (Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 2022).
Songs of Purgatory (Mount Sinai, NY: Gradiva Publications, 2020).
Beato chi scrive (Rome: nottetempo, 2016).
Poesie per paraurti (Faenza: Mobydick, 2012)
La stella del mattino e della sera (Rome: Il Filo, 2006)
Lode all'isterica e altre dichiarazioni d'amore (Faenza: Mobydick, 2000)
L’amore del secolo / Love of the Century (Bologna: Book, 2000)
La sposa perfetta/The Perfect Bride (Bologna: Book, 1997)
La ricerca della maturità (Udine: Campanotto, 1992)
La resurrezione delle cose (Milan: Ceratti, 1988)

Faculty & Staff