Gennaro Ambrosino (MA in Modern Philology, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’; MA in Western Literature, KU Leuven) is a PhD candidate in Italian Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. His doctoral research examines the intersections of archaeology, geology, and theories of the ‘unconscious’ in Italian culture from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. He has published and presented on the interplay between nineteenth-century archaeological and geological discourses and literary imagery, with a particular focus on Giacomo Leopardi (Cahiers d’études italiennes, 40, 2025). His research interests also include Mesmerism and Spiritualism in Italy during the long nineteenth century. On this topic, he has published peer-reviewed articles in Incontri. Rivista europea di studi italiani (37, 2022) and Enthymema (27, 2021). Additionally, he has been actively involved in academic event organization, including the international conference Spiritismo e letteratura italiana tra il Settecento e il Duemila (KU Leuven, 29–30 September 2023).Fabio Camilletti is a Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Warwick. His academic training took place at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, St John's College Oxford, Paris Sorbonne, and the University of Birmingham. Between 2008 and 2010, he was a fellow in Literature, Art History, and Psychoanalysis at the ICI Kulturlabor Berlin, and he has held visiting positions at institutions such as the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, IULM Milan, and the School of Advanced Study, University of London, among others. His research focuses on Romantic and Gothic literature, the occult, and theories of spectrality. Among his publications are Italia lunare. Gli anni Sessanta e l'occulto (2018) and Spettri familiari. Letteratura e metapsichica nel secondo Novecento italiano (2024), as well as two co-edited anthologies on Italian folk horror.Bart Van den Bossche is Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium. His research interests cover various topics in modern and contemporary Italian literature, with a focus on avant-garde and modernism, the relationships between myth and literature, and the poetics of the novel. Since 2011, he has been a member of the MDRN research group (www.mdrn.be) that studies European literature between 1880 and 1960. He has published essays on various authors and topics, a monograph on Cesare Pavese (Cesati, 2001) and a volume dedicated to myth in twentieth-century Italian literature (Cesati, 2007). Some of the volumes he co-edited are as follows: Futurism. A Microhistory, with co-editors Sascha Bru and Luca Somigli (Legenda, 2017), 1947. Almanach littéraire, with co-editors David Martens and MDRN (Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2017), Modern Etruscans. Close Encounters with a Distant Past, with co-editors Martina Piperno and Chiara Zampieri (Leuven University Press, 2023), and Modernism and Science in Europe 1890–1950, with co-editor Anke Gilleir, special issue of Journal of Literature and Science (2023).

• List of ContributorsGennaro Ambrosino, Fabio Camilletti, Bart Van den Bossche, Introduction, Modern Spiritualism in Italian Literature and Culture (1765-1969)1. Giulia Scialanga, The Discourse on Spectrality in Atanasio Cavalli’s Delle apparizioni, ed operazioni de’ spiriti (1765)2. Gennaro Ambrosino, ‘Gli occhi sono il telegrafo dell’anima’. Tracing the Prehistory of Modern Spiritualism in Italian Literature and Culture (1792-1853)3. Simona Cigliana, Esotericism, Occultism, Psychic Research and the Origins of Modernity. Italian Cultural and Literary Landscape (1850-1930)4. Stefano Serafini, Investigating the Supernatural in Modern Italian Literature5. Francesco Paolo de Ceglia, Lorenzo Leporiere, Eusapia Palladino, the Despair of Science. The uncertain boundaries of mediumship in liberal-era Italy (1861-1921)6. Bart Van den Bossche, Telling examples? Spirits, stories and plots in Pirandello7. Alessandra Diazzi, The Psychic Psyche in Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno8. Michael Subialka, Spiritualism, Modernist Idealism, and the Séance: The Case of Italo Svevo9. Fabio Camilletti, The Un-Death of the Author. Dante’s Mediumistic Afterlives10. Stefano Lazzarin, Moravia between Play and Aura in the Short Story Seduta spiritica (1960)11. Fabrizio Foni, Alan Maglio, Luca Matarazzo, Night’s Spiritual Heralds: Mediumistic Phenomena in the Milanese Newspaper La Notte (1952-1969)