University College Cork

Faculty Member, Italian

About

Mark Chu is Senior Lecturer in Italian at University College Cork, where he has worked since 1991, having previously taught English at the Università degli Studi di Palermo (1985-1991). He received his PhD from the University of Hull (UK) in 1992, for a thesis on ‘“Power” and “Reason” in the Works of Three Sicilian Writers: Federico De Roberto, Vitaliano Brancati and Leonardo Sciascia’.

His main areas of research are (i) Sicilian literature since 1870, and (ii) Italian crime fiction in its European and global context. Providing cohesion across these two apparently disparate areas is his concern with theoretical questions regarding representation and his cultural studies approach. These, in turn, are reconciled in his work, through a commitment to ethico-political engagement with the text and its intended and unintended meanings, with a deconstructionist method.

His research on Sicilian literature has evolved from a thematic study in his doctoral thesis, to a focus on the very nature of the representation of the region by authors working predominantly in a realist mode and frequently referring to aspects of the island’s history.

Since January 2004, he has served as Head of the Department of Italian. He teaches Italian language and modern Italian literature and the media, and supervises research postgraduates working on modern and contemporary Italian narrative.

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