Pietro Bianchi Publishes First Book

Pietro Bianchi Publishes First Book

Romance Studies Department 3rd year graduate student Pietro Bianchi has just published his first book Jacques Lacan and Cinema: Imaginary, Gaze, Formalisation.


Prior to coming to Duke, Bianchi studied at the University of Bologna and at the University of Udine in Italy as well as at the Theory Department of the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (Netherlands). His background is in philosophy and film studies, with a strong emphasis on French psychoanalysis and in particular on the thought of Jacques Lacan—the main topic of his new book.

In addition to writing this book, Bianchi also regularly publishes as a film critic for a variety of Italian publications. His Ph.D. project at Duke is on French and Italian cinema, especially on genre cinema of the 50s-60s-70s and Romance Studies Professors Fredric Jameson, David F. Bell, Roberto Dainotto and Anne-Gaëlle Saliot are supervising him.


Professor Jameson endorsed the book, writing:

“Although the idea of the gaze as object played an important part in Lacanian psychoanalysis, it has rarely been found useful in practical film criticism. Pietro Bianchi’s impressive analyses are here therefore groundbreaking, and his accounts both of Lacanianism and of modern French film theory are impressively lucid and eloquent. This is a stimulating and original book in all respects.”
— Professor Fredric R. Jameson, Knut Schmidt-Nielsen Professor of Comparative
Literature and Director of Institute for Critical Theory, Duke University


Congratulations on this achievement Pietro!