Timothy Campbell, professor of Romance studies, has been awarded the 2017 American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS) prize in film and other media studies for his recent book, “Technē of Giving: Cinema and the Generous Form of Life.”
The book explores how we hold the objects of daily life—and ourselves—in relation to neoliberal forms of gift-giving. In such a milieu of charitable gift-giving, nearly everything given and received becomes the subject of a calculus. Bringing political philosophy together with classical Italian cinema, Campbell investigates whether there is there another way to conceive of generosity, and what giving and receiving without gifts would look like.
Campbell’s research interests include contemporary Italian thought, Michel Foucault, and race and biopolitics. He has translated Roberto Esposito’s “Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy” (2008) and “Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community” (2010) and is editor of the “Commonalities” series for Fordham University Press. He is currently completing a project on power and the comic self.
