Flavio Rizzo will be on Sabbatical during the Fall 2023 Semester

Flavio Rizzo has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and an Italian Laurea in Cinema Studies from Roma Tre University. Before joining Champlain College, Flavio was an Assistant Professor in the Center for Global Communication Strategies at the University of Tokyo where he was part of its faculty in the Japan in East Asia Program. He also taught Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the City University of New York.

Flavio is also a writer and filmmaker. Among other works, he has a documentary on Pier Paolo Pasolini (recognized with the Cinema Avvenire Award during the 53rd Venice Film Festival) and a documentary on the Coca Wars in Bolivia.

His research is currently focusing on cinematic and literary representations of seclusion; it concentrates on exploring contemporary forms of seclusion by putting the radical act of retreating from the world into the larger context of contemporary hyper-connectivity, networked and narcissistic digital narratives, and both commercially motivated and sincere forms of neo-spiritualisms. As part of this study, he has been tackling the Hikikomori phenomenon in Japan; he focuses on the juxtaposition of what he sees as postmodern hermits and the hyper-connected container in which they live. He is interested in analyzing the very specific iconographic space that emerges from this encounter-collision.

His areas of concentration rotate around interdisciplinary approaches and include: Cinema Studies, Cultural Studies, Buddhist Studies, and Mavericks in Literature.

He is a staunch supporter of Lazio, the team that in 1900 brought football to the city of Rome.