Flavio Rizzo
Associate Professor
Biography
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:
He is a staunch supporter of Lazio, the team that in 1900 brought football to the city of Rome.
Publications & Abstracts
2021 “Re-inventing isolation, Imagining the other in seclusion” Essays in Otherness – Aarhus University, co-author
2019 “Unlocking Hikikomori: an Interdisciplinary Approach” Journal of Youth Studies, Volume 22, No 06, Taylor & Francis, co-author
2018 “Migrant Crisis: One Day We Will Have a Language for This” Africa is a Country, May 2nd
2016 “Hikikomori: the Postmodern Hermits of Japan” Warscapes, June 14th
2016 “Student-Centered Teaching: Writing Through Passion” Komaba Journal of English Education, Volume 7, University of Tokyo, co-author
2015 “The New Paladins of the Humanities: A Warning” Warscapes, June 28th
2013 “Toward a Loss of Language” Huffington Post, Oct 2nd
2013 “Thoughts in Exile: Beyond Berlusconi’s Sex Trial” Huffington Post, August 6th
2013 “Minister Kyenge and “Good’ Colonialism” Warscapes, July 31st
2013 “Navigating Italian Shame” Huffington Post, July 21st
2013 “The Story of Wikileaks?” Warscapes, June 30th
2013 “Shipwrecked in Whole Foods” Warscapes, June 1st
2012 “On Ignorance and Prankumentary: Adrift in the Central African Republic” Warscapes, October 15th
2012 “Filming the Green Wave: a Delicate Space of Brutality” Warscapes, October 3rd
2012 “Compromising Iranian Cinema” Warscapes, May 29th
2011 In Danger, San Francisco: City Lights Books Translator of literary essays by Pier Paolo Pasolini
