Research: On the Frontlines of Fiction: Authority and Fictionality in American Veteran Narratives of the War on Terror
Angelo Arminio is PhD candidate at Sapienza Università di Roma and at the University of Silesia in Katowice. He earned his BA at Sapienza with a thesis which explores the interdependence of memory, autobiography, and literary fiction in Paul Auster’s early works. His MA dissertation investigates questions of historical truth and fiction in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried as well as more recent veteran narratives. During his studies, Angelo spent time abroad at the University of York and the Freie Universität Berlin thanks to the Erasmus Programme. After earning his MA, he spent a year teaching Italian in Nuremeberg thanks to a fellowship sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Education. His current research focuses on the evolution of the fictional narratives of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, focusing on questions of authority, memory, trauma, and the use of fictionality as rhetoric. His research interests include contemporary narratives of war, postmodern and contemporary fiction, autofiction, narratology, and Walt Whitman's poetry and prose.