Influential Film Scholar Angela Dalle Vacche Retires; Appointed Professor Emerita

Posted August 13, 2020

Angela Dalle Vacche, professor and influential scholar of film history and theory, has retired after nearly 19 years of distinguished service to the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Her retirement was effective Aug. 1. She has been appointed as Professor Emerita.

“Dr. Dalle Vacche was an internationally recognized scholar before she joined us, but she increased her reputation even more since 2001,” said LMC Chair Richard Utz.

In addition to her status as an acclaimed film scholar, Dalle Vacche — who specializes in the intersection of aesthetic theory and film history — has had a significant impact on film studies at Georgia Tech. She developed the Institute’s first course on African Cinema and introduced courses such as Color in Film, Recent European Filmmakers, Film Theory, and the Cinema of Pier Pasolini.

She created and served as director of the School’s summer Italian Film Institute, which offered students the opportunity to study film history and production in Gorizia, Italy. She also curated film series at Georgia Tech and elsewhere, including several focusing on African cinema. She worked with the Georgia Tech library to bring to campus more films and make them more accessible to students, said her longtime film studies colleague at Georgia Tech, Jay Telotte.

“She has been, very simply, a dedicated teacher and a valuable resource.”

Dalle Vacche cited her work with Georgia Tech students as a highlight of her career in Atlanta.

“I am a deeply visual person and the Tech students like to analyze images and chart narratives. Many of them had never been to Europe, so my teaching of European cinema was a good introduction for them. I made them curious and I discussed issues of cultural difference and historical specificity.”

An Illustrious Career

Dalle Vacche was born in Venice. She came to the United States in 1978 to pursue graduate studies and earned her Ph.D. in Film Studies from the University of Iowa in 1985. Later that year, she began her academic career as an assistant professor at Vassar College. In 1987, she moved to Yale University, where she wrote The Body in the Mirror. A decade later, in 1997, she moved to Atlanta to work at Emory University. She moved across town to Georgia Tech in 2001 to help strengthen the school’s offerings in film studies.

“Since that time she has collaborated with her colleagues to build an impressive and reputable section in her area of specialty, successfully teaching film from the introductory through the senior levels and mentoring and advising numerous students via senior thesis projects and independent studies,” Utz said. “Her work was instrumental at turning our film emphasis in the LMC major and our film minor into one of the most widely sought specializations among our students.”

Dalle Vacche authored or edited four of her seven published books while at Georgia Tech: The Visual Turn: Classical Film Theory and Art History; Color, A Film Reader; Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Cinema, for which she won an American Association of University Libraries Book Award in 2008; and Film, Art, New Media: Museum Without Walls.

A forthcoming book, Andre Bazin’s Film Theory: Art, Science, Religion, is based on archival research and Dalle Vacche’s own translation is Bazin’s early writings.

The book comes amid a resurgence in interest in Bazin and “promises to have a significant impact on international film studies,” Telotte said.

More Scholarship and Collaboration Ahead

Dalle Vacche served as a member of advisory and editorial boards of some of the most distinguished book series and journals in her field and was regularly invited to speak at film and arts events around the world.

The lengthy list of accolades and accomplishments Dalle Vacche accumulated during her tenure at Georgia Tech includes a Goggio Visiting Professorship at the University of Toronto, a distinction she shared with famed Italian author and scholar Umberto Eco.

She also was a Lerverhulme Trust Distinguished Senior Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College of the University of London, a Bellagio Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, a Dora Maar Fellowship from the Brown Foundation Fellows Program at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and a Core Program Residency from the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France.

In retirement, Dalle Vacche plans to continue her work on African film. She has been appointed a 2020 - 2022 Fulbright Specialist by the U.S. State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Exchange program. She will help develop film studies at the University of Gondar in Ethiopia and hopes to begin a 6-week residency there when international travel and health conditions allow. She also plans to work with contracts in Senegal to develop film studies programs there and will pursue a master’s degree in African Studies at Columbia University.

Our gratitude to Dr. Dalle Vacche for her dedication and vision during her years with the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts School of Literature, Media, and Communications.