Ty Davidian
Current Roles:
- Acting Graduate Representative, Department of French and Italian (Autumn Quarter '24)
- Coordinator, Italian Lecture Series (ILS)
- Managing Producer, Entitled Opinions ()
Ty Davidian is a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in Italian with Ph.D. Minors in Art History and French. He was recently awarded a research grant from the Getty Foundation to pursue research at the Getty Research Institute in summer 2024.
He is the Founder and Curator of The Futurist Archive, the largest internet archive for Italian Futurism, which contains entries for all Futurist artistic productions from 1909 to 1944. The Futurist Archive is scheduled to launch on its website, thefuturistarchive.com, in late 2024. The Futurist Archive is also active on , where it provides scans of hard-to-find Italian Futurist materials.
His research interests broadly revolve around the early 20th-century avant-garde, more specifically Italian Futurist poetics, prose, and art. His dissertation focuses on manifestations of ghosts (e.g., ghost bodies, ghost trains, ghost notes, and other ghostly phenomena) in First Futurist art and literature. Artworks by Boccioni, Russolo, and Carrà , as well as novels by Marinetti and Palazzeschi, all feature in the project.
He also has secondary research interests in contemporary Italophone literature, in particular the first-generation writings of Saidou Moussa Ba, Pap Khouma, and Mohamed Bouchane.