Edward Bowen

Edward Bowen specializes in Italian film history, film exhibition, urban politics, and contemporary Italian culture. His work is aligned with a subfield of film studies known as ‘New Cinema History,’ in which scholars examine a wide-range of primary documents, beyond the film text, in order to better understand the social, commercial, and political aspects of moviegoing. Some of Bowen’s work examines the business practices of exhibitors, the attachments that spectators have to venues, and the political potential of movie theaters. He recently co-edited, with Damien Pollard, Film Exhibition: The Italian Context (Oxford: Legenda, 2024), the first book in English exclusively dedicated to film exhibition history in Italy. Bowen’s chapter in the volume focuses on the career of exhibitor Giovanni Amati and the practices of his dominant cinema chain in Rome. Along with Rémi Lanzoni, Bowen co-edited and contributed to the volume The Cinema of Ettore Scola (Wayne State University Press, 2020). He has published in the following journals: Comunicazioni sociali, Bianco e Nero, Textual Cultures, Cinema e storia, Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, and Studies in Documentary Film. Bowen enjoys teaching all levels of Italian language, and he has designed numerous interdisciplinary courses on cinema, literature, history, migration, and urban studies. Several of his courses are cross-listed with the Department of Film & Media Studies. Bowen has co-directed the Summer Language Institute in Florence several times, and he enjoys helping students to find internships and scholarships in Italy. He received the Jessie Marie Senor Cramer & Ann Cramer Root Research and Teaching Award in 2023 and 2025.