Ty Davidian
Current Roles:
- Graduate Representative, Department of French and Italian
- Coordinator, Italian Lecture Series (ILS)
- Managing Producer, Entitled Opinions ()
Ty Davidian is a third-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 dissertation research at the Getty Research Institute's Special Collections in 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.
His primary research interests revolve around Futurist poetics, prose, and art. His dissertation, tentatively titled "Cracking the Code: Italian Futurism and the Occult," addresses how Futurists transformed their inner occult values into external forms of art. The project situates itself among early esoteric studies of Futurism, many of which focused exclusively on the "what" and "why" of Futurism's relationship with the occult, and looks to clarify reductionist interpretations of Futurist parole in libert脿 and art. Figures such as Marinetti, Boccioni, Russolo, Corra, and Ros脿 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.