Francesca DE AGNOI

Position
PhD Student
Dottorato

Area tematica
Supervisore
E-mail
francesca.deagnoi@unive.it
837409@stud.unive.it
Website
www.unive.it/people/francesca.deagnoi (personal record)
Office
Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies
Website: https://www.unive.it/dep.dslcc

Francesca De Agnoi is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and Aesthetics at the University of Milan and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her research explores the cathartic potential of negative empathy across postmodernist fiction and narrative video games, investigating how affective engagement with morally ambiguous narratives fosters emotional intensity, aesthetic appreciation, and sustained attention. Bridging critical theory, game studies, and reception theory, she employs qualitative empirical methods, cognitive poetics, and affect studies to examine contemporary media aesthetics. Her research interests include negative empathy, affect studies, psychoanalytic approaches to literature, the sublime, and intermediality.

She is currently a visiting researcher at the School of Communication and Culture of Aarhus University, Denmark, under the supervision of Mads Rosendahl Thomsen.