Full Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, she is the author of the award-winning Rovine con vista. Napoli e il cinema di Elvira Notari (1995, Premio Barbaro-Filmcritica; reissued by Quodlibet in 2023). The English edition, published in 1993, won the Society for Cinema and Media Studies award for best book on cinema. With Atlante delle emozioni. In viaggio tra arte, architettura e cinema (2006; 2015), she introduced the interpretive category of “emotional geography” and received the Kraszna-Krausz Award for the best book in the world on the moving image. Pubbliche intimità. Architettura e arti visive (2009), Superfici. A proposito di estetica, materialità e media (2016), and Atmospheres of Projection. Environmentality in Art and Screen Media (2022) are foundational books in new philosophies of the visual arts and materiality in the digital age. Internationally renowned for her writings, translated into fifteen languages, she has received prestigious honours, including an honorary doctorate from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.