Massimo Salgaro

Massimo Salgaro works as Assistant professor of German Studies at the University of Verona. Although his background is in German Studies during the past years he has been working empirically with psycholinguists and neuroscientists to assess the cognitive and emotional effects of literary reading. Current research project is Literary empathy and the “science of evil” (at Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt). This project aims at reflecting on the moral value of literary empathy with a further focus on the prosocial effects of literature as well as on the potentially asocial and amoral effects.

Visiting fellowships include Visting Scholar at the German Department of the Tongij University of Shanghai (China) and Alexander von Humboldt-fellow at the Seminar für deutsche Philologie at the University of Göttingen (Germany) in 2015; Visiting Professor at the University of Göttingen for the Spring school “World Literature – Reading and Writing in the Age of Globalization” in 2014; Visting Scholar at the German Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) in 2012-2013; Visiting Professor at the Department of English and Film Studies of the University of Alberta, Edmonton (Canada) in 2011; Visiting scholar at the Peter-Szondi Institut of the Freie Universität Berlin (DAAD Stipendium) in 2010 and Visiting scholar at the Department of German Studies of the Columbia University, New York (USA) in 2008.

Website at the University of Verona.