EDUCATION

Zecchi received a "Laurea" (BA) in Studi Linguistici e Culturali Comparati (formerly Lingue Straniere) from the Università Ca' Foscari, Venezia, Italy, a Master degree from the University of California San Diego in Hispanic Studies with a focus on gender studies, another Master from the University of California Los Angeles in Italian Studies with a specialization in Italian cinema, and a PhD from the University of California Los Angeles in Romance Studies,  with a dissertation entitled The Representation of Rape and the Rape of Representation: Sexual/Textual Violence in Spain and Italy. Most recently, Zecchi earned a Certificate in Screenwriting from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos/ Escuela de Guion of Madrid, Spain, under the direction of Alicia Luna. In the Summer of 2019 she was trained as a videoessayist at the Scholarship in Sound and Image, Middlebury’s Digital Liberal Arts Summer Institute.

 

RESEARCH

Zecchi has published and lectured extensively on European and Latin American cinemas, women filmmakers, feminist film theory, adaptation theory, gender-based violence, aging studies, and videographic scholarship. In addition to over 100 academic articles and book chapters, she is the author, editor, or co-editor of eleven volumes: including the monographic books La pantalla sexuada (The Gendered Screen, Cátedra, 2015) and Desenfocadas: Cineastas españolas y discursos de género (Out of Focus: Spanish Women Filmmakers and Gender Discourses, Icaria, 2014 —listed as one of the 10 books that defined a decade by the daily Spanish newspaper ElDiario ). See her a complete list of her books here.

A prolific video-essayists, Zecchi's work has been featured in the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound  Best Video Essays of the year since 2021. Her The Rhythms of Rage was the most vote-getter of 2024. Some of her videographic work were screened at official selections of national and international film festivals -including Emami Experimental Art (India), Adelio Ferrero (Italy), Marienbad (Czech Republic), and Bordeaux Short Film Biennale (France), Feminist Border Arts Film Festival (New Mexico).
She talks about her practice-based research in the Video Essay Podcast (Episode 31).
In 2017, in recognition of her research and service, Zecchi was elected associate member of The Film Academy of Spain (Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España), voting on the Goya Awards, Mexico’s Ariel Awards, and Spain’s Oscar submission.
In 2020 she joined the editorial board of the award winning journal [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies.

ADMINISTRATIVE APPOINTMENTS and VISITING POSITIONS

Zecchi joined the Dept. of Languages Literatures and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2005, and was promoted to full professor in 2015.  She served as Graduate Program Director and Head of the Spanish and Portuguese Unit (2011-2015);  Director of the UMass Translation Center (2015-2017), and Co-Director of the UMass Digital Humanities Initiative Program (2016-2017).
​In 2017, Zecchi was appointed  Head of the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies. 
Zecchi held visiting positions in different European and American universities, such as the Johns Hopkins University, Universidad Carlos III of Madrid, Universitat de Valencia, Universitat de Girona, Universidad de Cádiz in Spain, at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark, and at the Università degli Studi Ca' Foscari in Italy.

 
ORGANIZATION of FILM FESTIVALS AND CONFERENCES

Zecchi has a broad experience with film festivals. She founded and has co-curated 12 annual editions of the Massachusetts Catalan Film Festival, she is the faculty sponsor of the UMass Latin American Film Festival, she collaborated in two editions of MIC Género (Muestra Internacional de Cine con Perspectiva de Género) en en la Ciudad de México, and served twice on the jury of Cines del Sur in Granada. Since 2023 she serves as the executive director the the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival.
At UMass, she organized or co-organized the international conferences "Theory and Practice of the Video Essay" (2022), "Gynocine: Spanish Women and Film" (2011), "Spanish Cinema Today" (2012), and "Almodóvar en evolución" (2013 —in collaboration with her graduate students).  At Aston University in Birmingham, UK, the international  conference "CinemAGEnder" (2016), and the Workshop Aging Studies and Visual Culture at the University Complutense of Madrid (2017). 

DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS and WORKSHOPS in VIDEOGRAPHIC SCHOLARSHIP

In 2011, with a seed grant from the University of Massachusetts, she launched  the open access Gynocine Project: Women Filmmakers, Feminism, and Film Studies. In 2017 she co-founded the international research network CinemAGEnder.  She has participated in the organization of international workshops in videographic criticism, including  “Videographic Venice: The Video Essay at the Intersection of Place and Practice”, at Venice International University, “Reframing the Argument: Videographic Criticism as Graduate Research Practice”, a week long advanced workshop for graduate students, at the University of Notre Dame, “From Text-Based Research to Videographic Criticism” a 2-day workshop for undergraduate students, at Yale University, among others.
 

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