Flavia Brizio-Skov received her early education in public schools in Savona, Italy, her B.A. from the University of Genoa, Italy, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle, in Comparative Literature. She joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee in 1988, immediately after completion of her doctoral studies.

She has received numerous research awards and grants and has participated in many conferences. Since 1995 she has been the Campus Director for the Cooperative Exchange Program between UT and the University of Genoa, Italy, organizing trips of UT faculty members to Genoa, of Genoa students to UT, and organizing two International Seminars, one in Genoa and one at UT.

She has been invited to lecture at various international conferences (Genoa, Lisbon), and at national institutions (Bryn Mawr College, The Catholic University of America, Kennesaw State University); in Fall 2004 she was the Director of the UT Semester in Wales, Swansea, UK; since Fall 2004 she has been a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Studies in European Cinema, University of Wales, UK and for the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies for many years.  

She has been a reader for the University of Toronto Press, Forum Italicum, The Modern Language Journal, Heinle & Heinle, and Houghton Mifflin. Professor Brizio-Skov’s research has touched on a variety of areas as her three monographs, one edited volume and numerous articles show. She has worked on contemporary literature, critical theory, postmodernism, metafiction, metahistory, cultural studies and cinema. Her research deals with popular culture in the Italian cinema of the postwar period and in genre cinema.  She teaches courses on a variety of topics related to 20th century Italy, dealing with literature, cultural studies, social history, and cinema; she also teaches a special topics course in Italian Cinema every spring for Cinema Studies, and in Fall she teaches Introduction to World Cinema for Cinema Studies.