College of Arts and Sciences

Education:

• PhD, Comparative Literature, Indiana University, 1996
• MA, Italian Literature, Indiana University, 1993
• Laurea French Literature, German as second area, University of Turin (Italy), 1984

Academic Positions:

• 2019 - Present: Distinguished Professor of Global Studies and Modern Languages, Drexel University, Philadelphia
• 2015 – 2019: Professor of European Studies, San Diego State University, San Diego
• 2013 – 2015: Professor of Italian and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Connecticut, Storrs
• 2003 – 2013: Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Connecticut, Storrs
• 1998 – 2003: Assistant Professor of Italian and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Modern and Classical Languages, University of Connecticut, Storrs
• 1997 – 1998: Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, PR

Academic Administration:

• 2019 – Present: Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Drexel University, Philadelphia
• 2015 – 2019: Dean, Arts and Letters: College of Humanities and Social Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego
• 2012 – 2013: Associate Dean for Humanities and Regional Campuses (Interim), College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs
• 2010 – 2011: Chair, Program of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Connecticut, Storrs
• 2005 – 2010: Head, Department of Languages, Cultures and Literatures, University of Connecticut, Storrs
• 1998 – 2004; 2006 – 2008: Director of Italian Language Program,Modern and Classical Languages, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Curriculum Vitae:

Selected Publications:

Works in Progress:

• “Nation(s) and Translation: special issue of Annali d’Italianistica” (forthcoming 2020)
• “The Camps of the ‘Duce’: Civilian Internment in Fascist Italy (1940-1943)”: co-translated and co-edited; (forthcoming with Routledge 2020)
• “Umberto Eco: Cultural Interventions from the Archives of History”

Books:

• “The Politics of Culture and the Ambiguities of Interpretation: Umberto Eco's Alternative,” with an afterword by Umberto Eco, ed. (New York: Peter Lang, 1998)
• “Céline, Gadda, Beckett: Experimental Writers of the 1930s,” with a preface by Stanley Gontarski (Florida University Press 2000)
• “Risorgimento in Modern Italian Culture: Revisiting the 19th century Past in History, Narrative, and Cinema,” ed. (Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005)
• “Reading and Writing the Mediterranean: Essays by Vincenzo Consolo,” ed. with M. Lollini (Toronto University Press, 2006)
• “Italian Cultural Studies: Negotiating Regional, National and Global Identities,” ed. Special issue of Annali d’Italianistica” 24 (2006)
• “Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean,” with V. Ferme (Fordham University Press, 2011; Race & Ethnic Studies series); translated, edited and annotated.
• “Italy @ 150: National Discourse at the Sesquicentennial (1861-2011)”; guest-editor for special issue of Italian Culture XXX.1 (2012)
• “Italy and the Mediterranean: Words, Sounds, and Images of the Post-Cold War Era,” with V. Ferme (co-authored monograph, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013).
• “From Otium and Occupatio to Work and Labor in Italian Culture,” co-ed. for Annali d’Italianistica 23 (2014)

Chapters in Books/Articles (Recent):   

• “Colonial Legacies and Postcolonial Interruptions.” ISSA 31.1 (2018): 25-59.  
• “Umberto Eco’s Semiotic Imaginary”, with a response by Umberto Eco The Library of Living Philosophers, Open Court, 2016, 533-559.  
• “Fighting Cosa Nostra with the Camera’s Eye: Letizia Battaglia’s Evolving Icons of ‘Traumatic Realism,’” Italian Women at War, ed. Susan Amatangelo, Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2016, 165-179.
• Writing the Mediterraneity of the Italian South,” with V. Ferme, CLC: Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 371 (2015): 222-247 (rpt.)
• “Vincenzo Consolo and His Mediterranean Paradigm,” with M. Lollini, CLC: Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 371 (2015): 177-197 (rpt.)
• “Vincenzo Consolo and the Postmodern Writing of Melancholy,” CLC: Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 371 (2015): 144-154 (rpt.)
• “Consolo, Lévinas, and the Ethics of Postmodernist Storytelling,” Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 371 (2015): 119-128 (rpt.)
• “From Sicily to the Global South(s): Vincenzo Consolo and the Mediterranean,” Sicily and the Mediterranean: Migration, Exchange, Reinvention, ed. Summerfield and Karagoz, Palgrave MacMillan, 2015, 195-215.
• “European Cities Dream the ‘Great Sea’: Discourses on the Mediterranean and their Reception in the Arab and Islamic World,” Mediterranean Review 7.2 (2014): 53-82.  
• “Creative Tensions: Evolution and Involution in Eco’s Aesthetics Theory and Fictional Practice” Parol: quaderni d’arte e di epistemologia 14 (2013): 119-133.