Assistant Professor of Italian
 
- Dottorato, Università degli Studi di Milano, 2003

- Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005


My research interests focus primarily on two fields: 20^th-century Italian literature and literary theory. Within the context of 20^th-century Italian literature, I am particularly interested in authors who link literature and the visual arts. In my doctoral dissertation, Parola e immagine nel Novecento Italiano: L’ekphrasis in Longhi, Banti, Pasolini e Testori (University of North Carolina, 2005), I analyze the visual elements in works by Anna Banti, Roberto Longhi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Giovanni Testori. These writers were involved with Longhi’s literary and artistic journal, Paragone, which encouraged a continuous confrontation between literature and painting and dominated the Italian cultural scene from the 50s to the 70s.  Banti, Pasolini, and Testori were influenced by Roberto Longhi's theory of the "equivalenze verbali," i.e., the ekphrastic attempt to translate the visual into the verbal.  After analyzing Longhi's theories, I point out how the three writers use this approach in their novels, movies, and poetry.  In literary theory, I am especially interested in the French and Italian semiotic and post-structuralist tradition.  In my book Le strutture e la storia: La critica italiana dallo strutturalismo alla semiotica (Milano, Led, 2006), I point out how Italian stucturalists (D'Arco Silvio Avalle, Maria Corti, Umberto Eco, Cesare Segre) have been able to go beyond the classic opposition between structuralism and historicism, by means of both a formal and a philological aproach to literary ananlysis.

In my teaching experience thus far, I have never taught a class in which I was not also an active learner, no matter how well I knew the material. I believe this is because I value the interaction I have with my students, and I take their questions, comments, and concerns seriously. In my courses, I always encourage students to contribute to classroom discussions. While doing so, I emphasize the need for critical engagement with the materials being studied and respect of other classmates' opinions. I use a wide variety of technology and media in my classes, including audio-visual aids, audio and video iPod, press items, and other media and related resources. I find that incorporating technology increases student interest in the class and helps accommodate different learning styles. I adhere to the goals of the course syllabus, but I know how to be flexible and to adapt my teaching whenever necessary.

Representative publications

Book

Le strutture e la storia: La critica italiana dallo strutturalismo alla semiotica. Milano: Led, 2006.

Articles

"Scacchi, cristalli, orologi: aporie della decostruzione."  Per Franco Brioschi.  Saggi di lingua e letteratura italiana, a cura di Claudio Milanini e Silvia Morgana, Milano, Cisalpino, 2007: 447-453.