I am an assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. During Fall 2009, I am also a Post-Doctoral
Fellow in International Humanities at the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown
University. 

I received my PhD in Italian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2007),
with a specialization in Modern Italian Studies, Gender Studies and Comparative
Literature (Italian and French). 

I am currently working on a book manuscript entitled "Dissonant Vehicles of Gender.
The Ideology of Character from Alessandro Manzoni to Elsa Morante." Organized around
the work of four Italian authors, this project explores the intersection between
narrative, epistemology and gender in modern Italian literature. I am particularly
interested in the literary category of character as an ideological notion. Characters
constitute the privileged focus of an analysis of the novel that encompasses both
structure and reference, and that takes gender as its central analytical and ideological
paradigm. Through the discussion of specific characters, I explore how gender informs not
only the characters' biography and behavior, but the very narrative and
epistemological structures that shape their fictional existence and literary works at
large. 

Articles and Book Reviews

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Gendered Quests: Analysis, Revelation and the Epistemology of Gender in Neera's "Teresa", "Lydia" and "L'indomani", The Italianist (2008)

This essay is devoted to Milanese fin-de-siècle writer Neera, more specifically to the three novels...

 

Book Manuscript

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The Ideology of Character: An Introduction (2007)
I discuss here the theoretical and critical concerns that shape my analyses of Alessandro Manzoni's...
 

Presentations

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Narrative, Masculinity and Homosexuality: Gender Ideology in Elsa Morante, CICIS Conference (2007)
In this paper I analyze the character of Manuele, the protagonist of Elsa Morante’s last...
 

Teaching Material