Specialization:
Professor of Italian Studies
Director of Italian Program & Italian Undergraduate Studies
Bio:
Educational Background
- PhD in History, UCLA (1995)
- MA in History, UCLA (1988)
- BA in History, Magna Cum Laude, UCLA (1987)
Academic Distinctions and Awards
- UCHRI Conference Grant recipient for the conference History Unlimited: Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture, held at UCLA on April 22-23, 2012
- Co-principal investigator, Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation Grant (2000-2001)
- Mershon Center Fellow, Ohio State University (1999)
- Jean Monnet Fellowship, European University Institute, Florence (1998-1999)
- Wolfsonian Foundation Summer Fellowship, Miami, Florida (1995)
- Ford Foundation Teaching Fellowship, UCLA (1993-1994)
Research Interests
- Medeterranean imaginaries and cultures
- Relationship between Italian modernism and mass culture
- Fascist forms of imaginary and their relations to representations of fascism
- Relationships between 20th-century continental philosophy and visual culture
Books
- The Fishing Net and the Spider Web. Mediterranean Imaginaries and the Making of Italians. London: Palgrave, 2020.
- Italia senza frontiere (Borderless Italy), co-edited with Stephanie Malia Hom and Laura S. Ruberto, California Italian Studies 9.1 (2019) https://escholarship.org/uc/ismrg_cisj/9/1
- Performing Race. Co-editor. Zapruder World 4. 2017 (http://zapruderworld.org/journal/archive/volume-4/)
- Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture. Co-editor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016
- Metahistory Forty Years After. Co-editor. Special Issue of Storia e storiografia 65, 1. 2014
- Italy in the Mediterranean, co-edited with Lucia Re, California Italian Studies 1.1 (2009-2010), https://escholarship.org/uc/ismrg_cisj/1/1
- The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe. Co-editor. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006
- The Historic Imaginary. Politics of History in Fascist Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003
Selected Articles & Book Chapters
- “We Have Made the Mediterranean; Now We Have to Make Mediterraneans!” In Critically Mediterranean. Y. Elhariry and E. Tamalet eds. (New York: Palgrave, 2016), 181-198.
- “A Spatial Turn in Holocaust Studies?” Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture, 218-239.
- “The Fascist Stylization of Time.” Journal of Modern European History 13, 1 (2015): 98-114.
- “To Measure Futurism," California Italian Studies 2.1 (2011)
- “From Mare Nostrum to Mare Aliorum: Mediterranean Theory and Mediterraneanism in Contemporary Italian Thought," California Italian Studies 1.1 (2009-2010)
- “Digitalizing Historical Consciousness," History and Theory 48.2 (May 2008): 103-121
- “Futurist mediterraneità between Emporium and Imperium," Modernism/modernity 15.1 (January 2008): 25-43
- “Italiani brava gente: The Legacy of Fascist Historical Culture on Italian Politics of Memory," in The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe
- “Politics of Memory and Poetics of History in the Making of European Identity,” co-authored with Wulf Kansteiner, in The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe
- “Nascita di una finzione. Guerra di secessione e cinema statunitense,” Zapruder 10 (May-August 2006): 130-138
- “Fascism and Philosophy: the Case of Actualism,” South Central Review 23.1 (Spring 2006): 4-22
Work in Progress
- Translation of The Fishing Net and the Spider Web in Italian
- "Chrstopher Columbus and the (Italian) American Imaginary." A full-length study of the figure of Columbus in the American imagianry.
| Quarter | Course | Title |
| Spring 2012 | ITAL 126DD | Literature in Italian |
| Winter 2012 | ITAL 179X | Fiction and Film in Italy |
| Winter 2012 | ITAL 138DX | Cultural Representations in Italy |
| Fall 2011 | ITAL 138EX | Cultural Representations in Italy |
| Fall 2011 | ITAL 111 | Italian Short Fiction |
| Spring 2011 | ITAL 160 | Senior Seminar |
| Spring 2011 | ITAL 138DX | Cultural Representations in Italy |
| Winter 2011 | ITAL 124X | Italian Theatre |
| Fall 2010 | ITAL 180Z | Italian Cinema |
| Fall 2010 | ITAL 126A | Literature in Italian |
| Winter 2010 | ITAL 178B | Italian Cinema |
| Winter 2010 | ITAL 138DX | Cultural Representations in Italy |
| Fall 2009 | ITAL 179X | Fiction and Film in Italy |
| Fall 2009 | ITAL 111 | Italian Short Fiction |
| Spring 2009 | ITAL 180Z | Italian Cinema |
| Spring 2009 | ITAL 138D | Cultural Representations in Italy |
| Winter 2009 | ITAL 124X | Italian Theatre |
| Spring 2008 | ITAL 126A | Literature in Italian |
| Winter 2008 | ITAL 179X | Fiction and Film in Italy |
| Fall 2007 | ITAL 124X | Italian Theatre |
| Spring 2007 | ITAL 180Z | Italian Cinema |
| Spring 2007 | ITAL 111 | Italian Short Fiction |
| Winter 2007 | ITAL 179X | Fiction and Film in Italy |
| Winter 2007 | ITAL 20X | Introduction to Italian Culture |
| Fall 2006 | ITAL 101 | Advanced Reading and Composition: Modern Italy |
Research:
My research focuses on the formation of what I call "imaginaries," namely, mental images detectable in discoursive and image-making cultural-political practices that inform the formation of collective identities. My particular focus in on the formation of historical imagianaries, and the politics of memory deriving from the deployment of such imaginaries. Lately, I have been more and more attracted by the transnational scope and formation of imaginaries, which has led to the publication of my latest book on the role that Mediterranean imaginaries have played in forming Italian identities at home and abroad.
Projects:
Besides the translation of my latest book, The Fishing Net and the Spider Web, into Italian and in a format destined to a wider non-academic readership, I am also beginning a research path into the imaginary construction of Columbus in American and Italian American culture.
Publications:
The Fishing Net and the Spider Web. Mediterranean Imaginaries and the Making of Italians (Palgrave, 2020)
The Historic Imaginary. Politics of History in Fascist Italy (Toronto UP, 2003)
