Stephanie Malia Hom

Assistant Professor
smh@frit.ucsb.edu

Office Location: 

Phelps 5323

Website: 

http://www.stephaniemaliahom.com

Specialization: 

Assistant Professor of Transnational Italian Studies

Affiliated Faculty, Anthropology

Education: 

PhD, Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2007
MA, Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2002
Diploma di lingua e cultura italiana, Università per Stranieri di Perugia, 2000
BA with Honors, International Relations, Brown University, 1997

Bio: 

Academic Awards and Distinctions

The Nantucket Project, TNP Scholar, 2017-2018
American Council of Learned Societies, Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, 2014-2015
Stanford Humanities Center, Marta Sutton Weeks Fellowship, 2014-2015
American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Oscar Broneer Travelling Fellowship, 2012-2013
Harvard University, Lauro De Bosis Fellowship, 2012-2013
American Academy in Rome, Lily B. Auchincloss Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies, 2010-2011
The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Grant for Research on Venetian History and Culture, 2007-2008
The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Fellowship, 2006-2007
American Geographic Society Library, Helen & John S. Best Research Fellowship, 2004-2005
Research Institute for the Study of Man, Landes Award for Supervised Field Training, 2002

Research: 

modern Italy and the Mediterranean
migration and detention; mobility studies
colonialism and imperialism; postcolonial studies; empire
tourism studies; tourism and travel in Italy
20th - and 21st-century Italian and Italophone literature

Projects: 

My next book project, Imperial Eclipse: Italian Colonial Fiction and Race, 1900-1960 (in preparation) examines the ideological roots of the myth that Italians are not racist (gli italiani non sono razzisti). It traces this belief back to fictional narratives produced about colonialism in the era during and immediately after Italy's direct colonial rule. Building on the framework of empire's mobius strip, it shows how imaginative mobilities powerfully inculcate epidermal racism in Italy, which give rise to contemporary practices of discrimination and violence against those perceived to be nonwhite.

Publications: 

Books

Empire’s Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes in Italy’s Crisis of Migration and Detention, Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2019. Winner, 2019 American Association of Italian Studies Book Prize (20th and 21st
Centuries); 2019 Books of the Year, Times Literary Supplement
 
The Beautiful Country: Tourism and the Impossible State of Destination Italy, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2015.
 
Edited Volumes & Journal Issues
“Borderless Italy/Italia senza frontiere,” California Italian Studies, co-edited with Claudio Fogu and Laura
E. Ruberto, vol. 9, no. 1 (2019).
 
Italian Mobilities, co-edited with Ruth Ben-Ghiat. London: Routledge, 2016.
 
Select Articles & Book Chapters
“All Empire is a Stage: Italian Colonial Exhibitions in Continuum.” In Neocolonialism and Built Heritage: Echoes of Empire in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, ed. Daniel Coslett, 106–123.London: Routledge, 2020.
 
“The City of Light in the City of Signs: Virtuality and Tourism in Paris, Las Vegas.” In Tourism Fictions, Simulacra, and Virtualities: Spatialities of Tourism in an Era of Complexity, eds. Maria Gravari-Barbas, Nelson Graburn, and Jean-François Staszak, 183–196. London: Routledge, 2020.
 
“Notes on Rhetoric and Repetition in Tourism.” In Repetition, Recurrence, Returns: How Cultural Renewal Works, eds. Joan Ramon Resina and Christoph Wulf, 105–143. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019.
 
“Becoming Ospite: Hospitality and Mobility at the Center of Temporary Permanence.” In Italian Mobilities, eds. Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Stephanie Malia Hom, 88–110. London: Routledge, 2016.
 
“La terra in Sicilia: A Dundesian Reading of the Festival of St. Agatha.” Special Issue on the Legacy of Alan
Dundes. Western Folklore 73:2–3 (2014): 146–72.
 
“Simulated Imperialism.” Traditional Dwellings & Settlements Review 25:1 (2013): 25–44.
 
“On the Origins of Making Italy: Massimo D’Azeglio and ‘Fatta l’Italia, bisogna fare gli Italiani.’” Italian Culture 31:1 (2013): 1–16.
 
“Empires of Tourism: Travel & Rhetoric in Italian Colonial Libya and Albania, 1911–1943.” Journal of Tourism History 4:3 (2012): 281–300.
 
“Italy Without Borders: Simulacra, Tourism, Suburbia, and the New Grand Tour.” Special Issue on Italian Cultural Studies. Italian Studies 65:3 (2010): 376–97.
 
“Consuming the View: Tourism, Rome, and the Topos of the Eternal City.” Special Issue on Capital City: Rome, 1870–2010. Annali d’Italianistica 28 (2010): 91–116.
 
“Set into Motion: Identity and Mobility in Nassera Chohra’s Volevo diventare bianca.” The Italianist 29:3 (2009): 425–47.
 
“‘Patria’-otic Incarnations and Italian Character: Discourses of Nationalism in Ippolito Nievo’s Confessioni d’un Italiano.” Italica 84:2–3 (Summer/Fall 2007): 214–32.
 
“The Tourist Moment.” Annals of Tourism Research 31:1 (2004): 61–77.

Courses: 

Fall 2020 - ITAL139YY - Biopolitics and Medical Humanities: Italy in the Age of the Coronavirus

Winter 2021 - ITAL119A - The Art of Translation: Race & Italophone Literature

Spring 2021 - ITAL138AA - Italian Cultural Expressions: Interrogating the Real: Italian Literature & Cinema from Realism to Virtual Reality
 
Fall 2021 - ITAL139ZX - Crime, Italian Style;  ITAL111 - Short Stories in Italian
 
Professor Hom also conducts independent research and study courses (ITAL199; ITAL199RA) at the undergraduate level, and Directed Reading and Research courses (ITAL596; FR596) at the graduate level.