About

I am the William Payden Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Associate Director of the Center for Italian Studies at the University of Notre Dame. My research interests include modern and contemporary Italian literature and cinema, post-war Italian history, and the representation of minoritized cultures in twentieth-century Italy.

My first book, Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History (University of Toronto Press, 2020), was awarded the 2020 Book Prize for Visual Studies, Film and Media from the American Association of Italian Studies and was shortlisted for the Bridge Literary Prize in North American Non-Fiction. The book examines the work of celebrated neorealist filmmakers alongside investigations of many of the influential artists, authors, and intellectuals who similarly contributed to the development of Italian neorealism. In addition to this monograph, I have published chapters in several books, including World Film Locations: Florence (Intellect Books, 2014); Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Traumas, and Nostalgia in Post-World War II Italian Culture (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2018); The Total Art: Italian Cinema from Silent Screen to Digital Image (Bloomsbury, 2019); Innesti: Primo Levi e i libri altrui (Peter Lang, 2020). My work has also appeared in leading scholarly journals including Modern Language Notes, Italian Culture, the Journal of Modern Italian Studies, California Italian Studies, Tre Corone, and the Italianist.

A fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy, I have received an Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Reading and a Kaneb Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Notre Dame.