I currently teach at the University of Illinois at Chicago as Visiting Lecturer of Italian, in the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies.
I hold a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I also hold a Master’s and a Bachelor's degree in English and Spanish Literature, both received in Italy. My current research interests include pandemic studies in world literature, 20th-century Italian literature with a focus on environmental literature and cinema, Italo Calvino and the fantastic mode.
I was born and raised in Italy but spent several years studying abroad. I studied at the University of Seville, at Sierra Nevada College, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I taught the Italian and Spanish languages in Minnesota, in Wisconsin, and in Tennessee, for a total of over 8 years.
Center for Teaching, Sewanee, The University of the South, Teaching Enrichment Grant, 2021/2022
“Regrowth and Rebirth in Alice Rohrwacher’s Cinema”. In Italian Quarterly, Spring 2025
"Italo Calvino, un visionario ambientalista". Author profile for the AATI Newsletter Fall 2023
"The Secrets of Calvino’s Ars Combinatoria". In Italica, v. 99, no. I, Spring 2022
Patrizia Grimaldi Pizzorno. Dopo la peste. Desiderio e Ragione nella Decima Giornata del Decameron. Firenze: Olschki, 2021. Pp. 126. In Annali d’Italianistica, v. 41, 2023
Paolo Traniello. Le opere e i libri. Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni alle soglie dell’editoria moderna. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2021. Pp. 191. In Annali d’Italianistica, v. 41, 2023
Antonio Mileo. L’eroe fuori gioco. La struttura dello spazio nella Gerusalemme Liberata. Napoli: Paolo Loffredo Editore, 2020. Pp. 277. ISBN: 9788832193442. In Quaderni d’Italianistica, v. 43, no. 1, 2022
Elio Attilio Baldi. The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. Pp. 306. In Annali d’Italianistica, v. 38, 2020 (Spring 2020)
2020/2021, Leadership Award recipient, Graduate Association of French and Italian Students, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2019-2020, Instructor of Honor Award recipient, University Housing, University of Wisconsin-Madison
PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison
NeMLA 2024 – Boston, MA - Integrating Sustainability into the L2 classroom (March 2024)
NeMLA 2023 – Buffalo, NY - The Resilience of Nature amid Environmental Destruction in Alice Rohrwacher’s Cinema (March 2023)
NeMLA 2022 – Baltimore, MD - The False Authenticity of Books in Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (March 2022)
SIS PG Colloquium Really Fantastic 2022 – Virtual Symposium - Moderator of panel The Fantastic and Italo Calvino (February 2022)
NeMLA 2021 – Virtual Conference - Calvino’s Machines: a Key to Anti-anthropocentrism (March 2021)
"Italo Calvino: a Visionary Environmentalist". University of Illinois at Chicago, October 25, 2023
"Italo Calvino: un Ambientalista Visionario". Ridgewood High School, November 2, 2023
