My area of expertise includes the literary production of the Italian American diaspora and its related themes of cultural conflict, crossings, and ethnic identity formation. It extends onto the insurgence of the necessity of a new canon that considers hybridized genders and new ethnic literature.
Current Area of Research: Literary representations of gender violence, such as rape or female discrimination, as seen in the Italian American literary tradition. I have recently developed into a writer of non-fiction and children’s stories that all share an Italian American background but deals with themes of racial contamination.
I am currently interested in the literary representation of gender violence and violated bodies within Italian American immigrant communities and the investigation of immigrant women’s traumas through a psychoanalytical perspective. I am proposing an innovative reading of Italian American gender literature that will exploit the theoretical frame of feminist psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Throughout my research, I have built a robust background in Italian literature and Italian American studies, migration studies, gender studies, above all with concern to the literary representation of patriarchy, shame, and violence. Moreover, I have been dedicating my attention to the literature of African Italian women writers in Italy today. I am exploring the meaningful relationship between corporeal tensions, food, and the shaping of a new Italian identity.
