You might describe me as a modernist who is having an affair with the Early Modern. It is true. During the week, I’m committed to postwar Italy, but on the weekends, you will find me spending time with the Late Renaissance and Baroque. In either case, I focus on the themes of (in)fidelity, oppression/resistance, marginalization, and alienation in both literature and cinema. I take a keen interest in the marvelous, the fantastic, and magical realism.
Some frameworks that shape my perspective include Women of Color Feminisms, Sexuality and Gender Studies, Queer Theory, and Decoloniality.
CURRENT PROJECTS:
Candidacy Exams: For my minor, I will analyzed representations of women warriors in Renaissance Chivalric Romances and Novellas. For my major, I will complicate Italian feminism by examining anti-identitarian authors/directors/artists that disavow feminism at the height of the feminist movements of the 1970s.
Anna Maria Ortese’s L’Iguana: The territorializing nature of capitalism is similar to that of colonialism as expressed in the overlapping identities of characters in the novel. The use of magical realism resists the territorialization of both capitalism and colonialism.
PAST PROJECTS:
Qualifying Exam: My critical research question focused on the systems of oppression that marginalize women in Italy from Trecento to now. I examined the State, the church, civil society, and domestic life as forces of marginalization as described within literature, film, and art and how the female body becomes commodified and consumed through her sexual difference.
