CV / publications

CURRENT POSITION

Assistant Professor (non-tenure track)/Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Department of English and American Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU).

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Program in English-Language Literatures, “Sapienza” University of Rome, 2011
(Doctoral Fellow at the International Forum for U.S. Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, January-May 2010; UCD Clinton Institute Summer School, Dublin, July 2009)
Dissertation title: “An American Hauntology, 1976-2001: Ghosts and the Literary Imaginary”
Dissertation advisor: Alessandro Portelli

Laurea vecchio ordinamento (equivalent to B.A.+M.A.) in Modern Languages and Literatures, summa cum laude, “Sapienza” University of Rome, 2007
Thesis title: “The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton: ‘Words Shadowy yet Transparent Enough’”
Thesis advisor: Alessandro Portelli
Areas of specialization: American and German literature

PUBLICATIONS

Books in Progress

• Homo Legens: Modes and Moods of Reading.

• “Pound e/o McLuhan: ideogrammi e mosaici per l’età elettrica” [“Pound and/or McLuhan: Ideograms and Mosaics for the Electric Age”]. Ezra Pound. Ein Intellektueller unter Intellektuellen/Un intellettuale tra intellettuali. Eds. Roberta Capelli and Ralf Lüfter. Milan: Ares, 2022 (forthcoming).
• “Gli zoomanti: insegnare la letteratura americana ai tempi del Covid-19” [“Zoomers: Teaching American Literature in the Time of Covid-19”]. Altre Modernità, vol. 27, 2022 (forthcoming).
• “‘Down beside Where the Waters Flow’: Reclaiming Rivers for American Studies.” Co-authored with Uwe Lübken. Rivers of the Americas, special issue of Review of International American Studies (RIAS), vol. 14, no. 1, 2021. 13-24.
• “Philip K. Dick e l’alba delle macchine antropomimetiche: penso, dunque sono… ma che cosa? [“Philip K. Dick and the Dawn of the Anthropomimetic Machines: I Think, Therefore I Am... What?"]. Umanesimo e rivolta in Blade Runner. Ridley Scott vs Philip K. Dick. Eds. Alessandro Clericuzio, Giorgio Pangaro, and Luigi Cimmino. Bari: Rubbettino, 2015. 33-45.
• “Toward an American Hauntology: Intermedial Ghosts in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Louise Erdrich’s Tracks.” Europe Facing Inter-Asian Cultural, Literary, Historical and Political Situations. Eds.  Elisabetta Marino and Lina Unali. Rome: UniversItalia, 2014. 197-209.
• "Native American Responses to America: William Apess and Leslie Marmon Silko.” Narrating American Gender and Ethnic Identities. Eds. Aleksandra Rozalska and Grazyna Zygadlo. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013. 209-16.
• “Spectral Traces: Writing, Gender and Memory  in Edith Wharton’s Ghost Stories.” Ácoma: International Journal of North-American Studies ns 1 (2011). 125-33.
• “Fluid Destiny: Memory and Signs in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49." Against the Grain: Reading Pynchon's Counternarratives. Ed. Sascha Pöhlmann. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 251-62.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

• “Ideas Going into Action”: Ezra Pound and Transmedia Pamphleteering in Fascist Italy (forthcoming).
• “Make It New: Ezra Pound, Marshall McLuhan, and the Nature of Cultural and Technological Innovation.” Institute of Economics, Finance, and Management, Jagiellonian University, June 2020 (invited talk).

• “The American Renaissance and Its Walls: From Poe’s House of Usher to Thoreau’s Wooden Cabin.” University of Ragusa, September 2019.

• “‘Missives/Missiles’ from St. Elizabeths: The Unpublished Letters of Ezra Pound and Eva Hesse, 1950-1960.” Ezra Pound International Conference, University of Salamanca, June 2019.

• “Intellettuali e tardo modernismo: il carteggio di Ezra Pound con Marshall McLuhan e Eva Hesse, 1948-1960.” Ezra Pound Research Center, Merano, November 2018 (invited talk).

• “Explorations in the American Reading Imaginary: Emerson, Thoreau, and Pound.” University of Milan, September 2017.
• "The Futures of Reading: On Close, Distant, and Ethical Reading in American Studies." Fulbright Lecture Series, LMU Munich, Munich, June 2017.
• “From Reading Angels to Machine Reading: Some Reflections on Chad Wellmon’s ‘Sacred Reading: From Augustine to the Digital Humanists.'” Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Venice, May 2017.
• "The Pound Galaxy: On Ezra Pound, Marshall McLuhan, and Digital Fascism." Schloss Brunnenburg, Tirol, November 2015.
• “‘From Singular to Connected Paradigms of the Mind and Brain:’ Globally Networked Intelligence and Posthuman Civil Liberties in Ramez Naam’s Nexus.” University of  Würzburg, Würzburg, June 2014.
• “Towards a Critical Posthuman(ist) American Studies.” Centro Studi Americani, Rome, June 2014.
• “A Transatlantic Correspondence: The Unpublished Letters of Ezra Pound and Eva Hesse, 1950-1960.” Venice International University, Venice, May 2014.
• “A Day with the Tea Party.” University of Trento, Trento, October 2011.
• "Configurations of Spectrality between China and America: The Woman Warrior and The Hundred Secret Senses." University of Rome "Tor Vergata," Rome, December 2010.
• "Native American Responses to America." University of Lodz, Lodz,  October  2010.
• "Detesting Obama: Protesters and their Signs." Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, September 2010.
• “Postmodern Ghosts: An American Hauntology, 1975-2001.” International Forum for U.S. Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, January 2010.
• "Where Have All the Specters Gone?" UCD Clinton Institute, Dublin, July 2009.
• “US in the Eyes of the Other(s): William Apess, Leslie Marmon Silko, and the Problem of Belonging to America.” John-F.-Kennedy Institute of the Free University, Berlin, June 2008.
• “‘All That Is Solid Melts into Air’: Between Hardware and Software. Memory and Signs in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.” LMU Munich, Munich, June 2008.

FELLOWSHIPS, SCHOLARSHIPS AND GRANTS

2018: Grant from the Bavarian American Academy, the Munich Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Munich University Society for the organization of the international conference “Wie Wir lesen/How We Read."

2014-2015: DAAD Postdoctoral Fellowship, Department of English and American Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

2014: Selected through national competition to present my project on critical posthumanism at the annual seminar organized by the Italian Association of North American Studies  (travel grant).

2013 (September-October): BAA Research Fellow at the Eva Hesse Archive of Modernism and Literary Translation, Munich.

2011: Travel Grant from the Italian Association of North American Studies  to participate in and present a paper at the 21st Biennial International Conference, Trento.

2010: Doctoral Fellow at the International Forum for U.S. Studies at the U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

2009: Tuition scholarship, UCD Clinton Institute Summer School, Dublin.

2007-2010: Doctoral University Fellowship, "Sapienza" University of Rome.

ACADEMIC SERVICE

Executive Council Member, International American Studies Asociation (IASA), 2019-2021.

Book Review Editor of the Review of International American Studies (RIAS), the flagship journal of the International American Studies Association.

Book reviewer for Italian-Americana.

Grant Reviewer for the National Science Centre (NSC), Poland.

Co-organizer of the international conference “Wie wir lesen/How We Read,” Munich, June 2018.

Co-organizer of the international symposium “Modernism, Architecture, and the Construction of Ideas in America.” Venice International University, Venice, May 2018.

Organizer and Chair of the panel “The Wor(l)ds We Inhabit: Modes and Moods of Reading.” AISNA Conference, Milan, September 2017.

Co-organizer of the international symposium "Reading Globally: New Perspectives on Reading and the Humanities." Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Venice, June 2017.

Assisted in organizing the annual symposium of the LMU American Studies Colloquium at Schloss Brunnenburg, Tirol, November 2015.

Member of the Local Organizing Committee, Eighth International Melville Conference, Rome, June 2011.

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

19th- and 20th-century American literature and culture; literature and philosophy; media ecology; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ezra Pound, Marshall McLuhan.

CURRENT PROJECTS

I am currently collaborating with Massimo Bacigalupo and Anna Flügge (LMU Munich)on a project titled "Letters from the Cold War: The Correspondence of Ezra Pound and Eva Hesse, 1950-1960." This project focuses on the unpublished correspondence of the controversial American poet Ezra Pound with Eva Hesse, the highly acclaimed German translator of Pound, E.E. Cummings and Langston Hughes. The first phase of the Pound/Hesse correspondence project (September 2014­­­˗August 2015) was funded by a DAAD postdoctoral fellowship and was jointly hosted by the Department of English and American Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and by the Eva Hesse Archive of Modernism and Literary Translation at the Bavarian American Academy (BAA). I am also beginning work on a book tentatively titled Homo Legens: Modes and Moods of Reading.

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

MLA (Modern Language Association), IASA (International American Studies Association), AISNA (Italian Association of North American Studies), GAAS (German American Studies Association), BAA (Bavarian American Academy).