EDUCATION
Ph.D., 1992, Ethnic Studies, University of California-Berkeley.
M.A., 1987, Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
B.A., 1985, English and American Literature, University of Bologna.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Awarded with the National Scientific Qualification as Full Professor (ASN), 2014.
Tenured Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Ferrara, 2007-present.
Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Ferrara, 2004-present.
Tenured Assistant Professor of American Literature, University of Ferrara, 2000-2004.
Tenured Assistant Professor of American Literature, University of Rome II, 1999-2000.
Assistant Professor of American Literature, University of Rome II, 1996-2000.
Visiting Lecturer, Ethnic Studies Dept., University of California-Berkeley, Summer 1993.
Instructor, Ethnic Studies Dept., University of California-Berkeley, 1990-91.
Instructor, Women's Studies Dept., University of California-Berkeley, 1989.
PEER REVIEWER
ANVUR GEV Eligibility (VQR 2015-2019), 2020.
Italian Journals: Annali di Cà Foscari, Oltreoceano, Acoma: Rivista Internazionale di Studi Nordamericani.
American Journals: Studies in the Novel, Literature and Medicine, Utopian Studies.
German Journals: Amerikastudien/American Studies.
EDITORIAL POSITIONS
Advisory Editor, Comparative American Studies (U.K.), 2002-present.
Editorial Board member, Collegium for African American Research, FORECAAST series, Liverpool University Press, 2013-2017.
Editorial Board, Leggere Donna (Ferrara, Italy), 1987-present.
Editor of a series of Italian translations of African American novels (Firenze: Le Lettere, Italy), 2006-2015.
OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Visiting Scholar, University of California-Berkeley, August 20th-September 7th , 2018.
Board member and Treasurer of the Italian Association of American Studies (A.I.S.N.A.), 2010-2013.
Guest-in-Residence, Cornell University, August 31st – September 9th, 2012.
Visiting Scholar, Carter G. Woodson Centre, University of Virginia, April 11th -30th, 2010.
Member of the working group on “Slavery in the Artistic, Literary, and Historical Imagination,” Yale University, 2005-2007.
Italian Contributor, American Literary Scholarship (Duke University Press), 2005-2007.
Advisory Board Member of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers (S.S.A.W.W.). 2005-2007.
Vice-President of MESEA (Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas), 2000-2002.
Group Resident at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation, February 2000.
Co-Founder and member of the steering committee of MELUS-Europe, 1997-99.
FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
FFABR (Italian Education Ministry) Individual Research Grant, 2017.
Andrew W. Mellon Travel Grant for International Scholars, 2006, American Studies Association (A.S.A).
Fellow, 2001, Salzburg Seminar (Austria).
Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, 1994-96, University of Bologna (Italy).
Regents Dissertation Fellowship, 1991-92, University of California-Berkeley.
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Teaching Award, 1990-91, University of California-Berkeley.
Nonresident Tuition Fellowship, 1988-90, University of California-Berkeley.
AWARD
Choice Outstanding Academic Book, 2002, for Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001).
BOOKS
Trajectories of Freedom in American Literature. Bologna: Odoya, 2012.
America nera: la cultura afroamericana (Black America: A History of African American Culture). Roma: Carocci, 2002.
Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Portraits of a Lady in the Fiction of Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Edward Bellamy. Cagliari: Edizioni AV, 2001.
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
“Racial Passings.” Race in American Literature and Culture. Ed. by John Ernest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
“African American Novels and the New Slavery in the New South.” “A New Negro for a New Century:” African American Literature in Transition, 1900-1910. Ed. by Shirley Moody-Turner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
“’What Irene Redfield Remembered’: Making It New in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” New Historical and Aesthetic Perspectives on Passing. Ed. by Hélène Charlery and Aurélie Guillain. Bern: Peter Lang, forthcoming.
“Riprodurre la rivoluzione: rappresentazioni narrative di Toussaint Louverture prima della guerra civile.” Àcoma: Rivista Internazionale di Studi Nordamericani, 18 (2020). 31-44.
“’He Like a Wind Cloud Flew’: The Speculative Narrative Politics of Travel in Clotel, The Heroic Slave, and Blake.” Letterature d’America 38 (2018). 47-72.
"Historicizing (the New) Jim Crow: Notes on Recovering Early African American Speculative Fiction." Il critico e lo scrittore. Ed. by Cristina Giorcelli and Giuseppe Nori. Bologna: Odoya, 2017. 85-96.
“’In some…determined way a little flaunting’: Nella Larsen’s Letters.” With Jacquelyn Y. McLendon. Approaches to Teaching Nella Larsen. Ed. by Jacquelyn Y. McLendon. New York: MLA, 2016. 161-168.
“Un giardino peculiare: la ‘natura’ della schiavitù in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. Il paesaggio americano e le sue rappresentazioni nel discorso letterario. Ed. by C. Martinez. Milano: LED Edizioni Universitarie, 2016. 41-50.
“’To Fashion the Wonderful Garment:’ W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.” Extravagances: Habits of Being 4. Ed. by Cristina Giorcelli and Paula Rabinowitz. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. 243-261.
“The Mark Within: Parody in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man.” The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: Norton Critical Edition. Ed. by Jacqueline Goldsby. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015. 370-387. REPRINT. The essay was originally published in: Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
"‘Though years have flown by’: A Letter from Nella Larsen to Carl Van Vechten.” With Jacquelyn Y. McLendon. RSA Journal 25 (2015). 217-221.
“Out of the Kitchen of the House of Fiction.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 31.1 (2014). 66-69.
“The Black Muckraker in J. McHenry Jones’s Hearts of Gold: Rediscovered Texts, Pedagogy, and the Progressive Era.” Modes and Facets of the American Scene: Studies in Honor of Cristina Giorcelli. Ed. by Dominique Marçais. Palermo: Ila Palma, 2014. 55-64.
"Sexual Violence and the Black Atlantic: On Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy." Waging Empathy: Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and the Global Movement to End FGM. Ed. by Tobe Levin. Frankfurt am Main: UnCUT/VOICES Press, 2014. 75-86. REPRINT. The essay was originally published in: Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. Eds. M. Diedrich, H. L. Gates, Jr., and C. Pedersen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 228-239.
“Jim Crow and the House of Fiction: Charles W. Chesnutt’s and Sutton E. Griggs’s Last Novels.” Jim Crow, Literature, and the Legacy of Sutton E. Griggs. Ed. by Tess Chakkalakal and Kenneth W. Warren. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2013. 214-253.
“Of the Coming of Grace: African American Utopian Fiction, The Black Woman Intellectual, and Lillian B. Jones Horace’s Five Generations Hence.” Recovering Five Generations Hence: The Life and Writing of Lillian Jones Horace. Ed. by Karen Kossie-Chernyshev. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013. 163-191.
“’New and Unknown Ways of Living and Dressing’: W. E. B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, and the Quicksand of Intertextuality.” Abito e identità. Ricerche di storia letteraria e culturale. Vol. 12. Ed. Cristina Giorcelli. Palermo: Ila Palma, 2012. 155-199.
“Desegregating the Future: Sutton E. Griggs’ Pointing the Way and American Utopian Fiction in the Age of Jim Crow,” American Literary Realism 44.2 (2012). 114-132.
“’An Era of Change:’ Charles W. Chesnutt, the New South, and the Ironic Economy of The Colonel's Dream,” Metamorfosi. Continuità e discontinuità nelle culture americane. Ed. by Cristina Giorcelli and Ettore Finazzi-Agrò. Casoria: Loffredo Editore, 2011. 125-143.
M. Giulia Fabi, “Italian Contributions: 2007”, American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2007. Ed. Gary Scharnhorst. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. 489-507.
“Exile and Utopia in Pauline E. Hopkins’s Of One Blood,” Lo sguardo esiliato: cultura europea e cultura americana fra delocalizzazione e radicamento. Ed. by Cristina Giorcelli. Casoria: Loffredo Editore, 2008. 141-159.
“Italian Contributions: 2006”, American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2006. Ed. David J. Nordloh. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. 471-486.
“White Lies: Amelia E. Johnson’s Sunday School Fiction and the Politics of Racelessness.” Comparative American Studies (U.K.) 5.1 (2007): 7-35.
“Italian Contributions: 2005”, American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2005. Ed. Gary Scharnhorst. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 494-511.
“Re-Visions of the Canon, African American Literature, and the Pleasures of Intertextuality.” Ripensare il canone: la letteratura inglese e angloamericana. Eds. Gianfranca Balestra e Giovanna Mochi. Roma: Artemide, 2007. 133-140.
“Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave: Transnationalism and Early African American Utopian Fiction.” Quale America? Soglie e culture di un continente (vol. 2). Ed. Daniela Ciani Forza. Venezia: Mazzanti Editori, 2007. 165-177.
“Reading Black Women Writers.” New Black Feminist Criticism, 1985-2000, by Barbara Christian. Eds. Gloria Bowles, M. Giulia Fabi e Arlene R. Keizer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. 69-78.
“Dignity and/as the Ethos of Resistance in African American Literature.” Il concetto di dignità nella cultura occidentale. Eds. G. Giliberti, G. Morisco, D. Morondo. Pesaro: Edizioni Studio Alfa, 2006. 191-199.
“Reconstructing the Race: The Novel after Slavery.” Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel. Ed. Maryemma Graham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 34-49.
"The Poetics and Politics of a Feasible Utopia: Edward A. Johnson's Light Ahead for the Negro." Vite di utopia. Ed. Vita Fortunati. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2000. 303-310.
"Reconstructing Literary Genealogies: Frances E. W. Harper's and William Dean Howells' Race Novels." Soft Canons: American Women and Masculine Tradition. Ed. Karen L. Kilcup. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1999. 48-66.
"Sexual Violence and the Black Atlantic: On Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy." Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. Eds. M. Diedrich, H. L. Gates, Jr., and C. Pedersen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 228-239.
"Tra spettri e schiavi: Charles Dickens in America." Viaggiatori d'Oriente e d'Occidente. Ed. R. Ben Amara. Cagliari: Edizioni AV, 1999 107-115.
"'Ritorno al futuro': storia, matrilineaggio, tradizione e revisione del canone nella critica letteraria femminista afroamericana." Appartenenze. Ed. S. Albertazzi. Bologna: Patron, 1998. 75-85.
"Representing Slavery in 19th-Century Britain: The Anxiety of Non/Fictional Authorship in Charles Dickens' American Notes (1842) and William Wells Brown's Clotel (1853)." Images of America: Through the European Looking-Glass. Ed. W. Chew. Brussels: VUB P, 1997. 125-140.
"The Return of Raced Subjects: Methodological Issues in Teaching Multicultural Women's Studies Courses." Teaching English Literature in a Changing World. Ed. M. L. Bignami. Milano: Unicopli, 1996. 322-333.
"'Race Travels:' Towards a Taxonomy of Turn-of-the-Century African American Utopian Fiction." Viaggio in utopia/ Journey in Utopia. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1996. 335-342.
"Taming the Amazon? The Price of Survival in Turn-of-the-Century African American Women's Fiction." The Insular Dream: Obsession and Resistance. Ed. K. Versluys. Amsterdam: VU UP, 1995. 228-41.
"Frank J. Webb's The Garies and Their Friends (1857) and the Unprecedented Fictional Representation of African American Life in the Antebellum North." Letterature d'America 15.60 (1995): 53-79.
"La tradizione invisibile: le radici ottocentesche della narrativa femminile afroamericana." Acoma: Rivista Internazionale di Studi Nordamericani 3 (1995): 29-37.
"'Utopian Melting:' Technology, Homogeneity, and the American Dream in Looking Backward." Imagination and Technology. Proceedings of the XII Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention. Venezia: Supernova, 1994. 346-54.
"On Nobel Prizes and the 'Robinson Crusoe Syndrome:' The Case of Toni Morrison." Journal of Gender Studies 2.2 (1993): 253-58.
"'The Unguarded Expressions of the Feelings of the Negroes:' Gender, Slave Resistance, and William Wells Brown's Revisions of Clotel." African American Review 27.4 (1993): 639-54.
"Taking the Skeletons out of the Closet: Thomas Nelson Page and Frances Harper's Post-Reconstruction Re-Visions of the 'True Woman' and the Civil War." Methodologies of Gender. Proceedings of the XI Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention. Roma: Herder, 1993. 437-44.
"Henry James: The Reluctant Patriarch. A Study of The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, and The Awkward Age." The Henry James Review 13.1 (1992): 1-18.
"Maxine Hong Kingston e la tradizione cinese-americana." Reprinted in Leggere Donna: nuova guida all'acquisto dei libri di donne, ed. Luciana Tufani (Ferrara: Luciana Tufani Editrice, 1996): 142-143.
"The Coquette or the Ambiguities: On the Politics of Seduction and Marriage in the New Republic." R.S.A. Journal (the annual publication of the Italian Association of American Studies) 1 (1990): 7-26.
EDITIONS
Narrazione della vita di Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass), by Frederick Douglass (bilingual edition). Ed., with Introduction and Bio-Bibliography. Venezia: Marsilio, 2015.
New Black Feminist Criticism, 1985-2000, by Barbara Christian. Ed., with Introduction by Gloria Bowles, M. Giulia Fabi, and Arlene R. Keizer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Appunti americani (Notes of a Native Son), by James Baldwin. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2007.
Mai più nero (Black No More), by George Schuyler. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Roma: Voland, 2005.
Legami di sangue (Kindred), by Octavia E. Butler. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2005.
Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter, by William Wells Brown. Ed., with Introduction and Notes. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.
Imperium in Imperio, by Sutton E. Griggs. Ed., with Introduction and Notes. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2004.
Le donne di Brewster Place (The Women of Brewster Place), by Gloria Naylor. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2003.
La stanza di Giovanni (Giovanni's Room), by James Baldwin. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2001.
Sabbie mobili (Quicksand), by Nella Larsen. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 1999.
Danza per una vedova (Praisesong for the Widow), by Paule Marshall. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 1999.
Critiche femministe e teorie letterarie (Feminist Criticisms and Literary Theories). Ed., with Introduction, of the section on African American Feminist Literary Criticism. Bologna: CLUEB, 1997.
Volo di ritorno: Antologia di racconti afroamericani, 1859-1977 (Flying Home: An Anthology of African American Short Stories, 1859-1977). Ed., with Introduction and Bio-Bibliographies. Firenze: Le Lettere, 1996.
Tin Can, by Marita Bonner. Introduction. Trieste: Edizioni Ricerche, 1996 (bilingual edition).
REFERENCE BOOK ENTRIES
“L’utopia afroamericana.” Dall’utopia all’utopismo: percorsi tematici. Ed. by Vita Fortunati, Raymond Trousson, and Adriana Corrado. Napoli: CUEN, 2003. 859-864.
"Sutton E. Griggs," "Pauline E. Hopkins," "Edward A. Johnson," and "George S. Schuyler." Dictionary of Literary Utopias. Ed. by Vita Fortunati and Raymond Trousson. Paris: Champion-Slatkine, 2000. 85, 301-302, 356-357, 475.
"Criticism to 1920." The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 184-187.
"Amelia E. Johnson." The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 401.
INVITED SPEAKER
“Insurrectionary Intertextuality in Antebellum African American Speculative Fiction,” International Symposium “Early Black Utopias,” Johns Hopkins University, 29 March 2019.
Plenary Lecture, “Rethinking African American Studies 150 years after the birth of W.E.B. Du Bois,” International Symposium, A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies), Center for American Studies, Rome, 27 September 2018.
Plenary Lecture, “Book Power: Early African American Speculative Fiction and the Future of the Past,” 32nd European Association for American Studies Conference, University College London, 6 April 2018.
“Looking Backward to Afrofuturism,” Bowdoin College, 27 March 2018.
"A Genre of the Future: Recovering and Editing Pre-Harlem Renaissance Speculative Fiction," The Forty-Eighth Conference on Editorial Problems: Editing Early African American Literature," University of Toronto, 10 November 2012.
"Desegregating the Future: African American Speculative Fiction," Cornell University, 7 September 2012.
"Historicizing the Future of Jim Crow: African American Speculative Fiction, 1902-1911," International Symposium "Jim Crow America: A Problem in Historicization," University of Chicago, 28 April 2012.
"The Tradition(s) of Black Speculative Fiction: Race, Gender, and the Desegregation of the Future," Ethnic Studies Department, University of California-Berkeley, 16 April 2012.
“Desegregating the Future: Speculative Fiction to the Harlem Renaissance.” International Colloquium “Establishing the Past: Problems in Nineteenth-Century African American Literary Studies,” Bowdoin College, Maine (U.S.A.), 9-10 April 2010.
“Race into the Future: African American Speculative Fiction.” College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA (U.S.A.), 26 April 2010.
PRESENTATIONS AT CONFERENCES
“Worlding Plantations with Armies of Slaves: Frederick Douglass’s and Martin R. Delany’s Speculative Fictions,” International Conference, “Worlding Science Fiction,” University of Graz (Austria), 6-8 December 2018.
"To Become a New Negro: Uncle Jack's Travels in Sutton E. Griggs's Pointing the Way," Southeastern American Studies Association, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA (U.S.A.), 2-4 March 2017.
Roundtable “Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem at 10: Unsettling Nineteenth-Century African American Studies,” C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Penn State University, 2016.
Roundtable “Beyond Recovery: Rethinking American Literary History,” Program arranged by the American Literature Section, MLA Convention, Chicago, 2014.
“Neo-Slavery and the Fiction of Democracy: Novelistic Representations of the Convict-Lease System in the Progressive Era,” XXI Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention, "Democracy and Difference," Trento (Italy), 26-29 October 2011.
“Desire and Social Change in the Progressive Era: The Black Muckraker in J. McHenry Jones’s Hearts of Gold (1896),” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, " Black States of Desire: Dispossession, Circulation, Transformation," Paris (France), April 6-9, 2011.
“The Time of Miracles Is [Not] Past: Historical Memory and the Utopian Economy of Of One Blood”. ALA (American Literature Association) Conference, San Francisco, CA (U.S.A.), 27-30 maggio 2010.
“African American Utopian Fiction and/as Civil Rights: Sutton E. Griggs's Pointing the Way,” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Black Knowledges - Black Struggles – Civil Rights: Transnational Perspectives," Bremen (Germany), March 2009.
“Remembering Slavery and Planning Social Change in African American Utopian Fiction of Pauline Hopkins’s Era,” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Blackness and Modernities," Madrid (Spain), April 2007.
“’Stretchin’ Color an’ Slavery:’ Memories of Slavery and Visions of Social Change in Early African American Utopian Fiction,” Gilder Lehrman Center, Yale University (U.S.A.), March 2006.
“Transnationalism in Early African American Utopian Fiction,” American Studies Association Convention, “The United States from Inside and Out: Transnational American Studies,” Oakland, California (U.S.A.), October 2006.
“Re-Visions of the Canon, African American Literature, and the Pleasures of Intertextuality,” Convegno Internazionale “Ripensare il canone: la letteratura inglese e angloamericana,” Siena (Italy), October 2005.
“Alternative Black Worlds: Rediscovering Nineteenth-Century African American Utopian Fiction,” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "The Black World," Tours (France), April 2005.
“Dignity and/as the Ethos of Resistance in African American Literature,” ERASMUS Thematic Network “ACUME” International Convention "The Concept of Dignity in Western Culture," Urbino (Italy), June 2004.
“The Rise of the African American Novel and W.W. Brown’s Clotel,” Dept. of English, University of Richmond, VA (U.S.A.), February 2004.
“La geografia della segregazione in Le donne di Brewster Place di Gloria Naylor,” International Convention "Città, etnicità e diaspora nell’era della globalizzazione," Cagliari (Italy), October 2003.
"The Future of the Past: Early African American Utopian Fiction." CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Crossroutes: The Meanings of Race for the 21st Century," Cagliari (Italy), March 2001.
"Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't: Charles W. Chesnutt's Parody of British Fiction and the Limits of Subversion." MELUS-Europe International Convention, Orleans (France), June 2000.
"'L'isola piu` un miraggio che un posto reale': Danza per una vedova di Paule Marshall." International Convention "Isole, Oasi, Esili," Cagliari (Italy), March 2000.
"The Aesthetics of Rebellion in William Wells Brown's Clotel." MELUS-Europe Founding Conference, Heidelberg (Germany), June 1998.
"Approaches to African American Literature: The Interpretive and Pedagogical Challenge of Race." British Council, Bologna (Italy), February 1998.
"Passing: l'identita` negata." Convention of the Italian Society of Literary Women, University of Florence (Italy), September 1997.
"The Poetics and Politics of a Feasible Utopia: Edward A. Johnson's Light Ahead for the Negro." International Convention of the Centre for Utopian Studies of the University of Bologna, Gargnano sul Garda (Italy), June 1997.
"Nineteenth-Century African American Novelists and the Representation of the African Diaspora," CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Mapping African America," Liverpool (U.K.), April 1997.
"'...Her Struggle Is Not to Die:' Alice Walker's Narrative Representations of Sexual Violence against Women of the African Diaspora." International Symposium on Contemporary Literature of the African Diaspora, Salamanca (Spain), March 1996.
Respondent. "Gender and Sexuality in Critical Studies: An Interdisciplinary Symposium," Bologna (Italy), March 1996.
"Genteel Rebellions: The Politics of Closure in Turn-of-the-Century African American Women's Novels." Universite' Catholique de Louvain Symposium, "Disorderly Conducts: Visions of Gender in American Women's Writings," Louvain (Belgium), May 1995.
"Representing Slavery in 19th-Century Britain: The Anxiety of Non/Fictional Authorship in Charles Dickens' American Notes (1842) and William Wells Brown's Clotel (1853)," BLASA (Belgian Luxembourg American Studies Association) Convention, Brussels (Belgium), May 1995.
"Lifting the Veil: Contextualizing Alice Walker's Representations of Sexual Violence within the Narrative Traditions of African American Women," CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Transatlantic Passages," Tenerife (Spain), February 1995.
"The Return of Raced Subjects: Re-reading Anglo-American Literature from a Multicultural Perspective," British Council Symposium "Teaching English Literature in a Changing World," Varenna (Italy), September 1994.
"Reading and/as Listening to 'Other' Women: Methodological Issues in Teaching Multicultural Feminist Courses," Advanced Post-Graduate Course "European Women's Studies from a Multicultural Perspective," Bologna (Italy), September 1994.
"Taming the Amazon? The Price of Survival in Turn-of-the-Century African American Women's Fiction," E.A.A.S. (European Association of American Studies) Biennial Conference, "The Insular Dream: Obsession and Resistance," Luxembourg, March 1994.
"Utopian Melting: Technology, Homogeneity, and the American Dream in Looking Backward," XII Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention, "Imagination and Technology," Venezia (Italy), October 1993.
"Race Travels: Towards a Taxonomy of Turn-of-the-Century African American Utopian Fiction," International Convention of the Centre for Utopian Studies of the University of Bologna, Rimini (Italy), March 1993.
"Ideal Chains: Constitutional 'Freedoms' and William Wells Brown's Revisions of Clotel," American Studies Association Convention, "The Question of Rights," Baltimore (U.S.A.), November 1991.
"Taking the Skeletons out of the Closet: Thomas Nelson Page and Frances Harper's Post-Reconstruction Re-Visions of the 'True Woman' and the Civil War," XI Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. Convention, "Methodologies of Gender," Messina (Italy), October 1991.
"Genteel Exorcisms: Segregation and True Womanhood in Red Rock and Iola Leroy," Boundaries in Question: A Conference for Feminist Activists and Feminist Graduate Students, University of California, Berkeley (U.S.A.), October 1991.
"The Peculiar (Im)migration: Passing-for-White in Afro-American Fiction, 1853-1912," Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago (U.S.A.), December 1990.
"On Color, Ideology, and Race: The Theme of Passing in Afro-American Fiction," Building Bridges Conference: Feminism Across the Disciplines, University of California, Berkeley (U.S.A.), October 1990.
CONFERENCE SESSIONS CHAIRED
“Democracy, Comparative Modernities, and the Time-Spaces of Enclosure,” XXI Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention, "Democracy and Difference," Trento (Italy), 26-29 October 2011.
"Black Womanhood and Black Manhood," CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Blackness and Modernities," Madrid (Spain), April 2007.
“Ambassadors from Within: The National and International Critical Impact of African American Studies,” XVII AISNA (The Italian Association of American Studies) Biennial Convention, Rome (Italy), November 2003.
"Sites of Ethnicity: Europe and the Americas", MESEA (Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas), Padova (Italy), June 2002.
“Discourses of Slavery and Abolition between the United States and Europe.” EAAS (The European Association for American Studies), Bordeaux (France), March 2002.
“African American Women Novelists.” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Black Liberation in the Americas," Muenster (Germany), March 1999.
“Race-ing Literary Form: The Aesthetics of Oppositional Narratives.” MELUS-Europe Founding Conference, Heidelberg (Germany), June 1998.
"Marked Bodies: Bearing the Badges of Difference in American Literature." XIII AISNA (The Italian Association of American Studies) Biennial Convention, Rome (Italy), October 1995.
BOOK REVIEWS
Review of Ingrid Thaler’s Black Atlantic Speculative Fictions: Octavia E. Butler, Jewelle Gomez, and Nalo Hopkinson, Journal of American Studies 46 (2012): 261-263.
Review of P. Gabrielle Foreman’s Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century and Donna Aza Weir-Soley’s Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings, Feminist Review 101 (2012): e5-e8.
"Annalucia Accardo, Il racconto della schiavitu` negli Stati Uniti d'America," Leggere Donna 73 (Mar.-Apr. 1998) 5.
"Cinzia Biagiotti e Laura Coltelli, Figlie di Pocahontas: racconti e poesie delle indiane d'America," Leggere Donna 61 (Mar.-Apr. 1996): 9.
(Solicited) "Gayl Jones, Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature," American Literature 65.2 (1993): 391.
"La doppia vita di Tome Hayashi: la narrativa di Hisaye Yamamoto," Leggere Donna 35 (Nov.-Dec., 1991): 13-14.
(Trans.) "La celebrazione delle figure 'di mezzo': arte e identita` in Dictee di Teresa Hak Kyung Cha," by Elaine Kim, Leggere Donna 34 (Sept.-Oct., 1991): 18, 28.
"Cannibali per amore: madri e figlie in The Joy-Luck Club," Leggere Donna 31 (Mar.-Apr., 1991): 13-14.
(Trans.) "'Necessita` e 'Stravaganza' ne La donna guerriera di Maxine Hong Kingston: l'arte e la vita delle minoranze etniche americane," by Sau-ling Wong, Leggere Donna 29 (Nov.- Dec., 1990): 14-15.
"Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar," Leggere Donna, 2 (Sept.- Oct., 1989): 11.
"Invented Lives, by Mary Helen Washington and Reconstructing Womanhood, by Hazel V. Carby," Leggere Donna 16 (Sept.- Oct., 1988): 17.
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
M.L.A. (The Modern Language Association of America).
A.S.A. (The American Studies Association).
C.A.A.R. (Collegium for African American Research).
E.A.A.S. (The European Association of American Studies).
S.F.R.A. (Science Fiction Research Association).
A.I.S.N.A. (The Italian Association for the Study of North American Literature).
Ph.D., 1992, Ethnic Studies, University of California-Berkeley.
M.A., 1987, Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
B.A., 1985, English and American Literature, University of Bologna.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Awarded with the National Scientific Qualification as Full Professor (ASN), 2014.
Tenured Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Ferrara, 2007-present.
Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Ferrara, 2004-present.
Tenured Assistant Professor of American Literature, University of Ferrara, 2000-2004.
Tenured Assistant Professor of American Literature, University of Rome II, 1999-2000.
Assistant Professor of American Literature, University of Rome II, 1996-2000.
Visiting Lecturer, Ethnic Studies Dept., University of California-Berkeley, Summer 1993.
Instructor, Ethnic Studies Dept., University of California-Berkeley, 1990-91.
Instructor, Women's Studies Dept., University of California-Berkeley, 1989.
PEER REVIEWER
ANVUR GEV Eligibility (VQR 2015-2019), 2020.
Italian Journals: Annali di Cà Foscari, Oltreoceano, Acoma: Rivista Internazionale di Studi Nordamericani.
American Journals: Studies in the Novel, Literature and Medicine, Utopian Studies.
German Journals: Amerikastudien/American Studies.
EDITORIAL POSITIONS
Advisory Editor, Comparative American Studies (U.K.), 2002-present.
Editorial Board member, Collegium for African American Research, FORECAAST series, Liverpool University Press, 2013-2017.
Editorial Board, Leggere Donna (Ferrara, Italy), 1987-present.
Editor of a series of Italian translations of African American novels (Firenze: Le Lettere, Italy), 2006-2015.
OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Visiting Scholar, University of California-Berkeley, August 20th-September 7th , 2018.
Board member and Treasurer of the Italian Association of American Studies (A.I.S.N.A.), 2010-2013.
Guest-in-Residence, Cornell University, August 31st – September 9th, 2012.
Visiting Scholar, Carter G. Woodson Centre, University of Virginia, April 11th -30th, 2010.
Member of the working group on “Slavery in the Artistic, Literary, and Historical Imagination,” Yale University, 2005-2007.
Italian Contributor, American Literary Scholarship (Duke University Press), 2005-2007.
Advisory Board Member of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers (S.S.A.W.W.). 2005-2007.
Vice-President of MESEA (Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas), 2000-2002.
Group Resident at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation, February 2000.
Co-Founder and member of the steering committee of MELUS-Europe, 1997-99.
FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
FFABR (Italian Education Ministry) Individual Research Grant, 2017.
Andrew W. Mellon Travel Grant for International Scholars, 2006, American Studies Association (A.S.A).
Fellow, 2001, Salzburg Seminar (Austria).
Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, 1994-96, University of Bologna (Italy).
Regents Dissertation Fellowship, 1991-92, University of California-Berkeley.
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Teaching Award, 1990-91, University of California-Berkeley.
Nonresident Tuition Fellowship, 1988-90, University of California-Berkeley.
AWARD
Choice Outstanding Academic Book, 2002, for Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001).
BOOKS
Trajectories of Freedom in American Literature. Bologna: Odoya, 2012.
America nera: la cultura afroamericana (Black America: A History of African American Culture). Roma: Carocci, 2002.
Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Portraits of a Lady in the Fiction of Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Edward Bellamy. Cagliari: Edizioni AV, 2001.
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
“Racial Passings.” Race in American Literature and Culture. Ed. by John Ernest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
“African American Novels and the New Slavery in the New South.” “A New Negro for a New Century:” African American Literature in Transition, 1900-1910. Ed. by Shirley Moody-Turner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
“’What Irene Redfield Remembered’: Making It New in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” New Historical and Aesthetic Perspectives on Passing. Ed. by Hélène Charlery and Aurélie Guillain. Bern: Peter Lang, forthcoming.
“Riprodurre la rivoluzione: rappresentazioni narrative di Toussaint Louverture prima della guerra civile.” Àcoma: Rivista Internazionale di Studi Nordamericani, 18 (2020). 31-44.
“’He Like a Wind Cloud Flew’: The Speculative Narrative Politics of Travel in Clotel, The Heroic Slave, and Blake.” Letterature d’America 38 (2018). 47-72.
"Historicizing (the New) Jim Crow: Notes on Recovering Early African American Speculative Fiction." Il critico e lo scrittore. Ed. by Cristina Giorcelli and Giuseppe Nori. Bologna: Odoya, 2017. 85-96.
“’In some…determined way a little flaunting’: Nella Larsen’s Letters.” With Jacquelyn Y. McLendon. Approaches to Teaching Nella Larsen. Ed. by Jacquelyn Y. McLendon. New York: MLA, 2016. 161-168.
“Un giardino peculiare: la ‘natura’ della schiavitù in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. Il paesaggio americano e le sue rappresentazioni nel discorso letterario. Ed. by C. Martinez. Milano: LED Edizioni Universitarie, 2016. 41-50.
“’To Fashion the Wonderful Garment:’ W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.” Extravagances: Habits of Being 4. Ed. by Cristina Giorcelli and Paula Rabinowitz. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. 243-261.
“The Mark Within: Parody in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man.” The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: Norton Critical Edition. Ed. by Jacqueline Goldsby. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015. 370-387. REPRINT. The essay was originally published in: Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
"‘Though years have flown by’: A Letter from Nella Larsen to Carl Van Vechten.” With Jacquelyn Y. McLendon. RSA Journal 25 (2015). 217-221.
“Out of the Kitchen of the House of Fiction.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 31.1 (2014). 66-69.
“The Black Muckraker in J. McHenry Jones’s Hearts of Gold: Rediscovered Texts, Pedagogy, and the Progressive Era.” Modes and Facets of the American Scene: Studies in Honor of Cristina Giorcelli. Ed. by Dominique Marçais. Palermo: Ila Palma, 2014. 55-64.
"Sexual Violence and the Black Atlantic: On Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy." Waging Empathy: Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and the Global Movement to End FGM. Ed. by Tobe Levin. Frankfurt am Main: UnCUT/VOICES Press, 2014. 75-86. REPRINT. The essay was originally published in: Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. Eds. M. Diedrich, H. L. Gates, Jr., and C. Pedersen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 228-239.
“Jim Crow and the House of Fiction: Charles W. Chesnutt’s and Sutton E. Griggs’s Last Novels.” Jim Crow, Literature, and the Legacy of Sutton E. Griggs. Ed. by Tess Chakkalakal and Kenneth W. Warren. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2013. 214-253.
“Of the Coming of Grace: African American Utopian Fiction, The Black Woman Intellectual, and Lillian B. Jones Horace’s Five Generations Hence.” Recovering Five Generations Hence: The Life and Writing of Lillian Jones Horace. Ed. by Karen Kossie-Chernyshev. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013. 163-191.
“’New and Unknown Ways of Living and Dressing’: W. E. B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, and the Quicksand of Intertextuality.” Abito e identità. Ricerche di storia letteraria e culturale. Vol. 12. Ed. Cristina Giorcelli. Palermo: Ila Palma, 2012. 155-199.
“Desegregating the Future: Sutton E. Griggs’ Pointing the Way and American Utopian Fiction in the Age of Jim Crow,” American Literary Realism 44.2 (2012). 114-132.
“’An Era of Change:’ Charles W. Chesnutt, the New South, and the Ironic Economy of The Colonel's Dream,” Metamorfosi. Continuità e discontinuità nelle culture americane. Ed. by Cristina Giorcelli and Ettore Finazzi-Agrò. Casoria: Loffredo Editore, 2011. 125-143.
M. Giulia Fabi, “Italian Contributions: 2007”, American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2007. Ed. Gary Scharnhorst. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. 489-507.
“Exile and Utopia in Pauline E. Hopkins’s Of One Blood,” Lo sguardo esiliato: cultura europea e cultura americana fra delocalizzazione e radicamento. Ed. by Cristina Giorcelli. Casoria: Loffredo Editore, 2008. 141-159.
“Italian Contributions: 2006”, American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2006. Ed. David J. Nordloh. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. 471-486.
“White Lies: Amelia E. Johnson’s Sunday School Fiction and the Politics of Racelessness.” Comparative American Studies (U.K.) 5.1 (2007): 7-35.
“Italian Contributions: 2005”, American Literary Scholarship: An Annual 2005. Ed. Gary Scharnhorst. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 494-511.
“Re-Visions of the Canon, African American Literature, and the Pleasures of Intertextuality.” Ripensare il canone: la letteratura inglese e angloamericana. Eds. Gianfranca Balestra e Giovanna Mochi. Roma: Artemide, 2007. 133-140.
“Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave: Transnationalism and Early African American Utopian Fiction.” Quale America? Soglie e culture di un continente (vol. 2). Ed. Daniela Ciani Forza. Venezia: Mazzanti Editori, 2007. 165-177.
“Reading Black Women Writers.” New Black Feminist Criticism, 1985-2000, by Barbara Christian. Eds. Gloria Bowles, M. Giulia Fabi e Arlene R. Keizer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. 69-78.
“Dignity and/as the Ethos of Resistance in African American Literature.” Il concetto di dignità nella cultura occidentale. Eds. G. Giliberti, G. Morisco, D. Morondo. Pesaro: Edizioni Studio Alfa, 2006. 191-199.
“Reconstructing the Race: The Novel after Slavery.” Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel. Ed. Maryemma Graham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 34-49.
"The Poetics and Politics of a Feasible Utopia: Edward A. Johnson's Light Ahead for the Negro." Vite di utopia. Ed. Vita Fortunati. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2000. 303-310.
"Reconstructing Literary Genealogies: Frances E. W. Harper's and William Dean Howells' Race Novels." Soft Canons: American Women and Masculine Tradition. Ed. Karen L. Kilcup. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1999. 48-66.
"Sexual Violence and the Black Atlantic: On Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy." Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. Eds. M. Diedrich, H. L. Gates, Jr., and C. Pedersen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 228-239.
"Tra spettri e schiavi: Charles Dickens in America." Viaggiatori d'Oriente e d'Occidente. Ed. R. Ben Amara. Cagliari: Edizioni AV, 1999 107-115.
"'Ritorno al futuro': storia, matrilineaggio, tradizione e revisione del canone nella critica letteraria femminista afroamericana." Appartenenze. Ed. S. Albertazzi. Bologna: Patron, 1998. 75-85.
"Representing Slavery in 19th-Century Britain: The Anxiety of Non/Fictional Authorship in Charles Dickens' American Notes (1842) and William Wells Brown's Clotel (1853)." Images of America: Through the European Looking-Glass. Ed. W. Chew. Brussels: VUB P, 1997. 125-140.
"The Return of Raced Subjects: Methodological Issues in Teaching Multicultural Women's Studies Courses." Teaching English Literature in a Changing World. Ed. M. L. Bignami. Milano: Unicopli, 1996. 322-333.
"'Race Travels:' Towards a Taxonomy of Turn-of-the-Century African American Utopian Fiction." Viaggio in utopia/ Journey in Utopia. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1996. 335-342.
"Taming the Amazon? The Price of Survival in Turn-of-the-Century African American Women's Fiction." The Insular Dream: Obsession and Resistance. Ed. K. Versluys. Amsterdam: VU UP, 1995. 228-41.
"Frank J. Webb's The Garies and Their Friends (1857) and the Unprecedented Fictional Representation of African American Life in the Antebellum North." Letterature d'America 15.60 (1995): 53-79.
"La tradizione invisibile: le radici ottocentesche della narrativa femminile afroamericana." Acoma: Rivista Internazionale di Studi Nordamericani 3 (1995): 29-37.
"'Utopian Melting:' Technology, Homogeneity, and the American Dream in Looking Backward." Imagination and Technology. Proceedings of the XII Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention. Venezia: Supernova, 1994. 346-54.
"On Nobel Prizes and the 'Robinson Crusoe Syndrome:' The Case of Toni Morrison." Journal of Gender Studies 2.2 (1993): 253-58.
"'The Unguarded Expressions of the Feelings of the Negroes:' Gender, Slave Resistance, and William Wells Brown's Revisions of Clotel." African American Review 27.4 (1993): 639-54.
"Taking the Skeletons out of the Closet: Thomas Nelson Page and Frances Harper's Post-Reconstruction Re-Visions of the 'True Woman' and the Civil War." Methodologies of Gender. Proceedings of the XI Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention. Roma: Herder, 1993. 437-44.
"Henry James: The Reluctant Patriarch. A Study of The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, and The Awkward Age." The Henry James Review 13.1 (1992): 1-18.
"Maxine Hong Kingston e la tradizione cinese-americana." Reprinted in Leggere Donna: nuova guida all'acquisto dei libri di donne, ed. Luciana Tufani (Ferrara: Luciana Tufani Editrice, 1996): 142-143.
"The Coquette or the Ambiguities: On the Politics of Seduction and Marriage in the New Republic." R.S.A. Journal (the annual publication of the Italian Association of American Studies) 1 (1990): 7-26.
EDITIONS
Narrazione della vita di Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass), by Frederick Douglass (bilingual edition). Ed., with Introduction and Bio-Bibliography. Venezia: Marsilio, 2015.
New Black Feminist Criticism, 1985-2000, by Barbara Christian. Ed., with Introduction by Gloria Bowles, M. Giulia Fabi, and Arlene R. Keizer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Appunti americani (Notes of a Native Son), by James Baldwin. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2007.
Mai più nero (Black No More), by George Schuyler. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Roma: Voland, 2005.
Legami di sangue (Kindred), by Octavia E. Butler. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2005.
Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter, by William Wells Brown. Ed., with Introduction and Notes. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.
Imperium in Imperio, by Sutton E. Griggs. Ed., with Introduction and Notes. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2004.
Le donne di Brewster Place (The Women of Brewster Place), by Gloria Naylor. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2003.
La stanza di Giovanni (Giovanni's Room), by James Baldwin. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2001.
Sabbie mobili (Quicksand), by Nella Larsen. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 1999.
Danza per una vedova (Praisesong for the Widow), by Paule Marshall. Ed., with Afterword and Bio-Bibliography. Firenze: Le Lettere, 1999.
Critiche femministe e teorie letterarie (Feminist Criticisms and Literary Theories). Ed., with Introduction, of the section on African American Feminist Literary Criticism. Bologna: CLUEB, 1997.
Volo di ritorno: Antologia di racconti afroamericani, 1859-1977 (Flying Home: An Anthology of African American Short Stories, 1859-1977). Ed., with Introduction and Bio-Bibliographies. Firenze: Le Lettere, 1996.
Tin Can, by Marita Bonner. Introduction. Trieste: Edizioni Ricerche, 1996 (bilingual edition).
REFERENCE BOOK ENTRIES
“L’utopia afroamericana.” Dall’utopia all’utopismo: percorsi tematici. Ed. by Vita Fortunati, Raymond Trousson, and Adriana Corrado. Napoli: CUEN, 2003. 859-864.
"Sutton E. Griggs," "Pauline E. Hopkins," "Edward A. Johnson," and "George S. Schuyler." Dictionary of Literary Utopias. Ed. by Vita Fortunati and Raymond Trousson. Paris: Champion-Slatkine, 2000. 85, 301-302, 356-357, 475.
"Criticism to 1920." The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 184-187.
"Amelia E. Johnson." The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 401.
INVITED SPEAKER
“Insurrectionary Intertextuality in Antebellum African American Speculative Fiction,” International Symposium “Early Black Utopias,” Johns Hopkins University, 29 March 2019.
Plenary Lecture, “Rethinking African American Studies 150 years after the birth of W.E.B. Du Bois,” International Symposium, A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies), Center for American Studies, Rome, 27 September 2018.
Plenary Lecture, “Book Power: Early African American Speculative Fiction and the Future of the Past,” 32nd European Association for American Studies Conference, University College London, 6 April 2018.
“Looking Backward to Afrofuturism,” Bowdoin College, 27 March 2018.
"A Genre of the Future: Recovering and Editing Pre-Harlem Renaissance Speculative Fiction," The Forty-Eighth Conference on Editorial Problems: Editing Early African American Literature," University of Toronto, 10 November 2012.
"Desegregating the Future: African American Speculative Fiction," Cornell University, 7 September 2012.
"Historicizing the Future of Jim Crow: African American Speculative Fiction, 1902-1911," International Symposium "Jim Crow America: A Problem in Historicization," University of Chicago, 28 April 2012.
"The Tradition(s) of Black Speculative Fiction: Race, Gender, and the Desegregation of the Future," Ethnic Studies Department, University of California-Berkeley, 16 April 2012.
“Desegregating the Future: Speculative Fiction to the Harlem Renaissance.” International Colloquium “Establishing the Past: Problems in Nineteenth-Century African American Literary Studies,” Bowdoin College, Maine (U.S.A.), 9-10 April 2010.
“Race into the Future: African American Speculative Fiction.” College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA (U.S.A.), 26 April 2010.
PRESENTATIONS AT CONFERENCES
“Worlding Plantations with Armies of Slaves: Frederick Douglass’s and Martin R. Delany’s Speculative Fictions,” International Conference, “Worlding Science Fiction,” University of Graz (Austria), 6-8 December 2018.
"To Become a New Negro: Uncle Jack's Travels in Sutton E. Griggs's Pointing the Way," Southeastern American Studies Association, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA (U.S.A.), 2-4 March 2017.
Roundtable “Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem at 10: Unsettling Nineteenth-Century African American Studies,” C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Penn State University, 2016.
Roundtable “Beyond Recovery: Rethinking American Literary History,” Program arranged by the American Literature Section, MLA Convention, Chicago, 2014.
“Neo-Slavery and the Fiction of Democracy: Novelistic Representations of the Convict-Lease System in the Progressive Era,” XXI Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention, "Democracy and Difference," Trento (Italy), 26-29 October 2011.
“Desire and Social Change in the Progressive Era: The Black Muckraker in J. McHenry Jones’s Hearts of Gold (1896),” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, " Black States of Desire: Dispossession, Circulation, Transformation," Paris (France), April 6-9, 2011.
“The Time of Miracles Is [Not] Past: Historical Memory and the Utopian Economy of Of One Blood”. ALA (American Literature Association) Conference, San Francisco, CA (U.S.A.), 27-30 maggio 2010.
“African American Utopian Fiction and/as Civil Rights: Sutton E. Griggs's Pointing the Way,” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Black Knowledges - Black Struggles – Civil Rights: Transnational Perspectives," Bremen (Germany), March 2009.
“Remembering Slavery and Planning Social Change in African American Utopian Fiction of Pauline Hopkins’s Era,” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Blackness and Modernities," Madrid (Spain), April 2007.
“’Stretchin’ Color an’ Slavery:’ Memories of Slavery and Visions of Social Change in Early African American Utopian Fiction,” Gilder Lehrman Center, Yale University (U.S.A.), March 2006.
“Transnationalism in Early African American Utopian Fiction,” American Studies Association Convention, “The United States from Inside and Out: Transnational American Studies,” Oakland, California (U.S.A.), October 2006.
“Re-Visions of the Canon, African American Literature, and the Pleasures of Intertextuality,” Convegno Internazionale “Ripensare il canone: la letteratura inglese e angloamericana,” Siena (Italy), October 2005.
“Alternative Black Worlds: Rediscovering Nineteenth-Century African American Utopian Fiction,” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "The Black World," Tours (France), April 2005.
“Dignity and/as the Ethos of Resistance in African American Literature,” ERASMUS Thematic Network “ACUME” International Convention "The Concept of Dignity in Western Culture," Urbino (Italy), June 2004.
“The Rise of the African American Novel and W.W. Brown’s Clotel,” Dept. of English, University of Richmond, VA (U.S.A.), February 2004.
“La geografia della segregazione in Le donne di Brewster Place di Gloria Naylor,” International Convention "Città, etnicità e diaspora nell’era della globalizzazione," Cagliari (Italy), October 2003.
"The Future of the Past: Early African American Utopian Fiction." CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Crossroutes: The Meanings of Race for the 21st Century," Cagliari (Italy), March 2001.
"Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't: Charles W. Chesnutt's Parody of British Fiction and the Limits of Subversion." MELUS-Europe International Convention, Orleans (France), June 2000.
"'L'isola piu` un miraggio che un posto reale': Danza per una vedova di Paule Marshall." International Convention "Isole, Oasi, Esili," Cagliari (Italy), March 2000.
"The Aesthetics of Rebellion in William Wells Brown's Clotel." MELUS-Europe Founding Conference, Heidelberg (Germany), June 1998.
"Approaches to African American Literature: The Interpretive and Pedagogical Challenge of Race." British Council, Bologna (Italy), February 1998.
"Passing: l'identita` negata." Convention of the Italian Society of Literary Women, University of Florence (Italy), September 1997.
"The Poetics and Politics of a Feasible Utopia: Edward A. Johnson's Light Ahead for the Negro." International Convention of the Centre for Utopian Studies of the University of Bologna, Gargnano sul Garda (Italy), June 1997.
"Nineteenth-Century African American Novelists and the Representation of the African Diaspora," CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Mapping African America," Liverpool (U.K.), April 1997.
"'...Her Struggle Is Not to Die:' Alice Walker's Narrative Representations of Sexual Violence against Women of the African Diaspora." International Symposium on Contemporary Literature of the African Diaspora, Salamanca (Spain), March 1996.
Respondent. "Gender and Sexuality in Critical Studies: An Interdisciplinary Symposium," Bologna (Italy), March 1996.
"Genteel Rebellions: The Politics of Closure in Turn-of-the-Century African American Women's Novels." Universite' Catholique de Louvain Symposium, "Disorderly Conducts: Visions of Gender in American Women's Writings," Louvain (Belgium), May 1995.
"Representing Slavery in 19th-Century Britain: The Anxiety of Non/Fictional Authorship in Charles Dickens' American Notes (1842) and William Wells Brown's Clotel (1853)," BLASA (Belgian Luxembourg American Studies Association) Convention, Brussels (Belgium), May 1995.
"Lifting the Veil: Contextualizing Alice Walker's Representations of Sexual Violence within the Narrative Traditions of African American Women," CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Transatlantic Passages," Tenerife (Spain), February 1995.
"The Return of Raced Subjects: Re-reading Anglo-American Literature from a Multicultural Perspective," British Council Symposium "Teaching English Literature in a Changing World," Varenna (Italy), September 1994.
"Reading and/as Listening to 'Other' Women: Methodological Issues in Teaching Multicultural Feminist Courses," Advanced Post-Graduate Course "European Women's Studies from a Multicultural Perspective," Bologna (Italy), September 1994.
"Taming the Amazon? The Price of Survival in Turn-of-the-Century African American Women's Fiction," E.A.A.S. (European Association of American Studies) Biennial Conference, "The Insular Dream: Obsession and Resistance," Luxembourg, March 1994.
"Utopian Melting: Technology, Homogeneity, and the American Dream in Looking Backward," XII Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention, "Imagination and Technology," Venezia (Italy), October 1993.
"Race Travels: Towards a Taxonomy of Turn-of-the-Century African American Utopian Fiction," International Convention of the Centre for Utopian Studies of the University of Bologna, Rimini (Italy), March 1993.
"Ideal Chains: Constitutional 'Freedoms' and William Wells Brown's Revisions of Clotel," American Studies Association Convention, "The Question of Rights," Baltimore (U.S.A.), November 1991.
"Taking the Skeletons out of the Closet: Thomas Nelson Page and Frances Harper's Post-Reconstruction Re-Visions of the 'True Woman' and the Civil War," XI Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. Convention, "Methodologies of Gender," Messina (Italy), October 1991.
"Genteel Exorcisms: Segregation and True Womanhood in Red Rock and Iola Leroy," Boundaries in Question: A Conference for Feminist Activists and Feminist Graduate Students, University of California, Berkeley (U.S.A.), October 1991.
"The Peculiar (Im)migration: Passing-for-White in Afro-American Fiction, 1853-1912," Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago (U.S.A.), December 1990.
"On Color, Ideology, and Race: The Theme of Passing in Afro-American Fiction," Building Bridges Conference: Feminism Across the Disciplines, University of California, Berkeley (U.S.A.), October 1990.
CONFERENCE SESSIONS CHAIRED
“Democracy, Comparative Modernities, and the Time-Spaces of Enclosure,” XXI Biennial International A.I.S.N.A. (Italian Association of American Studies) Convention, "Democracy and Difference," Trento (Italy), 26-29 October 2011.
"Black Womanhood and Black Manhood," CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Blackness and Modernities," Madrid (Spain), April 2007.
“Ambassadors from Within: The National and International Critical Impact of African American Studies,” XVII AISNA (The Italian Association of American Studies) Biennial Convention, Rome (Italy), November 2003.
"Sites of Ethnicity: Europe and the Americas", MESEA (Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas), Padova (Italy), June 2002.
“Discourses of Slavery and Abolition between the United States and Europe.” EAAS (The European Association for American Studies), Bordeaux (France), March 2002.
“African American Women Novelists.” CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) International Convention, "Black Liberation in the Americas," Muenster (Germany), March 1999.
“Race-ing Literary Form: The Aesthetics of Oppositional Narratives.” MELUS-Europe Founding Conference, Heidelberg (Germany), June 1998.
"Marked Bodies: Bearing the Badges of Difference in American Literature." XIII AISNA (The Italian Association of American Studies) Biennial Convention, Rome (Italy), October 1995.
BOOK REVIEWS
Review of Ingrid Thaler’s Black Atlantic Speculative Fictions: Octavia E. Butler, Jewelle Gomez, and Nalo Hopkinson, Journal of American Studies 46 (2012): 261-263.
Review of P. Gabrielle Foreman’s Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century and Donna Aza Weir-Soley’s Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women's Writings, Feminist Review 101 (2012): e5-e8.
"Annalucia Accardo, Il racconto della schiavitu` negli Stati Uniti d'America," Leggere Donna 73 (Mar.-Apr. 1998) 5.
"Cinzia Biagiotti e Laura Coltelli, Figlie di Pocahontas: racconti e poesie delle indiane d'America," Leggere Donna 61 (Mar.-Apr. 1996): 9.
(Solicited) "Gayl Jones, Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature," American Literature 65.2 (1993): 391.
"La doppia vita di Tome Hayashi: la narrativa di Hisaye Yamamoto," Leggere Donna 35 (Nov.-Dec., 1991): 13-14.
(Trans.) "La celebrazione delle figure 'di mezzo': arte e identita` in Dictee di Teresa Hak Kyung Cha," by Elaine Kim, Leggere Donna 34 (Sept.-Oct., 1991): 18, 28.
"Cannibali per amore: madri e figlie in The Joy-Luck Club," Leggere Donna 31 (Mar.-Apr., 1991): 13-14.
(Trans.) "'Necessita` e 'Stravaganza' ne La donna guerriera di Maxine Hong Kingston: l'arte e la vita delle minoranze etniche americane," by Sau-ling Wong, Leggere Donna 29 (Nov.- Dec., 1990): 14-15.
"Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar," Leggere Donna, 2 (Sept.- Oct., 1989): 11.
"Invented Lives, by Mary Helen Washington and Reconstructing Womanhood, by Hazel V. Carby," Leggere Donna 16 (Sept.- Oct., 1988): 17.
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
M.L.A. (The Modern Language Association of America).
A.S.A. (The American Studies Association).
C.A.A.R. (Collegium for African American Research).
E.A.A.S. (The European Association of American Studies).
S.F.R.A. (Science Fiction Research Association).
A.I.S.N.A. (The Italian Association for the Study of North American Literature).
