The Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities Program announces this upcoming seminar by Alessandra Di Maio.

Monday, March 12, 2007
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
236 Royce Hall
UCLA campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Alessandra Di Maio is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She teaches a course on new identities and migrant literature in the Italian department and one on the contemporary narratives of the African diaspora in Europe and the Americas for the department of Comparative Literature. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and her Italian doctorate in Literary Sciences at the University of Bari, Italy. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Palermo, Italy. Among her publications are the volumes Tutuola at The University: The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor (Rome: Bulzoni, 2000) and the collection An African Renaissance (ed., Palermo: Kalos, 2006). Her most recent translation is Nuruddin Farah's Rifugiati (Rome: Meltemi, 2003; original title Yesterday, Tomorrow). Her area of specialization includes migratory, postcolonial, diasporic and black studies, with a particular attention to the formation of national and transnational cultural identities. Her research at UCLA focuses on the narration of immigration in contemporary Italy.

The seminar discussion will be based on the attached article, “Black Italia: Contemporary Migrant Writers from Africa”.  Please contact Laura Clennon at clennon@humnet.ucla.edu for a copy of the article.

Cost : Free; parking is available for $8.

Sponsor(s): The Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities Program.