Elizabeth joined the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in 2014.
In her dissertation she focuses on 20th century Italian texts where spaces of animal confinement such as slaughterhouses, zoos, and laboratories are represented, to investigate how the construction of the boundary between humans and other animals has led to the oppression and discrimination of both human and nonhuman beings. Alternate views to oppression and violence are also examined by exploring how to reorder our political and cultural systems to encompass nonhuman concerns as envisioned in the selected literary texts.
She holds a master's degree in Romance Philology and a B.A. in Literature and Modern Cultures from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. She currently serves on the editorial board of Sloth—A Journal of Emerging Voices in Human-Animal Studies and the Journal for Critical Animal Studies.
Research interests: Modern Italian Literature, Critical Animal Studies, Ecofeminism, Comparative Literature, Applied Ethics, Biopolitics, Gender and Race Studies, Urban Ecologies
Dissertation: A Shift in Perception: Rethinking Multispecies Coexistence
Recent Courses in RLL
ITAL 23205 Food and Culture in Italian Literature
The word “culture” is etymologically derived from the notion of cultivating the land, which evokes an act of care as well as of laboring. In this course we will explore this intrinsic link between food and culture in the Italian social context by analyzing a selection of literary works that tackle questions of identity, tradition, and the creation of a sense of belonging through the thematic thread of food.
Bridging geopolitics, history, and environmental humanities, with a particular attention to animal ethics and gender studies, we will embark on a journey across time, geographical regions, and social classes, to understand the role of food in Italian culture beyond its symbolic and aesthetic value. We will ask: how have culinary practices and consumption changed over time? How does Italian literature engage with questions of food justice and sustainability? How do representations of food reproduce and thus perpetuate harmful hierarchies of class, gender, race, and species? Together, we will look for answers to these and other related questions in a wide range of texts by authors such as Boccaccio, Giovanni della Casa, Clara Sereni, Italo Calvino, and Carlo Levi. We will also examine artworks born out of food labor movements, such as the protest songs of the mondine, and contemporary literature by migrant writers. The course will include creative assignments, close readings exercises, and will culminate in a whole-class collaborative project.
ITAL 20300 or consent of instructor. Taught in Italian.