Visiting Faculty

Alessandra Di Maio is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, where she teaches in the departments of Italian and 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 Universities of Bari and Pavia, Italy. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Palermo, Italy. Her area of specialization includes migratory, postcolonial, diasporic and black studies, with a particular attention to the formation of national and transnational cultural identities. She is currently at work on a manuscript on the literature of the African diaspora in Italy. Among her publications are the volumes Tutuola at The University: The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor (Rome: Bulzoni, 2000), the collection An African Renaissance (ed., Palermo: Kalos, 2006), and Forme transatlantiche: l’arte del romanzo breve (Milan, Mimesis, forthcoming). Among her translations are Wole Soyinka’s Sul far del giorno (Milan: Frassinelli 2007, original title You Must Set Forth at Dawn) and Nuruddin Farah’s Rifugiati (Rome: Meltemi, 2003; original title Yesterday, Tomorrow).