Alessia Martini
Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian
B.A., Università di Pisa, Italy; M.A., Università per Stranieri di Siena, Italy; M.A., Florida Atlantic University; Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Alessia Martini is originally from Carrara, Italy. She received her Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before coming to Sewanee, she taught Italian as a foreign language at different levels in Italy, India, and the United States. In addition to teaching Italian language and culture at all levels, Dr. Martini’s teaching at Sewanee includes courses in Italian modern and contemporary literature, Italian and Italian American cinema, Futurism, mafia, fascism, and migration.
Dr. Martini specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century transnational Italian studies. Her research is primarily concerned with issues of spatiality, in particular spatial representations of modernity in twentieth-century Italian literature and visual arts, and space and identity in the context of Italian American studies. Her most recent research project explores Italian ethnic identity through an analysis of memorials created by Italian Americans. Studying the role of Italian craft and materials in the creation of Confederate statues, her work aims to complicate the history of artistic labor and racial identity.
