Italian Faculty

Tita Rosenthal is a literary and social historian of early-modern Italy. Her interests include women writers of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Venice, courtesan poets, fashion and material culture, costume books, illustrated alba amicorum, and gender and sexuality in the early modern period in Europe. She is the co-translator (with Ann R. Jones) of Veronica Franco: Poems and Selected Letters (U of Chicago P, 1998) and The Clothing of the Renaissance World: Cesare Vecellio’s Costume Book 1590/1598 (Thames and Hudson, 2008). She is currently working on the fashions of women at court in renaissance Italy.

Keywords: Italian Renaissance; social history; sixteenth and seventeenth-century Venetian women writers; fashion history; costume books; material culture; illustrated album amicorum; women at court; gender and sexuality

Gian Maria Annovi’s research spans the twentieth through twenty-first centuries, with particular emphasis on the history and presence of the avant-garde, neo-avant-garde, experimentalism, and the relations between literary and other arts in Italy. His interests include film studies, critical thought, and gender and sexuality studies. His most recent book Pier Paolo Pasolini: Performing Authorship (Columbia UP, 2017) received the Ennio Flaiano International Prize for Italian Studies and the MLA Howard R. Marraro Prize. His most recent works in progress are a book tentatively titled “A Gathering of Others: Pasolini, Identity, and Homosexuality.”

Keywords: Avant-garde; neo-avant-garde; Italian cinema; Italian poetry; Pier Paolo Pasolini; experimentalism; queer; gender and sexuality.

Alessio Filippi’s research interests include food, body, sins in the Church in medieval Italy; Christianity, medieval philosophy; Italian medieval “novelle” (from Boccaccio to mid XV century; female saints in XIII-XIV centuries Tuscany. He is co-organizer of the annual one-day Italian Language Teacher’s Workshop (ILT) whose focus is to provide a venue for Italian basic language instructors to exchange ideas and strategies on the teaching of Italian.

Keywords: Food, the body, and sins in the Church in medieval Italy; female saints in XIII-XIV centuries Tuscany; WWI Italian literature; Renaissance cookery; XIX-XX Centuries Italian history, politics and numismatics.

James M. Fortney is Director of the Italian Basic Language Program at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.  In addition to teaching an Accelerated Italian course for Speakers of Spanish and other Romance Languages, he teaches a general education course on contemporary Italian fiction in translation.  Since 2013 he has directed and taught various Italian language and culture courses in Italy and currently directs USC’s Italian Language and Culture ITAL 220 Maymester at LUMSA University in Rome’s Prati Neighborhood.  His efforts have contributed to an internship course and opportunities with Italian owned and operated businesses in Los Angeles for USC students completing their basic language requirement in Italian thanks to the department’s affiliation with the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce West.  After his work as head editor for the American Association of Teachers of Italian Newsletter he was elected as Regional Representative for the state of California and is currently working to establish the first ever local chapter for California called AATI-CAL for which he will serve as President.

Keywords: language pedagogy, second language acquisition, cultural immersion, study abroad, contemporary Italian literature and cinema

Antonio Idini’s interests include Second and Foreign Language Pedagogy (Italian and English); Italian literature; Native American literature; Detective Fiction; Contemporary Cinema; Poetry. His translation into Italian of Acoma author Simon Ortiz’ Fight Back was published with an introductory essay by the publisher Quattroventi.

Keywords: Italian Basic Language; World Literatures; Natural and Artificial Languages; Italophone Writers.

Francesca Leardini conducts research in the areas of Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature (early Italian prose and poetry; Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca), and in Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature (Leopardi, Verga, Pirandello, Ungaretti, Palazzeschi, Landolfi).

Francesca Ricciardelli teaches Italian basic language courses, a general education course on Multilingualism and sociolinguistics, and an internship class where students can apply what they have learned in their first three semesters at USC. She publishes in Second Language Acquisition, Intercomprehension of the Romance Languages, Multilingualism, and the use of technology in language learning. These areas inspire her academic work and shape her pedagogical approach, encouraging dynamic, student-centered, and contextually rich learning experiences. Finally, she is currently holding the position of Director of Communication for the future California Chapter of AATI (American Association of Teachers of Italian). 

Keywords: Second Language Acquisition, Multilingualism, Sociolinguistics, Language and Technology