Transnational Spaces: Celebrating Fifty Years of Literary and Cultural Intersections at NeMLA

Carine Mardorossian is a Professor of English and Global Gender Studies at the University at Buffalo, SUNY where she specializes in postcolonial and Caribbean studies, feminist studies, creative nonfiction, and the medical humanities. Her first book, 'Reclaiming Difference: Caribbean Women Rewrite Postcolonialism', showed how Caribbean women writers help reframe the identities of race, gender, and nation as interrelated and contingent sites of difference. Her second book, 'Framing the Rape Victim: Gender and Agency Reconsidered', finds in Caribbean literature the answer to the impasse that has defined contemporary approaches to sexual violence. Her most recent book, 'Death is but a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End' (Penguin 2020), is co-authored with Christopher Kerr, MD and is a work of creative nonfiction that shows the centrality of the humanities to fields of specialized knowledge like medicine. She is currently completing a co-authored manuscript (with Veronica Wong) on Caribbean literature and the environment entitled 'Creolized Ecologies'. Simona Wright is a Professor of Italian at The College of New Jersey, where she directs the Italian program. She holds a Laurea in Germanistik from Ca' Foscari University (Venice, Italy) and a PhD in Italian Literature from Rutgers University. Her publications include a monograph on Italo Calvino, 'Calvino neobarocco' (Longo 1998), several articles on Italian women writers, contemporary Italian poetry, postcolonial literature and cinema, and Giacomo Leopardi. She is the co-editor of 'Contaminazioni culturali' (Vecchiarelli 2014), 'Attraversamenti culturali' (Cesati 2016), 'Mapping Leopardi' (Cambridge Scholars Press 2019), and 'Crocevia' (Led, 2022). Since 2006, she has been the editor of 'NeMLA Italian Studies' and has served on the editorial boards of Cambridge Scholars Press, ACLS, El-Ghibli, and 'Italica' online. Since 2013, she has co-organized the 'Intersections-Intersezioni Conference' (Turin and Florence, Italy) and has served twice on the Executive Board of NeMLA as President (2007-2011; 2017-2020).