Cristina Carnemolla

Cristina Carnemolla is an Assistant Professor of Hispanic and Italian Studies with a specialization in nineteenth-century literature and cultural history. She obtained her Ph.D. in Romance studies from Duke University. Prior to her doctoral studies, she completed a M.A. in Italian and Spanish at the University of Oregon (2017), a Laurea magistrale cum laude at the University of Catania (2015), and a B.A. cum Laude in Comparative Studies at the University of Catania (2012). Her research focuses on realist and naturalist novels with a comparative interest in the Italian, Spanish, Peruvian, and Argentine traditions.

Her current book project, tentatively titled South as a Method: From the Southern Question to the Southern Thoughts, examines the emergence of narrative and rhetoric patterns within the context of the unclear and unstable meaning of race and nation-building discourses in Italy, Spain, Peru, and Argentina. Her methodology combines a close reading of late nineteenth-century novels and short stories published in these countries with an analysis of how the global editorial market and local sociological essays influenced the creation of local ‘social types’ in these texts. Bridging intersectional literary analysis with post- and decolonial theories, the volume analyzes writers’ definitions of their novels rather than what critics or theorists have called ‘naturalist’ or ‘realist’ novels.

A separate strand of her scholarly work focuses on eccentric Marxist thinkers in the 1930s, such as Antonio Gramsci and José Carlos Mariátegui. Her scholarship and teaching use the Global South as an axis that integrates Mediterranean and Transatlantic studies to explore the intersection of race relations, politics, and cultural production in Italy, Spain, and Latin America. She has published on the reception of naturalism and realism in Italy and Spain, on women writers in the long nineteenth century, Antonio Gramsci, and ecocriticism.

In parallel to her research activities, she has a strong teaching commitment, which has been fostered and recognized by the AATI Teaching Black Italy grant and the CEDILS diploma.