Gabriella Romani , Ph.D.
Director of Alberto Institute & Italian Studies and Professor of Italian
Department of Languages Literatures and Cultures
(973) 275-2926
Email
Walsh Library
Room 324
Gabriella Romani, Ph.D.
Director of Alberto Institute & Italian Studies and Professor of Italian
Department of Languages Literatures and Cultures
Gabriella Romani is Professor of Italian at Seton Hall University. She received a Laurea from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and a Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. At Seton Hall she also directs the Charles and Joan Alberto Italian Studies Institute and the Summer Study-Abroad Program in Rome.
She is the author of Postal Culture: Writing and Reading Italy in Post-Unification Italy (University of Toronto Press, 2013), co-editor of Writing to Delight: Italian Short Stories by Nineteenth-Century Women Writers (University of Toronto Press, 2006), The Printed Media in fin-siècle Italy (Legenda, UK, 2011), The Formation of a National Audience in Italy, 1750-1890: Readers and Spectators of Italian Culture (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2017), Matilde Serao: International Profile, Reception and Networks (Classiques Garnier, 2022). She is currently working on a monograph on nineteenth-century Jewish writers in Italy, tentatively titled: “Jews of Italy and the Creation of a National Culture in Post-Unification Italy.” She has translated into English the works of Edith Bruck and Enrico Castelnuovo.
Her main field of research is late Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature and Culture. She is particularly interested in the relationship between author, publisher and reader and in the interaction between high and low-brow cultural productions during the process of modernization of the printed media in the late nineteenth-century Italy. She is one of the founders of Ottocentismi or INNCIS (Interdisciplinary Network of Nineteenth-Century Italian Studies).
Education
- Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2000
- Laurea, University of Rome, La Sapienza, 1991
Scholarship
Books:
- Postal Culture: Reading and Writing Letters in Post-Unification Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.
Edited Books:
- Matilde Serao: International Profile, Reception and Networks. Gabriella Romani, Ursula Fanning and Katharine Mitchell, eds. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2022.
- Enrico Castelnuovo, I Moncalvo. Gabriella Romani, ed. Novara: Interlinea, 2019.
- The Formation of a National Audience in Italy, 1750–1890: Readers and Spectators of Italian Culture. Gabriella Romani and Jennifer Burns, eds. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017.
- The Printed Media in Fin-de-Siecle Italy: Publishers, Writers and Readers. Ann Hallamore Caesar, Gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns, eds. Legenda, UK, 2011.
- Edmondo De Amicis, Impressioni di Roma. Afterward by Gabriella Romani. Venice: Marsilio, 2010.
- Writing to Delight: Nineteenth Century Short Stories by Italian Women, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2007.
Articles and Book Chapters:
- "Matilde Serao in the Holy Land." Matilde Serao: International Profile, Reception, and Networks. Gabriella Romani, Ursula Funning, and Katharine Mitchell, eds. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2022, 159-177.
- “Muses, Heroines, and Virtuous Wives in Nineteenth-Century Italy: Erminia Fuà Fusinato's and Matilde Serao's Literary Portrayals of the New Italian Woman.” The Italianist 3 (2019): 297-314.
- “Matilde Serao’s Art of Numbers: Naples and the Game of Lotto.” Delirious Naples. A Cultural History of the City of the Sun. Eds. Pellegrino D’Acierno and Stanislao Pugliese. New York: Fordham UP, 2019: 322-338.
- “Erminia Fuà Fusinato: A Jewish Patriot in Rome (1871–76).” Annali d’Italianistica, 36 (2018): 153-174.
- “National Readership and Cultural Consumerism in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy: Edmondo De Amicis and His Strategic Appeal to Sentiments.” The Formation of a National Audience, 1750-1890: Readers and Spectators of Italian Culture. Edited by Gabriella Romani and Jennifer Burns. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2017.
- “Fashioning the Italian Nation: Risorgimento and the costume all’italiana.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 20.1 (2015), 10-23.
- “Edmondo De Amicis na América do Sul: pàtria e identitade italiana fora dos limites nacionais.” Estudos Ibero Americanos: História, Literatura e Mito: viajantes europeus na América do Sul. 38 (2012): 63-75.
- “Un poeta americano a Firenze: Longfellow e le ‘calate dei barbari’ al salotto di Emilia Peruzzi nei ricordi di De Amicis.” Una sconfinata infatuazione: Firenze e la Toscana nelle metamorfosi della cultura Anglo-americana 1860-1915. Florence: Edizioni dell’Assemblea, 2012, 59-78.
- “Scrittrice italiana per caso.” Afterword. Edith Bruck. Privato, Milan: Garzanti, 2010, 175-185.
- “Rome 1870: O mammina o la morte! The Breach of Porta Pia according to Edmondo De Amicis.” Annali d'Italianistica, 28 (2010), 31-48.
- "From Letter to Literature: Giovanni Verga, Matilde Serao and Late Nineteenth-Century Epistolary Fiction", Modern Language Notes, vol. 124 (January 2009), pp 177-194.
- “A Room with a View: Interpreting the Ottocento Through the Literary Salon” Italica 84.2-3 (2007): 233-246.
- “Interpreting the Risorgimento: Alessandro Blasetti’s 1860 and the Legacy of Motherly Love” Italica 79.3 (2002): 391-404.
Translations:
- Edith Bruck, Lost Bread. Translated by Gabriella Romani and David Yanoff. Introduction by Gabriella Romani. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books (forthcoming 2023)
- Enrico Castelnuovo, The Moncalvos. Translated by Brenda Webster and Gabriella Romani. Introduction by Gabriella Romani. San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2017.
- Edith Bruck, Letter to My Mother. New York: Modern Language Association of America (Texts and Translations), 1st ed., 2006.
Accomplishments
- University Research Council- Seton Hall University, 2016.
- Visiting Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick, UK, 2012
- University Research Council- Seton Hall University, 2006.