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Education

• PhD, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2008
• MA, Brandeis University, 1998
• Laurea Summa Cum Laude, University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy, 1995

Areas of Specialization

• Modern Jewish Literature and Philosophy
• Jewish Autobiography
• Jewish Women's Writings
• Jewish Diaspora - Europe and America: History and Cultural Production
• Shoah: Fiction, Autobiography and Film

Recently Taught Courses

• Women and Shoah Memory, Memoirs and Memorials
• At Home in the Shtetl: Pre-War Jewish Life through Literature
• Fictional Memory: Women's Autobiographies and the Definition of the Self
• Melting Identities: The Formation of a Jewish-American Identity
• Family Matters: Twentieth-Century Jewish Women Remembering Family and/as History
• Great Books of the Western World (II): Europe - From Enlightenment to Disenlightenment - A Postmodern Approach
• Diasporas: Jews and Other Immigrants Writing Their American Story

Professional Accolades

2010	Josephine Abney Award in Women's and Gender Studies
2008-2009	Honorable Mention for the Carolyn Heilbrun Award
2007-2009	The National Foundation for Jewish Culture and The Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Jewish Studies
2006-2007	Blanksteen Fellowship in Jewish Studies

Current Research Projects

Presently working on book about French philosopher and Shoah survivor Sarah Kofman.

Selected Publications

• "The JAP, the Yenta and the Mame in Aline Kominsky Crumb's Graphic Imagination" The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Routledge University Press) June 2012.
• "Nightbirds, Nightmares and the Mothers' Smile: Art and Psychoanalysis in Sarah Kofman's Life-Writing." Women in French Studies, 2011.
• "Helena Janeczek's Lessons of Darkness: Uncharted Paths to Shoah Memory through Food and Language." Contemporary Women Writers (Oxford University Press) Fall 2011.
• "Challenging (Jewish) Invisibility: Natalia Ginzburg, Lia Levi and Clara Sereni Reinterpreting City, Family and Memory," forthcoming in the volume Performing Pasts, Inventing Selves: History and Identity in Contemporary Jewish Writing, Philippe Codde, Vivian Liska, Gert Buelens, and Kristiaan Versluys eds. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011.
• "DOWN, DOWN AND WITHIN! The Superpowers of Jewish Women's Graphic Memory," contributed to the catalogue for the exhibition "Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women" (The Jewish Forward) 2010.
• "Indispensabile naturalezza: Una conversazione con Federica K.Clementi" in the volume Wyslawa Szymborska, Opere. Pietro Marchesani, ed. Milan, Italy: Adelphi Edizioni, 2008. (Conversation with the author)
• "'Shoah Delle Donne': Famiglia e Esperienza Personale nella Letteratura Femminile della Shoah" ["'Women's Shoah:' Family and Personal Experience in Female Shoah Literature"] in Tra Storia e immaginazione: gli Scrittori ebrei di lingua italiana si raccontano. Hanna Serkowska, ed. Krakow, Poland: Wydawnictwo RABID, 2008.

Recent Presentations

• The JAP, the Yenta and the Mame in Aline Kominsky Crumb's Graphic Imagination at NORTHEAST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE (NeMLA), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ April 7-10, 2011.
• Make Yourself a Graven Image: How Graphic Memoirs Revisualize the Jewish Experience at NORTHEAST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE (NeMLA), Montreal, Quebec, April 7-11 2010.
• Entering the Matrix respondent to Bracha Ettinger's Matrixial Transjectivity, Plenary Lecture at the 38th ANNUAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA FRENCH LITERATURE CONFERENCE, Columbia, SC, March 18-20, 2010.
• "Re-Centering the Mother in Shoah Autobiography: Ruth Klüger, Edith Bruck, Sarah Kofman" at the FIFTEENTH WORLD CONGRESS OF JEWISH STUDIES, Jerusalem, Israel, August 1-7, 2009.
• "Man's Purposeful Creation: Primo Levi's Utopia of Being in La Chiave a stella" The 40th Annual Conference of the NORTHEAST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION (NeMLA), Boston, MA, February 26-March 1, 2009.
• "Entangled Roots: Helena Janeczek's Lessons in Darkness," The 40th Annual Conference of the ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES (AJS), Washington, DC, December 21-23, 2008.
• Le parole invisibili: Fantastic Architectures in Bruno Schulz and Italo Calvino presented at the conference «CROSSING BOUNDARIES: PERSPECTIVES ON THE FANTASTIC IN ITALIAN ARTS AND CULTURES» for the Fourth Annual Robert Dombroski Italian Conference—September 22nd-23rd, 2007: University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut.