Thanks for visiting!

I’m a faculty member in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, an Italianist, a film scholar, and an environmental humanist. I am currently researching analog media, specifically celluloid filmstock, and am interested in the way analog (vinyl, board games, typewriters, Polaroid) is making a comeback at precisely the moment when, because of COVID-19, we are learning not to touch things.

If we were having an espresso together, I would tell you about my passion for goats and volcanoes–two subjects that were important in my book about Italian films made on location, which analyzed all kinds of nonhuman subjects too often forgotten when we watch and write about films. I am a runner and an avid reader, and just finished reading Chris McDougall’s book Running with Sherman, so I am now determined to learn more about donkeys and mules (who have lived nearby us in Gagliano Aterno, Abruzzo, Italy, on our summer study abroad program Wayne in Abruzzo). The donkey in this photo is one I encountered in the Dolomites, though, near San Vigilio di Marebbe.

In my teaching and my research, I aim to find creative, dynamic new ways to see the interrelations between stories of all kinds and the world in which they are conceived and shared.

I’m grateful to the community of scholars that makes work in Italian studies and the environmental humanities so rewarding, and thankful for my students at Wayne State who challenge and inspire me each semester.