Barbara Alfano

Faculty at Bennington College
Italian, Bennington College

A native of Naples, Italy, Barbara Alfano is a member of the faculty at Bennington College in Vermont, where she teaches Italian literature, language, and culture. She moved to the USA in 1999 to pursue a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, which she earned at Penn State in 2004. She specializes in contemporary Italian narrative, with a focus on representations of America, issues of identity and the individual, love, and women’s writing. She is the author of The Mirage of America in Contemporary Italian Literature and Film (University of Toronto Press, 2013). In 2019, she co-edited Italian Quarterly’s special issue “Projecting Americanism Abroad; The Case of Cold War Italy.” Her essays have appeared in Italica, Forum Italicum, Variaciones Borges, and Humanities. In 2009, she published her first collection of short stories in Italian, Mi chiedevo (Manni Editori). Alfano’s teaching interests focus on e-learning and pedagogy. She loves journalism, which she has practiced since 1992.

Barbara Alfano