Ana Ilievska received her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Chicago in 2020 and holds BA and MA degrees from the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. Her teaching and research focus on Italian and Lusophone literatures with particular attention to the relationship between literature and technology from a philosophical and Southern European perspective. Ilievska is currently finishing work on a co-edited bilingual anthology of contemporary poetry from Sicily, forthcoming with Italica Press.
SHC Project
The Machine in the Novel: Fictional Human-Machine Interactions at the European Periphery (ca. 1870-1914)
Ilievska’s first book project traces the “voices” of technology in novels written during the Second Industrial Revolution. In The Machine in the Novel: Literature and Technology at the European Periphery, she outlines literary models for alternative attitudes towards technology in the works of Carlo Collodi, Luigi Pirandello, and Eça de Queirós through a comparison with works by Mary Shelley, J.-K. Huysmans, and Émile Zola. The project not only takes a fresh look at Southern European authors by catapulting them into current conversations about literature, technology, and Artificial Intelligence. It also questions Eurocentrism and its take on the Industrial Revolution from within the margins of Europe itself. Ilievska’s work has received recognition by the Fulbright Program, the U.K. Society of Pirandello Studies, the Fundação Eça de Queiroz, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her second project will be a study of the interpenetration of Italian and Balkan literature in Sicily and Trieste.
More from Ana Ilievska
Recent work on Arcade