We welcome our new colleague Angelica Pesarini, who is taking up the newly-created position in Race and Cultural Studies / Race and Diaspora that links Italian Studies with the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. Dr. Pesarini works on the intersections of race, gender, citizenship and identity in Italy. She earned her Ph.D. in 2015 from the University of Leeds with a dissertation on “Colour Strategies: Negotiations of Black Mixed Race Women’s Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Italy”, and has taught courses in Gender, Race and Sexuality at Lancaster University and courses in Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University’s Florence Campus.
Dr Pesarini’s work explores the dynamics of race performativity with a focus on colonial and postcolonial Italy and she is also interested in the racialization of the Italian political discourse on immigration. She has previously conducted research on gender roles and the development of economic activities within some Roma communities in Italy, and has analysed strategies of survival, risks and opportunities associated with male prostitution in Rome. She is the author of several publications on issues of race in Italy, both in English and Italian, and is a member of The Black Mediterranean Collective, which just published The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders, and Citizenship (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Next year she will teach a course in Italian Studies on Black Italian Literature. Please join us in warmly welcoming Dr Angelica Pesarini as our newest colleague in Italian Studies.