Samuele Pardini, Associate Professor of Italian, Elon University
Samuele Pardini holds a Laurea degree in Letters and Philosophy from the Universita’ degli Studi di Pisa, Italy, and an M.A. and a Ph.D in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Dr. Pardini’s teaching and research interests focus on 20th century American studies, Italian American studies, Ethnic studies, Italian Studies, cinema and literary criticism. He is the author of In the Name of the Mother. Italian Americans, African Americans and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen (UPNE 2017), winner of the 2018 Italian American Studies Association Book Award. He edited and penned the introduction to The Devil Gets His Due: The Uncollected Essays of Leslie Fiedler (Counterpoint 2008; paperback edition 2010). He also edited and translated into Italian two collections of Fiedler’s writings titled Vacanze Romane: Un critico americano a spasso nell’Italia letteraria (Donzelli 2004) and Arrivederci alle armi (Donzelli 2005).
Dr. Pardini’s work appeared in Critique, Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Italian Americana, Modern Fiction Studies, American Book Review, Annali d’Italianistica, The Cambridge History of Christianity, The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Interdisciplinary Humanities, The Grapes of Wrath: A Reconsideration (Rodopi 2009; Michale Meyer editor) and other publications. He’s currently working on a critical edition of Leslie Fiedler’s WWII letters to his first wife Margaret Shipley Fiedler. A second work in progress, called Modernity on Wheels: Speed and Automobile Culture in the 20th Century. Before coming to Elon, he taught at UCLA and Vanderbilt University