Giovanna Summerfield

Education

PhD, University of Florida

About Me

Giovanna Summerfield received her PhD in Romance languages and literatures with a minor in European and Mediterranean history from the University of Florida. She has published and presented extensively on the long eighteenth-century (1660-1830) French and Italian literature (emphasis on Sicilian writers), religious and philosophical movements, and women's studies. During her time at Auburn, she has served as Associate Dean for Educational Affairs in the College of Liberal Arts (2011-2021) and has been recognized with the Auburn University Creative Research and Scholarship Award 2022, the College of Liberal Arts’ Engaged Scholarship, 2009-2012, the Outstanding Scholarly Achievement in Women’s Studies, 2009-2010  and the PETL Early Teaching Career Award, March 2007. She has also served as an ambassador in the Office of Sustainability’s Peer Network, earning the Spirit of Sustainability Award, 2019.  Summerfield has served as Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar, dissertation outsider reader, and keynote speaker for several national and international academic institutions, as well as Global Teaching Academy Fellow and Imagining America Research Fellow. She created the Taormina, Italy, Study Abroad Program in 2005, providing an interdisciplinary curriculum and community engagement opportunities to all students enrolled. Summerfield was instrumental in the implementation of the Language Across the Curriculum program and the Italian government grant that awarded the Italian Studies program in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, where she served as undergraduate advisor of Italian Studies and faculty advisor of the Italian Club. Presently she serves as the book review coordinator for Modern Italy, Cambridge University Press, as the Editor-in-Chief of Italica (University of Illinois Press) and as Co-Founding Editor of I.S. Med.: Interdisciplinary Studies on the Mediterranean (Mimesis International).

Publications

• Dialoghi interculturali del Mediterraneo. Book series “Lessico mediterraneo” (Jouvence, 2024).
• “Il siciliano nella letteratura e musica contemporanea come espressione di identità mediterranea” in Dialoghi interculturali del Mediterraneo, 2024.
• Navigating the Mediterranean, Special Issue of the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, Vol. 12.1 (2024).
• “Reflecting (on) Identities: Melliti’s Io, l’altro and Crialese’s Terraferma.” Navigating the Mediterranean, special issue of the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies. Intellect/Chicago Press (Vol.12.1, 2024). 
• “Mariannina Coffa: Restrizioni patriarcali passate e presenti” in Autorità maschile e vissuti femminili tra storia e psicologia. EdiPuglia, 2023.  55-66.
• “Il mondo è di chi ha denari. L’arrivismo in The Rise of Silas Lapham di William Dean Howells, negli Stati Uniti dell’Ottocento.” Verga nel realismo europeo ed extraeuropeo, vol. II, Fondazione Verga. Euno Edizioni, 2023. 705-716. 
• Unframing and Reframing Mediterranean Spaces and Identities. Brill 2023.
• “Primo, Secondo e… contorno: A Big Night in the New World” in Memoria & Identità/Cultural & Linguistic Heritage. UniPa Press, 2023. 123-139.
• “Dimmi che mangi e ti dirò chi sei: appartenenza, identità e cittadinanza mediterranea. Il caso di Moltivolti, Palermo” in Fra kósmos e pólis: identità e cittadinanza da una prospettiva mediterranea.  Jouvence editoriale, 2023. 155-173.
• “Sabrina di Myriam Ben: Per quelli che ti hanno rubato la vita” in Violencias Textuales. Madrid: Editorial Dykinson. 2022. 402-413.
• “Femminicidio in Sicily: An Overview through Literature, Media and Contemporary Life” in Italian Experiences of Trauma through Film and Media. Edited by A. Baracco and R. Pollicino. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, April 2022.
• “La fine di un detective, narrata da Doyle, Simenon e…Montalbano di Camilleri” Symbolon XVI n. 13, 2022. 65-80.
• “Nuddu ammiscatu cu nenti? I ribelli contro la mafia” Cahiers d’études romanes 45, 2022. 277-294.
• “‘Nella nostra lingua […] il cuore della nostra identità’: tentativi letterari siciliani e l’omologazione linguistica nazionale”. Invited article in the special issue of Annali d’Italianistica vol. 38 (2020) titled “Nation(s) and Translation” edited by Norma Bouchard and Valerio Ferme. 273-294.
• Sicily on Screen. Essays on the Representation of the Island and Its Culture. NC: McFarland, 2020.
• “Eros and Thanatos Meet in the Southern Kitchens of Italy” in Food and Women in Italian Literature, Culture and Society. NY: Bloomsbury, (2020).
• “Le donne del Settecento siciliano cosi’ rispondono: lettere e poesie di Grimaldi, Bongiovanni e Galiani.” Rivista di Studi italiani, numero monografico La Sicilia a firma femminile: uno sguardo diacronico e sincronico dal XV al XXI secolo, edited by Milagro Martín Clavijo, Serena Todesco, Daniela Bombara. Anno XXXVIII, no.1, aprile 2020. 60-87.
• “Ciak si gira: la Sicilia vista dall’alt(r)o” Revista Tropos: Comunicação, Sociedade e Cultura (Special Issue on Mediterranean Cinema), Universidade Federal do Acre –UFAC, vol. 8, no.1 (2019).
• “Scusa ma decido io! Raoul Bova e la personificazione del Latin Lover” Special Issue of L’Avventura International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes, edited by Enrico Biasin and Catherine O'Rawe.  Vol. 4. Bologna: Il Mulino (August 2018). 57-68.
• “Per non dimenticare: Antimafia Digital Storytelling and Reflections” in The Italian Antimafia, New Media, and the Culture of Legality. University of Toronto, (2017).
• “Peppa la Cannoniera: Citizenship in Action” in Sisters in Arms: Italian Women at War since the Risorgimento. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, (2016). 33-47.
• Sicily and the Mediterranean: Migration, Exchange, Reinvention. (Co-editor and Contributor). Palgrave, 2015.
• Scholarship in Action: Communities, Leaders and Citizens.  (Co-editor and Contributor).  Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing, 2013.
• The Politics of Poetics: Poetry and Social Activism in Early-Modern through Contemporary Italy (co-edited with Federica Santini).  Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
• “Preparing and Engaging the New Citizens of the World.” Scholarship in Action.  Ed. by Barbara Baker, Kathleen Hale, and Giovanna Summerfield.   Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing, 2013.
• “Interview with Costanza Quatriglio.” Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen. Ed. by Stella Cantini.  New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
• “(R)evolution of Man, Pinocchio: From Wooden Puppet to Real Boy.” Charles Darwin: A Celebration of His Life and Legacy.   Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Publishing, 2012. 205-215.
• “Paris through the Lenses of Italian Directors (Bertolucci et al)” Film Locations: Cities of the Imagination, Paris.  Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2011.
• Le Siciliane: Cosi’ sono se vi pare.  Alessandria, Italy: Puntoacapo, 2011.
• Vendetta: Essays on Honor and Revenge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010.
• New Perspectives on the European Bildungsroman (co-authored). London, UK: Continuum, 2010.
• Remembering Sicily. (Co-authored) Mineola, NY: Legas Publishing, 2009.
• Credere aude: Mystifying Enlightenment. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2008.
• "Fratelli e fratellanze del '68" Carte italiane. Volume 4 (Italy 1968: Representations in Italian Culture) (2008). Los Angeles, CA: University of California Los Angeles. 235-248.
• Patois and Linguistic Pastiche in Modern Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.
• "Gli Arancini di Montalbano: More Than A Sicilian Culinary Note" Metamorphoses 14.1-2 (2006). Northampton, MA: Smith College. 286-291.
• No Tomorrow (translation of Dominique Vivant Denon's Point de lendemain, 1777). Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002.
• "Contes de fées by Women of the Seventeenth-Century: New Discourses of Sexuality and Gender." Les femmes au Grand Siècle. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2002 (reprinted in Literature Criticism From 1400-1800, Vol. 153 by Gale, Oct 2008).