Nominees and Bios for 2024 Election
Officer Positions
The following individuals are running in the 2024 Election for the Officer positions identified below:
President
MICHELE DERAMO, Ph.D., is Associate Vice Provost for Diversity Education and Engagement in the Office for Inclusion and Diversity at Virginia Tech. In this role, she designs, curates, and delivers professional development experiences that advance the university’s strategic priorities.
Deramo has been an active member of the Italian American Studies Association since 2015 and is currently a member of the IASA Executive Committee. Her presentations at the IASA annual conferences, as well as IASA and American Association of Teachers of Italian international symposia, have focused on feminist and diasporic analyses of the work of Elena Ferrante, as well as critical reflections on race and Italian American identity, bringing together her scholarly interests in displacement, diaspora studies, and intersectional feminist thought, with her professional work in the areas of institutional equity and university-community engagement. She also participated in the 2023 Italian Diaspora Studies Writing Retreat hosted by the University of Calabria.
Her vision for IASA includes exploring what cultural sustainability means for Italian Americans in the 21st century and engaging Italian American scholars with a broader community of peers in dialogues of race, gender, citizenship, and identity occurring nationally and internationally. She has extensive experience in large-scale programming, including directing in-person, hybrid, and asynchronous events and adopting innovative formats such as the unconference, a participant-driven approach emphasizing informal connections over formalized speeches and presentations. She is eager to bring forward these ideas to invigorate the IASA conference experience.
Vice President
LISA MARIE PAOLUCCI, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Education at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, where she currently serves as Department Chair and Certification Officer and coordinates Education accreditation activities. She has been a member of IASA for over a decade and has previously served as an Executive Council member and the Vice President of Communications and Marketing. She has also served on several Conference Committees. Dr. Paolucci's research is focused on young adult literature through the lenses of class, ethnicity, and gender, and she has published poems in No Distance Between Us: The Next Collection (2021), #me too, anch'io (2020), Literary Veganism: An Online Journal (2020), and Ovunque Siamo: New Italian American Writing (2019).
Dr. Paolucci is a former high school English teacher who earned her Ph.D. in English Education at Columbia University. As a student in the MA English program at Brooklyn College, she took several courses in Italian American Studies with Robert Viscusi, and eventually wrote her dissertation on Italian American teachers' pathways to teaching at Columbia University.
As Vice President, she would be excited about exploring new ways of engaging members and the community at large.
Vice President of Communications and Marketing
COURTNEY RUFFNER GRIENEISEN is a professor and Chair of Language & Literature at State College of Florida. She earned her doctorate in Literature and Criticism with her dissertation on “Inter-Colonialism: On-screen Representations of Italian-Americans” from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She co-founded the journal, Florida English, and co-edited for 15 years. She has published works on Poe, Pound, Lupino, and Scorsese as well as various topics on Italian Americana. She has been a member of IASA since 2009.
Since 2017 she has unofficially assisted the organization by reorganizing the platform Submittable that the Association uses to manage conference submissions and journal submissions. She assisted the Chicago conference committee with logistics pertaining to submissions and speaker biographies. She co-edited the Selected Essays from the Calabria Symposium and in doing so, she was able to introduce to the organization a printing option that allows for a quicker turnaround of special issue journal-based projects. In 2018 she became the organization’s VP of CAM where she would see us through the Covid years with implementation of a Webinar Series (24 Presentations) open to the membership. She became the third female President of IASA in 2022. During her presidency, she has archived important history for the organization including the integration of her Past Presidents Interview Project. She also brought to the organization a new annual Service Award. In her return to VP of CAM, Ruffner Grieneisen would work to streamline the organization’s website. She would also continue her work on archiving past conference programs, conference proceedings, and member accomplishments.
Secretary
MARC DIPAOLO: As someone elected to two consecutive terms as MELUS’ Secretary, I have the experience to serve in the same role for IASA. Currently a member of IASA’s Executive Council, I am interested in deepening my stake in the organization, especially since I have sent my co-edited manuscript of scholarly essays to an academic press for review: Italian Fantastika: Re-Imagining Identity via the Speculative Fictions of the Italian Diaspora. This upcoming work aside, I’ve already published and presented in the field. I wrote the autobiographical novel Fake Italian: An 83% True Autobiography with Pseudonyms and Some Tall Tales (2021) for Bordighera Press and edited Unruly Catholics from Dante to Madonna (2013) for Scarecrow. I’ve done manuscript reviews and written book reviews for Italian Americana: Culture and Historical Review and published an article comparing Frank Castiglione (a.k.a. the Punisher) to Lt. Columbo in Elwood Watson’s essay collection Pimps, Wimps, Studs, Thugs and Gentlemen (2009). As a scholar of ethnic and working-class superheroes like the Punisher, I’ve been interviewed on NPR, BBC4, and in the AMC docuseries Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics (s1e4, 2017). Thanks to my experience as a treasurer for the Working-Class Studies Association, Secretary for MELUS, and president of the AAR’s SW Region Chapter, I believe I have much to offer IASA. I hope you will consider me for the role of your new secretary.
Treasurer
ALAN J. GRAVANO is the Writing Center Director at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions. He was awarded a Fulbright Lectureship in Italian-American Studies at the University of Calabria from October 2022 to January 2023. He is a former MLA Delegate Assembly member (2017-2020), the Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession (2018-2021, Chair 2020-21), and past president of the Italian American Studies Association (2015-2021). He serves on the MLA LLC Italian American (2022-27, 24-25, Acting Secretary, 25-26, Acting Chair). He contributed “Reassessing the Topography of New York City in Don DeLillo’s Fiction” to Don DeLillo in Context (Cambridge UP, 2021) and “Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson as the Anti-Hero in Boardwalk Empire” to The Neglected Works of Martin Scorsese (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2024), and published “CNN’s Searching for Italy: Stanley Tucci as Foodways Icon” and “Chef/Cook, Influencer, Mixologist, Travel Host: Stanley Tucci as Everyman” in Italian Americans in Film and Other Media (Palgrave, 2024). He co-edited Italian Americans on the Page: Re-Reading the Classics and Examining Underexplored Subjects (SUNY Press, forthcoming 2025). Finally, he is the new editor-in-chief of the journal Italian Americana, published by the University of Illinois Press.
Gravano served as President of IASA from 2015-2021 and filled in as Treasurer since 2023. He realizes the difficulty in finding a treasurer and is running for a full term. During his tenure, Gravano oversaw and was involved in organizing the IASA conferences in New Orleans, Washington DC, Long Beach, California, Houston, Chicago, New York, and Arkansas, as well as a symposium in Calabria, Rome, Lucca, and Fiesole, Italy. He has overseen the MLA Allied Organization IASA Session Organizer since 2022.
Executive Council Positions
The following individuals are running in the 2024 Election for the three open Executive Council positions beginning in January 2025.
Personal Statement: I attended my first IASA (then AIHA) conference in 2002 and have been a regular attendee ever since. IASA has supported my career more robustly than any other professional organization, and I am proud to call many of its members my dear friends and mentors. I’m anxious to give back to this organization by helping to grow our support for emerging scholars both through monetary awards and mentorship initiatives. Encouraging the next generation of Italian American Studies scholars has long been a hallmark of IASA, and I would like to contribute what I can to this tradition. Thank you for your consideration.
JESSICA FEMIANI (BA Wesleyan University; MA Brooklyn College (CUNY); Ph.D. Binghamton University (SUNY)). Her poems and essays have been published in the Paterson Literary Review, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, #MeToo, Anch’io, Mom Egg Review, and Italian American Review. Her first chapbook, American Gun, was released from Finishing Line Press (July, ‘24). She lives in Binghamton, New York, and is an adjunct lecturer at SUNY Oneonta, teaching composition and creative writing.
Femiani has been presenting at IASA Conferences since she first became a member in 2013. IASA conferences have allowed Femiani to dialogue and forge connections with others interested in the politics of transnational and diasporic identities. Before joining IASA, Femiani served on the Board of the Italian American Writers Association, an organization she credits making her a writer and motivating her studies at Brooklyn College, where she was a student of the late Robert Viscusi.
Femiani previously served on the Executive Council (2013-2015) and is running with the intention of helping to steer IASA towards a more formidable future: encouraging opportunities for junior scholars and developing artists; partnering with various academic/arts organizations; building membership among the younger generations by establishing connections within the various cohorts of the Italian Diasporic Studies program, of which she was a member of the first cohort.
ALESSIA MARTINI is Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where she directs the Italian program and teaches a range of courses in Italian language, culture, contemporary literature, and cinema. Her commitment to Italian American Studies is shown in both her teaching and research. She was the first to ever offer Italian American cinema and literature courses at Sewanee, where she singlehandedly expanded and reshaped the Italian program, making it interdisciplinary and transnational.
Her research focuses on transnational Italian studies, primarily concerned with issues of spatiality, in particular, space, identity, and memorialization in Italian migrant communities. Her most recent article examines how the Italian immigrants in Barre, Vermont reconfigured urban spaces to preserve their cultural identity. This work appeared in a volume on Italian Diasporic Communities in Canada and the United States. Her current book project aims to unveil the role of Italian craft and materials in the creation of spaces of public memory across the United States. She is also contributing to the forthcoming volume of Diasporic Italy with an article that discusses the redesign of her Italian American Studies seminar.
Alessia joined IASA three years ago, and since then, she has presented her research at each annual fall conference. She is committed to promoting the organization through recruitment and developing online events that are inclusive to all members. In addition, she is interested in developing initiatives to help early career scholars and graduate students connect with established colleagues in IASA.
JOHN R. MITRANO (B.A., Northwestern University; M.A. and Ph.D., Boston College) has been a Lifetime Member of IASA for approximately 20 years. He is currently Professor of Sociology at Central Connecticut State University, where he has taught courses on the Italian-American experience and led study abroad programs in Italy. His current research centers on ethnic identity formation among college-aged Italian-American students and the role that cultural heritage programs play in that process. Over the past 25 years, he has published several articles in AIHA/IASA’s “Proceedings” in the areas of ethnic identity formation and ethno-marketing served as a reviewer for the Italian American Review, and previously was a member of the Executive Council and the Elections subcommittee in the early 2000s. If elected to the Executive Council today, he would like to serve the organization in the development of novel recruitment strategies to attract new members; further develop, catalog, and publicize academic I-A resources; and partner with other I-A organizations in ways that will contribute to the long-term vitality of IASA—while maintaining our unique identity. We may be a relatively small professional organization, but our body of work in academia has been enormous. I would welcome the opportunity to develop, nurture, and further publicize past, present, and future contributions from our members. Thank you for your consideration of my candidacy.
ELISABETTA SANINO D’AMANDA is the coordinator of the Italian Studies program at Rochester Institute of Technology in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures since 2001. She directs the RIT Study and Work Abroad program based in Genova, Italy, since 2004. Her scholarly publications and presentations are on Italian cinema, Italian American Studies, and Italian pedagogy, specifically focusing on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility. She is the AATI NY State representative and President of Italian Teachers of Central NY Association. She won twice the scholarship to participate in the Italian Diaspora Summer Seminar in 2022 and 2023. She has been active in the Italian American Rochester community since the 1990s and has been a reader for Professor Salamone « Italians in Rochester » books. Currently, she is representative of Comités NY under the auspices of the Italian government and Italian NY Consular Office.
Active documentary filmmaker, she holds an MFA candidate in Film Production at the Rochester Institute of Technology and has completed three documentary films, As Good As Bread (2008) on the Rochester Italian American Community, Silent Flame (2009), and Astrodance: Dances Through the Wonders of the Universe (2015). She produced 2016 Election Day (2017). She is in production with Astrodance 2. She has been invited to present her work in various university courses and series, and her films have been broadcast on Italian television, and film festivals, where she received the Depth of Focus Award for As Good As Bread and Inclusione 3.0 Award from the University of Macerata, Italy for Astrodance: Dances Through the Wonders of the Universe.