Barbara Alfano
Director of First-Year Forum, Faculty in Cultural Studies and Languages, Bennington College
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BIO
2025 CCN Champion
A native of Italy, Alfano specializes in 20th- and 21st-century Italian fiction, with a focus on women鈥檚 writing, representations of America, issues of identity, love studies, and ethics and literature. Her latest publication appeared in Romance Studies in 2024: 鈥淭he Weight of the Paternal: Authorship and Gustave Flaubert鈥檚 Legacy in Elena Ferrante鈥檚 The Lying Life of Adults.鈥 She is the writer of The Mirage of America in Contemporary Italian Literature and Film (University of Toronto Press, 2013) and the co-editor of Italian Quarterly鈥檚 special issue, 鈥淧rojecting Americanism Abroad: Italy in the Cold War鈥 (2019). Her essays have appeared in Italica, Forum Italicum, Oblio, and Quaderni d鈥橧talianistica, among other journals. She curates Stanford鈥檚 Arcade鈥檚 literary salon on Elena Ferrante.
In 2009, she published her first collection of short stories in Italian, Mi chiedevo. Before moving to the United States in 1999, Alfano worked in Naples as a journalist and translator. She taught Italian language, literature, and culture at Pennsylvania State University and directed its Italian language program in 2005鈥06. Laurea summa cum laude, Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples (1993); PhD in Comparative Literature, Pennsylvania State University (2004); Certificate in Online Learning, Duke University Continuing Studies (2020). Alfano joined the Bennington faculty of the Isabelle Kaplan Center for Languages and Cultures in the fall of 2008. She served as the Director of Remote Pedagogy Development for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years and became the Director of First-Year Forum in Fall 2021.
Bio
2025 CCN Champion
A native of Italy, Alfano specializes in 20th- and 21st-century Italian fiction, with a focus on women鈥檚 writing, representations of America, issues of identity, love studies, and ethics and literature. Her latest publication appeared in Romance Studies in 2024: 鈥淭he Weight of the Paternal: Authorship and Gustave Flaubert鈥檚 Legacy in Elena Ferrante鈥檚 The Lying Life of Adults.鈥 She is the writer of The Mirage of America in Contemporary Italian Literature and Film (University of Toronto Press, 2013) and the co-editor of Italian Quarterly鈥檚 special issue, 鈥淧rojecting Americanism Abroad: Italy in the Cold War鈥 (2019). Her essays have appeared in Italica, Forum Italicum, Oblio, and Quaderni d鈥橧talianistica, among other journals. She curates Stanford鈥檚 Arcade鈥檚 literary salon on Elena Ferrante.
In 2009, she published her first collection of short stories in Italian, Mi chiedevo. Before moving to the United States in 1999, Alfano worked in Naples as a journalist and translator. She taught Italian language, literature, and culture at Pennsylvania State University and directed its Italian language program in 2005鈥06. Laurea summa cum laude, Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples (1993); PhD in Comparative Literature, Pennsylvania State University (2004); Certificate in Online Learning, Duke University Continuing Studies (2020). Alfano joined the Bennington faculty of the Isabelle Kaplan Center for Languages and Cultures in the fall of 2008. She served as the Director of Remote Pedagogy Development for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years and became the Director of First-Year Forum in Fall 2021.