Dr. Ilaria Serra

ilaria serra

Ph.D., Comparative Studies, Florida Atlantic University

Professor of Italian and Comparative Studies

Cavaliere della Repubblica italiana, Ordine della Stella d'Italia

Areas of Expertise
Italian cinema, literature and cultural studies 
Italian American culture 
Italian song
History of Italian immigration

E-mail: iserra1@fau.edu
Phone: 561-297-0286

Ilaria Serra was born in Venice, Italy. She is a Professor of Italian and Comparative Studies and the coordinator of the FAU Italian Program. Her research weaves Italian American Studies into Italian Studies more broadly; main areas of focus include Italian cinema, Italian literature, Italian history through popular song, and the history of Italian immigration to the United States. She founded and co-leads the FAU Study Abroad Program in Venice, Italy (promotional video), where she teaches the course Venice and Its Reflections (course video).

She has received FAU's highest scholarly honor twice: Scholar of the Year Award at the Assistant Professor Rank (2012); and Scholar of the Year Award at the Associate Professor Rank (2020). In 2023 she was knighted by the President of the Italian Republic for her merit in the promotion of Italian culture abroad. In 2024 she recevied the Premio alla Carriera by FATI-Florida Association Teachers of Italian and the Teacher Recognition Award by the Italian Language Foundation, New York, and the Columbus International Award (Rome-Miami).

Dr. Serra created with her students the digital humanities projects, “Italian American Oral History Archive,” “Italian American Memories Documentary Archive” and “Floritalians.” She started and coordinates the FAU Italian and Italian American Film Festivals and organizes the annual International Symposium "Italy in Transit."  She recently received an  EU-Jean Monnet Center of Excellence grant  (click here for the Monnet Center  interview .) 

Courses

  • Italian Language
  • Poetic Geography of Italy (graduate) "The first US University course to enter in the Literary Parks Network" in Parchi Letterari Magazine; video presentation (h10.59).
  • Italo Calvino's World (graduate)
  • Venice in the Italian Literary Imagination (graduate)
  • Scrivere se stessi: l’autobiografia italiana (graduate)
  • Translating Identities: Italian America (graduate)
  • Italian Culture Through Film (graduate)
  • Venice and Its Reflections
  • The Italian City between History and Imagination
  • Italian Language through Film
  • Italy in Lyrics (Italian History through Its Music)
  • Italian Literature from the Baroque to the Present
  • Masterpieces of Italian Cinema
  • Italian-American Cinema
  • Italian Cinema and Literature: From Text to Screen
  • World Literature

Books

Serra Ilaria. Italia cantata. Storia d’Italia attraverso le canzoni da Napoleone a Berlusconi (1797-1997). A Culture and Language Textbook. New York: Linus Learning, 2021.

italia cantata

Serra Ilaria (ed.). Eugenia Bulat, La pietra di Ca’ Vendramin . Tropea: Meligrana, 2018. 

pietra bulat

Serra, Ilaria, and Alan Gravano, eds. Southern Exposures: Locations and Relocations of Italian Culture. Selected Proceedings of the 42th Annual AIHA Conference. New York: Bordighera Press, 2013. 

southern exposure

Serra, Ilaria. The Imagined Immigrant: Images of Italian Emigration to the United States between 1890 and 1924. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009. 

immagined immigrant

Serra, Ilaria. The Value of Worthless Lives: Writing Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies. Fordham University Press, 2007. 

value worthless lives

Serra, Ilaria.  Immagini di un immaginario: L’emigrazione italiana negli Stati Uniti fra i due secoli: 1890–1925. Cierre, 1997. 

immagini immaginario

 

Selected Articles

Serra, Ilaria. “The Castle and the Seasons: Loris Jacopo Bononi and the Geometaphor of Castiglione del Terziere.” Polisemie 5 (2024). DOI:10.31273/polisemie.v5.1246

Serra, Ilaria. “Gino Strada. An Italian Hero for World Medicine. The Year in Italy.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Journal (University of Hawaii Press) 46.1 (2023). 49-52. 

Serra, Ilaria. “Eugenia Bulat’s Poetry: Geometaphors among the Stones of Venice.” The Italianist – Special Issue, 'Cross-Cultural Approaches to Italian Ecocriticism.' 42 (2022-23).

Serra, Ilaria. “The Poetic Geography of Italy: Coastal Geometaphors,” Italian Culture 41.1 (2023). 80-102. 

Serra, Ilaria. “Fuori dalla porta, dentro dalla finestra: Dio nell’architettura di Pietro di Donato,” Campi Immaginabili 66/67 (2022). 456-471.

Serra, Ilaria. “Paper in Hand and Eyes Wide Open: The Year in Italy.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 44.1 (2021): 83-90.

Serra, Ilaria. “Scorsese and Dante: Art and the Afterlife. O'Brien’s Martin Scorsese's Divine Comedy. Movies and Religion.” Review essay. Italian Americana. Cultural and Historical Review. 29.1 (Winter 2021), 85-88.

Serra, Ilaria. “Needlework and the Feminine in Adriana Trigiani's Novels.” Letterature d'America XL.179 (2020). 81-100.

Serra, Ilaria. “Biographies from the Alps to Capri: The Year in Italy.” Biography. An Interdisciplinary Journal 42.1 (2019) (University of Hawaii Press): 69-76. muse.jhu.edu/article/726549. Published. Print and web.

Serra, Ilaria. “Villains between History and Literature: The Year in Italy.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Journal (University of Hawaii Press) 43.1 (2020): 101-108.

Serra, Ilaria. “Biographies from the Alps to Capri: The Year in Italy.” Biography. An Interdisciplinary Journal 42.1 (2019): 69-76. 

Serra, Ilaria. “Geography of the Abandoned Country. Italian American Poems and the Poetry of Abandoned Towns”. Forum of Modern Language Studies 54.5 (Fall 2018): 1-24. 

Serra, Ilaria. “Andrea Segre’s Cinema of Compassion.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 15.2 (2017). 191-207.  

Serra, Ilaria. “Lives of the Saints, Sinners and Everyone in Between: 2017 in Italy.” Biography. An Interdisciplinary Journal  40.4 (Fall 2017). 

Serra, Ilaria. "Voyageurs sulle vie italiani del mondo." Studi italiani  XXVIII.1 (gennaio-giugno 2016). 181-99.

Serra, Ilaria. "Canti di donne in lotta. L’esperienza veneta." Forum Italicum : A Journal of Italian Studies  Special issue "Music and Society in Italy." 49 (August 2015): 545-566.

Serra, Ilaria. "Geografia poetica dell’assenza. Poeti italoamericani e l’Italia abbandonata." Lettere aperte (University of Innsbruck, Austria). Edition 2, 2015. 

Serra, Ilaria. "The Last Dance: Orienta Badia's Autobiographical Novel, Rina." Italianamericana 32.2 (Summer 2014): 146-71.

Serra, Ilaria. "Alterità acquatica nella poesia italo-rumena di Eugenia Bulat." Lingua Romana 11.2 (Fall 2013). 

Serra. Ilaria. "Italian Tango between Buenos Aires and Paolo Conte." Italian Sound. Special issue of California Italian Studies 4.1 (2013). 

Serra, Ilaria. "Antigone Today. Pietas and Politics in Passannante ." Luci ed ombre 1.4 (Settembre-Ottobre 2013). 

Serra, Ilaria. "On Men and Bears: A Forgotten Migration in Nineteenth-Century Italy." History Workshop Journal 76 (Fall 2013). 

Serra, Ilaria. "From Literature to Film through Figurative Arts: Italian Imagistic Substitutions ." Adaptation 4.2 (September 2011). 

Serra, Ilaria. "Teaching Italy through Its Music: The Meaning of Music in Italian Cultural History." Italica 88.1 (Spring 2011): 94-114.

Serra, Ilaria. "From Immigration to Art Appreciation. The Extraordinary Case of the Morikami Museum in Florida." International Journal of the Arts in Society 4.3 (2009): 447-55. 

Serra. Ilaria. "I silenzi dell'autobiografia italoamericana." Mnemosyne. (Quaderno dell'Osservatorio Scientifico delle testimonianze autobiografiche e della memoria scritta e audiovisiva) 2 (2009): 133-44. 

Serra, Ilaria. "Italy: America's bride. The Image of Italy in Life Magazine (1950s)." Italica 86.3 (2009): 452-70. 

Serra, Ilaria. "Creare una memoria collettiva: Le donne e i documentari italoamericani." Oltreoceano. Percorsi Letterari e Linguistici 2 (2008): 85-92.

Serra, Ilaria. "Roberto Benigni's Ultimo del Paradiso." Dante. Riviste internazionale di studi su Dante Alighieri 3 (2006): 129-45.

Serra, Ilaria. "Rhyming Immigration. Two Italian American Autobiographies in Verses." New Expressions. Special issue of VIA. Voices in Italian America  17 (2006): 69-84.

Dinev, T., Bellotto, M., Hart, P., Colautti, C., Russo, V., Serra, I. "Privacy Calculus Model in E-commerce - a Study of Italy and the United States." European Journal of Information Systems 15.4 (2006). 

Translation

Serra, Ilaria. “Giovanni Corona. Poesie/Poems” Translation and Critical Introduction. Mosaici: Learned Online Journal of Italian Poetry, 2017.

Recent Book Chapters

Serra, Ilaria. “Poetic Calabria: Hidden Metaphors among its Rocks.” Essays on the History and Culture of the Unknown Calabria: Land of the Forgotten, Caterina Pangallo ed. Sidney, Australia: Cambridge Scholars, 2023. 219-240. 

Serra, Ilaria. “Il linguaggio dei fiori in Romancero gitano.” Romancero Gitano  by Federico Garcia Lorca (Marino Magliani e Riccardo Ferrazzi, transl). Cosenza: Pellegrini Editore, 2023. 5-14.

Serra, Ilaria. “Emigrazione e circo: la famiglia Zoppé tra Italia e Stati Uniti.” Viaggiare in un mondo diviso. Marco Severini, ed. Ronzani editore, 2022. 191-208. 

Serra, Ilaria.  “Questions on an Old Map: Joseph Tusiani’s If Gold Should Rust.” Il miglior Fabbro. Essays in Honor of Joseph Tusiani, edited by Paolo Giordano and Anthony Tamburri. New York: Bordighera Press, 2021. 239-258.

Serra, Ilaria. “I molteplici trattini del cinema italoamericano.” Gli italiani in USA: nuove prospettive di una diaspora secolare, edited by Anthony Tamburri and Silvana Mangione. New York: John D. Calandra Italian American Institute 2021. 97-128.

Serra, Ilaria. “Voci da un sogno veneziano in Florida: Boca Raton.” L’originalità della ricerca storica, edited by Marco Severini. Fano: Aras, 2021. 155-168.

Serra, Ilaria. “La Sardegna come poesia: Giovanni Corona. Una lettura geografica.” Nuovi studi su Giovanni Corona, edited by Simona Cigliana. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2020. 77-101. Book review here.

Serra, Ilaria. “‘Street’ is Feminine in Italian. Feminist Bodies in Italian Streets.” Bodies in the Street. The Somaesthetic of City Life , edited by Richard Shusterman. Leiden (NL): Brill, 2019. 153-176.

Serra, Ilaria. “La gioventù di Mario Isnenghi tra libri e campielli.” La gioventu’ degli storici e delle storiche, edited by Marco Severini and Lidia Pupilli. Venice: Marsilio. 

Serra, Ilaria. "Italian American Femininities," The Routledge History of the Italian Americans, edited by William Connell and Stanislao Pugliese. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Serra, Ilaria: "Femminismo Ruggente Cantato," Dieci passi nella storia de ll’emancipazione femminile italiana. Marsilio Ed., Venice, Italy (2016). 209-27.

Serra, Ilaria. "Ritorno alla polis: i film di Dennis Dellai." Un nuovo cinema politico italiano? Ed. William Hope, Luciana d'Arcangeli, and Fabiana Stefanoni. Vol. 2. London: Troubador Press, 2014. 40-51. 

Serra, Ilaria. "De Salvo’s Rialto: Walking on a Livable Bridge." Personal Effects: Essays on Memory, Culture, and Women in the Work of Louise De Salvo. Eds. Edvige Giunta and Nancy Caronia. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014. 222-32. 

Serra, Ilaria. "Rina quasi Orienta. Il romanzo autobiografico di Orienta Badia Johnson." Culture e transcultura nelle Americhe. Studi dedicati a Daniela Ciani Sforza. Ed. Silvana Serafin. Venice: La Toletta Edizioni, 2014. 159-73.

Serra, Ilaria. "Introduction." Ma così è la vita. Such is Life. Ed. Laura Ruberto. New York: Bordighera Press, 2010. 17-31. 

Serra, Ilaria. "Outsider Rhetoric in Italian Immigrant Autobiographies." Agency in the Margins: Stories of Outsider Rhetoric. Ed. Anne Meade Stockdell-Giesler. New York: Farleigh Dickinson University Press. 143-64. 

Serra, Ilaria. "Travel Literature: Crossing the Gaze between Italy and America." Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture. Ed. Edvige Giunta and Kathleen Zamboni McCormick. New York: Modern Language Association, 2007. 578-88. 

Serra, Ilaria. "Forme e deformità della famiglia nel cinema italoamericano." Quei bravi ragazzi. Il cinema italoamericano contemporaneo. Ed. Giuliana Muscio and Giovanni Spagnoletti. Venezia: Marsilio, 2007. 164-72. 

 

External Links

Ilaria Serra interviewed for Faculty Friday, November 2024.

Ilaria Serra presents the FAU Italian Program for the magazine WeTheItalians: From Venice to Florida: Meet the Wonderful Ilaria Serra by Umberto Mucci.

Ilaria Serra interviewed by Dean Horswell for "In Conversation. An Arts and Letters Podcast" on her research on Italian music.

Ilaria Serra featured in FAU Research Thursday in 2022, and in 2020.

Ilaria Serra in Strade Dorate

York University, The Mariano A. Elia Chair in Italian-Canadian Studies, Roundtable discussion Writing About Gender & Ethnicity: Italians in North America. Michela Baldo (U Birmingham), Licia Canton (Accenti Magazine, AICW), Ryan Calabretta-Sajder (U Arkansas), and Ilaria Serra (Florida Atlantic U); facilitated by Elia Chairholder Abril Liberatori.

Intervista a Ilaria Serra sullo studio dell'Italiano a FAU, Marzo 2020.

Italian Message in a Bottle: Ilaria Serra interviewed by WPBF about an Italian language love story.