Samuele Pardini

Samuele F. S. 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 are Transnational American studies, Italian American and African American literature, Italian Studies, popular culture, cinema and literary criticism and theory, with a special focus on modernity in the 20th century. 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 http://www.upne.com/1512600186.html), winner of the 2018 Italian American Studies Association Book Award (https://www.italianamericanstudies.net/cpages/bookaward). 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 and on a book tentatively titled Untenable Whiteness. The Itaian Diaspora, Race, and the Politics of Moderrnity  Before coming to Elon, he taught at UCLA and Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Pardini is the coordinator of the American Studies Program and the Liberal Arts Forum Advisor. He previously served two terms as Faculty-in-Residence of the Honors Program.