Speakers:
Marika Preziuso is Associate Professor of World Literature at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the Caribbean Diaspora and an M.A. in Gender, Society and Culture, both from the University of London, UK. At MassArt, Marika teaches 20th century and contemporary postcolonial literature, particularly by migrant and diasporic writers, and speculative fiction of the uncanny, magic realism and Afrofuturism. The transnational scope of Marika’s classes actively invites the skill of intercultural understanding. Marika’s academic research explores Western imaginaries of ‘otherness’ and the literary and aesthetic strategies employed by writers, artists, and theorists from the African and Caribbean diasporas to critique and expand such imaginaries and create “opaque” and hybrid spaces for themselves and their art.
Violetta Ravagnoli is Assistant Professor of History at Emmanuel College in Boston, where she teaches Asian History and Migration and Diaspora History. She is mostly interested in notions of identity and belonging and their formation through glocal frameworks. She is the coordinator of the Colleges of the Fenway shared Minor in Migration Studies. Her latest research project focuses on a comparative historical analysis of Italian and Chinese migrations to Boston from the late nineteenth century to today.
IDEA Boston is an Italian-inspired festival celebrating authors, books and culture, and organized by independent bookstore I AM Books, situated in Boston's North End neighborhood.
