Elections 2025
Candidates
PRESIDENT
JACQUELINE REICH
Bio:
Dr. Jacqueline Reich is Dean of the School of Communication and the Arts at Marist University and faculty member at the University of Florence’s History of Art and Performance Ph.D. program. She is the author of The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema (Indiana UP, 2015, winner of the AAIS 2015 Best Book on Film/Media prize and finalist for Best Book on Film from the Theatre Library Association) and Beyond the Latin Lover: Marcello Mastroianni, Masculinity, and Italian Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2004). She is co-author, with Catherine O’Rawe, of Divi. La mascolinità nel cinema italiano (Donzelli, 2015) and co-editor with Piero Garofalo of Re-viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema, 1922-1943 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2002). She has written widely on Italian American cinema and culture, and was co-PI, with Dr. Kathleen LaPenta, of the Bronx Italian American History Initiative, a community-engaged oral history research project at Fordham University.
Candidate Statement:
I first attended AAIS in Madison, Wisconsin in the mid-1990s while finishing my Ph.D.: I was heartened by the warm community of scholars I met, some of whom remain my closest colleagues. In subsequent years, I have worked at three universities (R1, research intensive, and Master’s granting), been a member of language, literature, and media departments, served as department chair for seven years and Dean of Marist University for four. As I step down from the Deanship this year, I am honored to be nominated as President of the AAIS.
Higher education is experiencing a period of extreme turbulence, with myriad internal and external threats. Beyond uncertain enrollment and financial exigencies, our institutions now face new federal policies that may radically alter what we teach, how we teach, and whom. Our best defense is to draw strength from the diverse unity of our voices and from our collective passion for our fields to become advocates for the AAIS’s mission. The AAIS has experienced incredible growth and positive change under the current leadership. My goal is to continue those initiatives and expand their reach by engaging with adjacent disciplines and learned societies. Chiefly, I plan to listen to all constituents so the AAIS can advocate for you and meet your professional needs in unstable times.
VICE PRESIDENT
ALESSANDRO GIAMMEI
Bio:
Alessandro Giammei is Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at Yale University. Trained in Rome and Pisa, he taught at Princeton as a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow, at Bryn Mawr as an Assistant Professor, and in New Jersey prisons as a volunteer. His books include Nell’officina del nonsense di Toti Scialoja (edizioni del verri 2014), which won the Edinburgh Gadda prize; Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Painting (Verso 2023, with Ara Merjian); Cose da maschi (Einaudi 2023); Gioventù degli antenati: Il rinascimento è uno zombie (Einaudi 2024); and Ariosto in the Machine Age (Toronto 2024), winner of both the AAIS book prize and the Howard R. Marraro prize.
Candidate Statement:
The AAIS is the community that makes me feel at home in Italian Studies. After finishing my PhD and moving to the US, I explored different associations as an academic migrant, always trying to figure out whether I was escaping my training (indeed my Italianness, whatever it is) or making peace with it. The AAIS is the professional home that makes me feel like both these feelings are valid, even fruitful in their simultaneity. That is why I intend to devote my service to our discipline mostly to this association.
I am currently serving as the coordinator of the Queer Caucus. I offer familiarity with two academic cultures (the Italian and the North-American), and experience in very different contexts. I taught and performed significant service in research universities as well as in a small liberal arts college, and I collaborated closely with a Community College as the Humanities coordinator in the Prison Teaching Initiative.
The coming years will see a constant attack to universities, and in particular to policies, funding, research, and teaching oriented towards the cultivation of diversity and justice. My hope and goal is to organize resistance in our field.
VICE PRESIDENT
COSETTA GAUDENZI
Bio:
Cosetta Gaudenzi is Associate Professor of Italian, Section Head of the Italian Program at the University of Memphis and Treasurer of the American Association for Italian Studies. She has national and international publications covering a range of topics, from the use of dialect and language in Italian cinema (including “Marco Bellocchio’s Buongiorno, notte and the Language of the Brigate Rosse,” and “Memory, Dialect, Politics: Linguistic Strategies in Fellini’s Amarcord”), American remakes of Italian films (“Translating and Adapting Cinema Across Borders: American Remakes of Italian Films in the Twenty-First Century”) and the reception of Dante in the English world (including “Dante’s Introduction to the United States as Investigated in Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club,” and “Dante e l’epica inglese: le appropriazioni settecentesche della Commedia di William Hayley”).
Candidate Statement:
I am a long-standing AAIS member and served as its Treasurer the last five years. During my tenure, I facilitated the association’s transition to a more sophisticated financial model, ensuring full compliance with IRS regulations for a growing nonprofit organization.
Having gained in-depth knowledge of AAIS in my role as Treasurer and being an interdisciplinary scholar with publications in diverse fields such as Dante Studies, Italian Cinema, and Translation Studies, I am well-prepared to take on the responsibilities of Vice President. In this role, I intend to continue and expand upon the work initiated by the current VP.
Collaboration and inclusion are key principles that should be embraced within the association and in external relationships. As VP, I will promote continued growth and visibility of AAIS and its mission by supporting dialogue among US Italian programs to address issues such as job security and by strengthening relations with national and international organizations, e.g., the Dante Society of America, American Boccaccio Association, RSA, MLA, AATI, SIS (UK), and ACIS (Australia). Furthermore, I will work with the editors of Italian Culture to achieve a stronger connection between our journal and our yearly conference, by publishing, for instance, the annual keynote address.
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
ROBERT RUSHING
Bio:
Robert A. Rushing is Professor of Italian and Film at UCLA, and was previously Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of three books: Resisting Arrest: Detective Fiction and Popular Culture (2007); Descended from Hercules: Biopolitics and the Muscled Male Body on Screen (winner of the 2016 AAIS best book in film and media prize); and Transnational Resonance: Italo Calvino’s Acoustic Afterlives (Fordham UP, forthcoming Fall 2025). Professor Rushing teaches, researches and publishes on 20th- and 21st-century Italian literature, culture and film, including contemporary Italian fiction, film and television; sound and music; critical and interpretive theory (especially gender and sexuality, psychoanalysis, biopolitics, and environmental humanities); popular culture, in both film and television (he has co-edited volumes on Mad Men and Orphan Black); comparative studies; and genre.
Candidate Statement:
In 25 years or more as a member of AAIS, I have enjoyed numerous conferences and professional collaborations (not to mention the 2016 book prize), and I’d be honored to pay back some of that professional enrichment through service. I am particularly keen on expanding the AAIS’ interdisciplinary and transcultural scope, and hope to work closely with the other members of the Executive Committee to do so.
TREASURER
CARMELA SCALA
Bio:
Dr. Carmela Scala received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York. Her current research focuses on Second Language Acquisition and promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in language and culture education. She serves as the Director of the Italian Language Program and Study Abroad Program at Rutgers University.
Dr. Scala is the founder and editor-in-chief of Language Teaching and Technology (LTT). She has been awarded an entrepreneurial grant to develop an entirely online professional development workshop for Italian teachers, as well as multiple smaller grants to create innovative online language courses. She has numerous publications in the fields of second language acquisition, online teaching, and teaching through the lens of DEI. In the last two years, she has received three grants from the Italian Consulate in New York, which have been instrumental in developing professional development courses for Italian teachers in the United States and Italy. These courses focus on Social Justice, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the language classroom, and sustainability.
Dr. Scala serves as an at-large Higher Education Representative on the ACTFL Board of Directors and as the Mid-Atlantic Representative and Advocacy Committee Chair for the American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI).
Candidate Statement:
I have been a member of the AAIS since 2017 and have always appreciated its dynamic intellectual community, where I continue to learn and grow. I value opportunities to collaborate with individuals from diverse backgrounds and fields of interest, as such exchanges foster creativity and innovation. My background in second language acquisition and pedagogy would bring a unique perspective to the association, particularly in highlighting the pedagogical dimensions of teaching. With prior experience serving on various committees and as a current member of the ACTFL Board of Directors, I have developed skills in organizational leadership, which will contribute to my effectiveness as Treasurer of AAIS. During my three-year term, I hope to strengthen the financial sustainability of the association and support initiatives that promote interdisciplinary collaboration and inclusivity within our community.