Donatella Izzo is Professor of American Literature at University of Naples L’Orientale. She is a member of the editorial board of Ácoma. Rivista internazionale di studi nordamericani (of which she also served as co-editor-in-chief until 2018) and of Anglistica, between, and The Henry James Review. She directs, with Giorgio Mariani, the book series “Sapienza Studies in American Literature and Culture” at Sapienza University Press and, with Giorgio Mariani and Mauro Pala, the series "Le balene" at La Scuola di Pitagora press. Since 2004 she has been on the Faculty of "The Futures of American Studies Institute" directed by Donald E. Pease at Dartmouth College (USA), of which she has been a co-director since 2012. Since 2012 she has co-directed (with Giorgio Mariani) OASIS - Orientale American Studies International School, convened every other year in Procida, at Università "Orientale"'s conference center. She was President of AISNA, the Italian Association of American Studies (2005-2007) and President of the International Henry James Society (2011). Since 2008 she has been a “Fellow” of the Collegium of World Literary History in Stockholm, on behalf of which she has been in charge of the United States section of "Literature: A World History." In 2016 and 2021, she was a fellow of the International Forum for United States Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Between 2001 and 2017, as a member of the PhD program in Comparative Literature (which she directed from 2009 to 2013) and of the PhD program in Literary, linguistic and comparative studies (2013-7) at University of Naples L’Orientale as well as the PhD program in English at University of Rome Sapienza (2004-9), she supervised about 15 dissertations. She is best known for her scholarly work on Henry James, on whose oeuvre she has published extensively both in Italy and in the USA. She has also published books and essays, both in Italy and internationally, on British and American writers, especially Melville, Howells, and Fitzgerald, and published essays and edited volumes on literary and gender theory, on cross-cultural literary rewritings, on the theory and history of American studies as a disciplinary field, on comparative literature, on Asian American literature, on American TV series, on the graphic novel in the US, on the philosophical and ideological implications of detective narratives.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
1- “Pop(e)ulism: Populist Miracles and Neoliberal Theologies”, in The Comeback of Populism: Transatlantic Perspectives, ed. Heike Paul, Ursula Prutsch, Jürgen Genhardt, Heidelberg, Winter Universitätverlag, 2019, pp. 235-52.
2- “Henry James and the ‘unprovoked harsh note’ of experience”, The Henry James Review, 41, 3 (Fall 2020), pp. 193-218 [Classe A].
3- “Alternative Modernisms: A Contrapuntal Reading of The Great Gatsby and Christ in Concrete”, in This Hope Sustains the Scholar. Essays in Tribute to the Work of Robert Viscusi, edited by Siân Gibby, Joseph Sciorra, and Anthony Tamburri, New York, Bordighera Press, 2021, pp. 61-88.
4- “Contro la melanconia: «The Beast in the Jungle» di Henry James, da François Truffaut a Patrice Leconte”, in Allegretto vivace. Omaggio a Bruna Donatelli, a cura di Laura Santone e Francesco Fiorentino, Roma, Roma TrE-Press, 2021, pp. 145-165.
5- “Positions with White Roses: Ursule Molinaro’s Theater of Cruelty”, Letterature d’America, XLI, 184, 2021, pp. 107-134 [Classe A].
6- “Lo schermo e l’Alzheimer: doomed detectives in cerca di memoria”, in Il convivio comparato. Scritti per Stefano Tani, a cura di Donatella Boni e Silvia Monti, Verona, Scripta, 2022, pp. 119-138.
7- “The Americas” (con Djelal Kadir, Quentin Youngberg e Albert Braz), in Literature: A World History, General Editors David Damrosch and Gunilla Lindberg-Wada, vol. 1: Before 200 CE, Ed. Anders Petterson, Hoboken, NJ, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022, pp. 214-221.
8- “The Americas” (con Djelal Kadir, Quentin Youngberg e Albert Braz), in Literature: A World History, General Editors David Damrosch and Gunilla Lindberg-Wada, vol. 2: 200-1500, Ed. Bo Utas and Theo D’Haen, Hoboken, NJ, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022, pp. 683-696.
9- “United States of America”, in Literature: A World History, General Editors David Damrosch and Gunilla Lindberg-Wada, vol. 3: 1500-1800, Ed. Zhang Longxi, Hoboken, NJ, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022, pp. 1009-1015.
10- “United States of America”, in Literature: A World History, General Editors David Damrosch and Gunilla Lindberg-Wada, vol. 4: 1800-2000, Ed. Djelal Kadir, Hoboken, NJ, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022, pp. 1536-1546.