Research: Tricksters and Medicine People. Reframing Prophecy in Contemporary Indigenous Novels.
Martina Lombardo is a PhD student enrolled in the program in English Literature, Language, and Translation Studies (curriculum in Literary and Cultural Studies) at Sapienza University of Rome, in joint collaboration with the University of Silesia in Katowice. In 2021, she earned her BA degree at Sapienza University of Rome in Lingue, Culture, Letterature e Traduzione, with a thesis that analyses the effects of the Black Lives Matter movement on the representation of the Black community in both literature, and television. In 2023, she obtained her master’s degree in English and Anglo-American Studies from Sapienza University of Rome, with a dissertation titled: “Can the Great American Novel Survive? Envisioning New Pathways in the XXI Century”, a comparative analysis of contemporary Black, Native American, and Hawaiian novels. During her MA, she spent six months studying abroad at the Technische Universität Dortmund, thanks to the Erasmus Program. Her current research focuses on prophetic characters in contemporary Indigenous novels. The aim of this research is to envision different models for these characters, and to observe if, and how, the relationship of different Indigenous communities to the land they inhabit impact the construction of such figures - and on the ways of envisioning the world connected to them. Her research interests include contemporary fiction written by authors of color, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and Post-Colonial Studies.