Susan Amatangelo

Biography

As a child, I longed to be able to understand the lively conversation around my grandparents’ dinner table every Sunday. They had immigrated to the United States (Boston, MA) with their children in the 1950s, when my father was 14 years old. While I did not speak much Italian growing up, I heard the language (as well as my family’s abruzzese dialect) regularly and began to study Italian in middle school. When the time came to select a college, one of my main criteria was the opportunity to study abroad in Italy, where I could immerse myself in the Italian language and culture. Smith College’s JYA program in Italy helped me to realize my dream, enabling me to live and study in Florence for ten months. My Italian experience in Firenze differed dramatically from the language and culture of my own family, offering me another perspective and “home” within Italy.

As a student at Smith College, I first declared English literature as my major, to which I later added Italian. My interest in literature began in high school, fostered by my mother’s family: my grandmother had grown up in Ireland memorizing Irish and English poetry, and she spoke fluent Irish (or Gaelic, as she called it). Language studies were important to my Irish relatives, as well: my aunt excelled in Latin, and one of my uncles became a professor of Slavic languages and literatures.

In my final year at Smith, I knew that graduate school was my next step but was unsure, at first, whether to apply to programs in English literature or Italian literature. Ultimately, I decided that deepening my engagement with Italian language, literature, and culture was a priority in my life. At Harvard University, where I pursued my M.A. and PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures, I discovered that my true literary interests were not the medieval and Renaissance authors I had studied as an undergraduate, as much as I revered them; instead, I gravitated toward modern and contemporary prose, women writers, and literary analysis through the lens of gender.

Just after I completed my PhD, I had the good fortune of being offered a job at College of the Holy Cross. I had never expected to find work in my home state and wasn’t even sure that I wanted to settle in Massachusetts. So many years later, I can say that it has been meaningful to maintain close ties with my family while building my own professional life and raising my kids in Worcester. Teaching at the College has given me the opportunity to share my passion for Italian language, literature, and culture with a wide variety of students. Despite the privilege reflected in my education, I was a first-generation college student and the child and grandchild of immigrants, an experience that has helped me to make connections with Holy Cross students of different backgrounds.

Through my Italian literature and culture courses, I have also been able to explore my areas of scholarly inquiry:  19th-century Italy, Sicilian authors, like Giovanni Verga, World War II literature, and Italian women as authors and as characters in modern and contemporary prose works. More recently, I have begun research projects on the Italian American experience, which I hope to publish and share with my students, as well. Whatever the topic, my goal is to open meaningful, critical conversations with scholars in Italian Studies, Holy Cross colleagues across disciplines, and my students, which may or may not find answers but will continue to pose new questions.

Selected Grants, Awards, Honors

Career Champion, Center for Career Development, for members of the Class of 2024 and 2025

Marshall Memorial Fund, Donelan Office of Community-Based Learning (Fall 2024)

Faculty Marshal for Holy Cross Commencement (1999, 2005, 2019)

Research and Publication Grant for indexing of Italian Women at War (Fall 2016)

Batchelor (Ford) Summer Fellowship for Italian Women at War book project (Spring 2013)

Hewlett-Mellon Presidential Discretionary Fund Fellowship for Italian faculty workshop on program curriculum (2010-2011)

Recipient of the Arthur J. O'Leary Faculty Recognition Award (2006-2008)

Books

(Edited volume)

Italian Women at War: Sisters in Arms from the Unification to the Twentieth Century. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016. [Authored introduction and chapter three (see below)]

(Monograph)

Figuring Women: A Thematic Study of Giovanni Verga’s Female Characters. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004.

Selected articles, book chapters, short pieces

“Teaching Giovanni Verga in North America.” Italica, 102.1 (2025): pp. 2-17. 

“Viewing the South: The Role of Verismo and the Illustrative Arts in Shaping Post-Unification Italian Culture.” Italy in the Second Half of the 19th Century: Bridging New Cultures. Eds. Francesca Cadel and Paola Nastri. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2024. 199-217.

“Rewriting History: Dacia Maraini’s Women Warriors, Real and Imagined.” A Life Devoted to Writing: Festschrift in Honor of Dacia Maraini. Ed. Michelangelo La Luna. Rossano, Italy: ConSenso Publishing, 2021. 131-153.

“Verga’s ‘L’amante di Gramigna’: Outlaws and Disorder in Militarized Post-Unification Italy.” Italy and the Military: Cultural Perspectives from Unification to Contemporary Italy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 117-132.

“Giovanni Verga: Vita dei campi [Life in the Fields].” The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 September 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11301].

“La bambina e il sognatore e il mito dell’infanzia.” Curiosa di mestiere. Saggi su Dacia Maraini. Eds. Manuela Bertone and Barbara Meazzi. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2017. 215-230.

“Introduction: Italy’s Sisters in Arms.” Italian Women at War: Sisters in Arms from the Unification to the Twentieth Century. Ed. Susan Amatangelo. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016. 1-10.

“‘Sono briganta, io, non donna di brigante’: The Female Brigand’s Search for Identity.” Italian Women at War: Sisters in Arms from the Unification to the Twentieth Century. Ed. Susan Amatangelo. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016. 49-69.

“Tra illusione e verità nel Gattopardo: la storia di Concetta, l’ultima salina.” Le siciliane: Così sono se vi pare. Ed. Giovanna Summerfield. Novi ligure: Puntocapa Editrice, 2011. 44-63.

“Cavalleria rusticana: El contexto.” Temporada d’Òpera 2010-2011. Amics del Liceu, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona. 109-112.

“‘Chi cerca trova, e chi séguita vince’: Seeking Revenge in Verga’s Cavalleria rusticana and Pirandello’s Liolà.” Vendetta: Essays on Honor and Revenge. Ed. Giovanna Summerfield. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 137-155.

“I ricordi sono per sempre.” Non soltanto un baule: Storie di emigranti italiani. Ed. Concetta Cirigliano Perna. Edizioni Farinelli, 2005. 64-9.

“Coming to Her Senses: The Journey of the Mother in La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa.” Italica 79.2 (2002): 240-56.