Ryan Calabretta-Sajder

President

2021-2023

Department of World Languages, Literatures and Culture
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Tel: (847) 217-1630                                                                                                                                                                    E-mail: rcalabretta@gmail.com
Website: Click here

Biography:

Dr. Ryan Calabretta-Sajder is currently Associate Professor and Section Head of Italian at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he teaches courses in Italian, Film, and Gender Studies. He serves as Associate Director of Gender Studies and Affiliate Faculty in African and African American Studies, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, and Jewish Studies.

He is the author of Divergenze in celluloide: colore, migrazione e identità sessuale nei film gay di Ferzan Ozpetek (Celluloid Divergences: Color, Migration, and Sexual Identity in the Gay Series of Ferzan Ozpetek) with Mimesis editore and editor of the collections of essays, Pasolini’s Lasting Impressions: Death, Eros, and Literary Enterprise in the Opus of Pier Paolo Pasolini with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Italian Americans On Screen: Challenging the Past, Re-Theorizing the Future with Alan Gravano (Lexington Press, 2020). His research interests include the integration of gender, class, and migration in both Italian and Italian American literature and cinema.  He has recently been awarded one of four Fulbright Awards for the Foundation of the South to conduct research and teach at the University of Calabria, Arcavacata for the Spring of 2017.  His next research project examines the visual, semiotic, and affect foodways provokes in Italian and Italian American cinema.

Calabretta-Sajder is currently the President for the American Association of Teachers of Italian, the President of Gamma Kappa Alpha, the National Italian Honors Society, founding and current editor of Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association, and President of the Italian American LLC (Modern Langauge Association). He is the Chief Designate Reader for the AP Italian Language and Culture Examination and serves on the Osservatorio nazionale.