Gianna Albaum

Gianna Albaum is a Lecturer in Italian Studies at Smith College, teaching Italian literature and culture through comparative frameworks. Her research investigates representations of intoxication and addiction in modern literature and film, with particular attention to colonial plant-drugs and their entanglements with European modernity.

Albaum's current book project, Bad Medicine: Literature and Drugs in Modern Italy, examines medical themes in works by Ippolito Nievo, Giovanni Verga, Annie Vivanti, Pitigrilli, Dino Buzzati, and Primo Levi. Her courses cover diverse topics including Boccaccio's Decameron, Elena Ferrante, Black Italy, and Italian crime fiction.

Recent publications analyze moral contagion narratives during the 1918 influenza pandemic and colonial imaginations of psychoactive substances. She co-created the NYU Black Italia digital resource while teaching at New York University.