معرفی
Nicoletta Pireddu is a Professor in the Department of Italian at Georgetown University's College of Arts & Sciences. She currently serves as the Inaugural Director of the Georgetown Humanities Initiative and remains an active member of the Global and Comparative Literature Program Steering Committee after directing it until Academic Year 2023-24. Her distinguished career spans over two decades at Georgetown, where she previously served as Interim Chair of the Italian Department and Director of Graduate Studies in Italian.
- Italian laurea from Università degli Studi di Verona
- Dottorato di ricerca in English and American Literatures from Università di Venezia "Ca' Foscari"
- M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA
Professor Pireddu's research centers on European literary and cultural relations from the 19th century to present, with particular focus on Italian, French, and British domains. Her work explores national and transnational identities, borders and migration, literary and critical theories, cosmopolitanism, Mediterranean and island studies, and the intersection of anthropology and literature. She has pioneered scholarship on early science-fiction and translation studies, examining how literature engages with scientific concepts and cultural exchanges.
Her extensive publication record includes over eighty articles in leading journals such as Comparative Literature, Romanic Review, and Journal of European Studies, along with numerous book-length publications. Her recent work shows a strong emphasis on cultural cosmopolitanism, as evidenced by her René Wellek Prize-winning edited volume Migrating Minds: Theories and Practices of Cultural Cosmopolitanism (2022) and the subsequent scholarly journal she co-founded bearing the same name.
- René Wellek Prize (2023) for Best Edited Essay Collection
- Condé Nast Award for excellence in research, teaching, service and leadership (2023)
- Cawley Career Champion Award (2024)
- American Association for Italian Studies book award (2003)
- Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching (2005)
Professor Pireddu has secured significant research funding from prestigious institutions including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Howard Foundation at Brown University, and the Italian Foreign Ministry. She has mentored numerous students through innovative seminars exploring topics like European consciousness, food and fashion in "made in Italy," the avant-garde in literature and arts, and the representation of mafia in literature and film. As the inaugural Director of the Georgetown Humanities Initiative, she has fostered interdisciplinary collaboration across campus, championing the Medical Humanities Program and organizing the 2019 American Comparative Literature Association annual conference at Georgetown. Her current work centers on the Ignatius Seminar on Borders, continuing her longstanding engagement with Mediterranean Crossings and transnational cultural flows.
