Dr. Fiore’s Book Pre-occupied Spaces Receives Honorable Mention at the 2019 MLA Convention

Dr. Teresa Fiore’s book Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (Fordham UP, 2017) continues to garner national recognition. At the 2019 MLA Convention it received an Honorable Mention as part of the 25th Howard R. Marraro Prize, which is awarded biennially for an outstanding book in the field of Italian literature or comparative literature involving Italian. In the words of the jury, “Fiore has done a masterful job of opening up a new conversation between Italy and its diaspora populations. Taking advantage of myriad sources and interdisciplinary approaches, Fiore presents the issue of immigration from an Italian standpoint with insight and great intellectual dynamism.”

“It is an immense honor for me to have received this mention” – Fiore (Inserra Endowed Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies, MLL Dept.) commented. “With a few exceptions over the years, the prize has recognized canonical authors and themes in Italian Studies: paying attention to Italy’s cultural history of mobility is an important shift signaling an urgency for the field to read the country’s present through the past and via a porous transnational lens.”

Pre-Occupied Spaces had already been awarded the American Association of Italian Studies Book Prize in 2018, as best title in the 20th-21st century category, and was also nominated for the Bridge Award. It has been positively reviewed in a number of Italian and U.S. journals, and has been presented on over a dozen campuses around the country from California (USC, UC Santa Barbara) to New York (Columbia U and NYU) and North Carolina (Duke U), as well as in Italy (Università di Palermo).

See also:
Description of the book with links to reviews and list of presentations
Marraro Prizes/MLA Press release
Dr. Fiore’s profile