Susanna Scarparo’s approach to teaching and research is interdisciplinary and cross-cultural. Her research interweaves theories of life-writing, biography, feminist theory, historiography, fiction and Italian Australian studies, while her teaching has drawn Italian Studies into the areas of general and comparative literature, cultural studies, film studies and women’s studies.
Dr Scarparo holds one of two Cassamarca lectureships at Monash University in Melbourne. Her position is attached to Italian Studies within the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, while the other Cassamarca Lectureship at Monash, held by Dr Carolyn James, is shared between History and Italian Studies. Dr Scarparo’s interdisciplinary approach has helped Italian Studies achieve its aim of extending its subject range. With colleagues from other disciplines within her faculty, she has devised new units on Italian cinema, on women’s autobiographical texts and on the theory of the novel. These units are offered in Visual Culture, the Centre for Comparative Literature, and French and Hispanic Studies, as well as in Italian Studies.
Italian women’s lives, and fiction about Italian women, are central features of Dr Scarparo’s work. The writing of Anna Banti and Maria Bellonci, two twentieth-century authors of fictionalised accounts of Renaissance women’s lives, is a particular interest. Anna Banti is the author of a fictionalised version of Artemisia Gentileschi’s life, while Maria Bellonci has written on Lucrezia Borgia. “The complexity of their writing, and the way they write about women in the past is compelling,” Dr Scarparo explains. Of greatest interest to her are the relationships that develop between these women writers and the subjects of their fictionalised biographies. Dr Scarparo’s publishing record reflects this passion for Italian women’s lives and fiction involving Italian women. In 2005 her monograph, Elusive Subjects: Biography as Gendered Metafiction, was published, while in 2004 she co-edited Across Genres, Generations and Borders: Italian Women Writing Lives.
She has also written on Italian Australian women’s issues. Her recent publications are significant in utilising literary studies, feminist theory and life writing for an understanding of Italian migration, thus bringing new approaches and insights to the field of Italian Australian studies. Among these are two co-authored articles, one on the proxy marriage phenomenon and the other on constructions of identity and home in the writings of the Italian Australian writer, Anna Maria Dell’Oso. As Dr Scarparo explains, it was a student who introduced her to the writing of Dell’Oso, a second generation Italian-Australian and popular newspaper columnist: “When I first arrived in Australia, a student asked me to supervise a thesis on self-identity in Italo-Australian writing and she particularly liked Dell’Oso. I began reading her work and I really liked it myself because it’s quite complex, but also funny and engaging.” Dr Scarparo now uses Dell’Oso’s short fiction in her undergraduate teaching. Her students, many of whom are themselves second and third generation Italo-Australians, respond with great enthusiasm. A high point in Dr Scarparo’s teaching career came in 2002, when she won the Faculty of Arts Award for Excellence in Teaching following nomination by her students.
Dr Scarparo’s interest in Italian feminist thought is also evident in her activities at a community level. In 2003 she organised the visit of prominent Italian feminist intellectual, Ida Dominjanni, for the “Week of Italian Language” in Melbourne. This position is Dr Scarparo’s first full-time lectureship. She arrived in Australia in January 2001 having completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in New Zealand. She has a PhD in Italian and comparative literature from the University of Auckland and an MA in English Literature from Otago University. Dr Scarparo was born and grew up in Italy, where she began her studies. Three years into her degree she decided to move to New Zealand, where she completed her studies: “There was no particular reason, but I had already been to the UK and the US during my studies, and I wanted to go somewhere different,” she explains. “Several people have joked that I wanted to go from one island to another, because I am from Sardinia.” Plans for the future include a book about Sardinian literature and the co-authoring of another on women film-makers in Italy.
back
