In “Confessing Myself: My Italian American Journey in Ethnic, Feminist, and Queer Studies,” Mary Jo Bona explores the ongoing interrelation between her work in Italian American literary studies and larger questions about canon-shaping in U.S. literature.
Mary Jo Bona is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. Bona works in feminist literary studies to examine the nexus between gender and ethnicity, with transnational migratory identities, material cultures, and Italian diaspora studies as primary intersections. Her authored books include Women Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary; By the Breath of Their Mouths: Narratives of Resistance in Italian America; Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers, and a book of poetry, I Stop Waiting For You. Bona completed a manuscript to revisit motherhood studies by examining multiethnic American narratives through the lens of diasporic time and gendered space.
Sponsored by: Department of Modern Languages & Literatures; Dr. Victor and Julia Botto Vari Italian Studies Initiative; Department of English; Department of Sociology; da Vinci RLC; Office for Multicultural Learning; SCU Library .