Valentina Graziuso

Education

Ph.D. candidate in Italian Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

MA Italian Studies, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

MA Linguistics and Web Technology, University Marburg, Germany

BA Linguistics and Cultural Mediation, Orientale University of Naples, Italy

About Valentina

Valentina is a doctoral student and teaching assistant in the Department of Romance Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her academic background reflects her multidisciplinary interests and cross-cultural experiences. After pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Italy, where she studied English and French Literature, Linguistics and Translation, Valentina moved to Germany to gain a Master of Arts in English Linguistics. At the time she spent a semester abroad at the Northern Caribbean University of Mandeville - Jamaica, where she researched on the implementation of distance-education in the content of developing countries.

At UNC, Valentina specializes in Modern – Contemporary Italian Literature and Environmental Humanities. Her current research interests include Posthumanism, Animal Studies, Ecofeminist Theology, and Multispecies ontology. Currently working on her research dissertation, she is focusing on the study of hybridity and metamorphosis as tools for literary representation of marginalized identities, human-nature relation and spirituality in the work by the Twentieth-century Italian novelist Anna Maria Ortese.