Biography
Mary Ann McDonald Carolan is Professor of Modern Languages & Literatures and Director of the Italian Studies program at Fairfield University (USA). In 2019 Prof. Carolan was the Tiro a Segno Fellow in Italian American studies at New York University. She is the author of The Transatlantic Gaze: Italian Cinema, American Film (State University of New York Press, 2014) which documents the sustained and profound artistic impact of Italian cinema upon filmmakers in the United States from the postwar period to the new millennium. Her current project, tentatively entitled Visions of Italy and America in Film, extends the analysis presented in The Transatlantic Gaze to focus on race and class. She is also completing another cross-cultural study, Orienting Italy: China through the Lens of Italian Filmmakers, that examines the ways in which Italian directors have employed documentary, historical fiction, and fictional narratives to represent China and its people both at home and abroad in Italy.
