CSI English Professor Maryann Feola has recently been elected as a Parliamentarian of the Calandra Institute’s Italian American Faculty and Staff Advisory Committee (IAFSAC) for a three-year term. As a result, she is also a member of the IAFSAC’s Executive Committee.

“My reaction to the election of Parliamentarian of the Calandra Council is a happy one,” Dr. Feola says. “It is an important service to a body dedicated to representing Italian Americans–students, faculty, and staff–at CUNY and promoting cultural events. I look forward to working with Council President Donna Chirico and Calandra Dean Anthony Julian Tamburri. My PhD dissertation and a subsequent book discuss the parliaments that shaped events in 17th-century England, so I have a special interest in this work.”

Dr. Feola received her PhD at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, where she pursued her interests in the various cultural aspects of the Renaissance and 17th century. Her research includes 16th- and 17th-century radical writers, including Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, early Quakers writers, and the literature of kingship and regicide. She also writes about the experience of Italian American women who have challenged boundaries. Dr. Feola has published articles on instructional approaches to the teaching of reading and writing to college students. At the College of Staten Island, she teaches such courses as the English Renaissance, 17th-century English Literature, John Milton, Medieval and Early Modern Culture, Women and Literature, and College Writing. She is also the Coordinator of Master of Arts Program in English.

Dr. Feola has received a Mellon Fellowship and several funding opportunities from The Folger Shakespeare Library. In 2003 she received the CSI Dolphin Award for Excellence in Teaching, and she has been recognized by The City University Access to Excellence program. She was the co-founder and former co-editor of The Journal of College Reading, and has written several biographies for Oxford University Press’s The Dictionary of National Biography, as well as reviews of books and plays concerning Renaissance literature, Italian American studies, and pedagogy. Her articles have been anthologized and appear in publications, including New Light on George Fox and Curraggia: Writing by Women of Italian Descent. Her George Bishop: Seventeenth Century Soldier Turned Quaker (1997) was published both in England and the U.S. She is working on an article concerning reflections of the Protestant Reformation in the plays of Christopher Marlowe, and a multi-genre book, tentatively titled: Geography of Shame: A Not-Too-Fictionalized Memoir, which explores southern Italy and the lives of Italian and Italian American women.

During the fall 2010, Dr, Feola will finalize the preparations for a conference that will be at CSI’s Green Dolphin Lounge on March 24, 2011. The conference, “Remembering the Triangle Fire of 1911,” will commemorate the March 25, 1911 tragedy that took the lives of 146 factory workers, most of whom were members of NYC’s Italian and Jewish immigrant communities.