Juliet Guzzetta

Biography

Juliet Guzzetta holds joint appointments in the Department of English and the Department of Romance and Classical Studies. Her first book, The Theater of Narration: From the Peripheries of History to the Main Stages of Italy (Northwestern UP, 2021; translation in Italian by Accademia University Press, 2023), explores a form of contemporary solo theater in its historical, political, and performative dimensions. It received an honorable mention from the Modern Language Association for the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies. She has published articles and essays in Theatre History Studies, Annali d’Italianistica, gender/sexuality/italy, Spunti e ricerche, Italica and several edited volumes, and recently published a translation of Giuliana Musso’s Dentro. Una storia vera se volete in the journal Delos: A Journal of World Translation. Currently she is working on a monograph provisionally titled Acting Class: Lessons from Franca Rame about politics and feminism in postwar Italy that centers Rame’s performances and activism as a model for political discourse, socially committed artistry, and grounded wide-ranging critique. She is also co-editing a collection of essays by scholars and creative writers with Graziella Parati called Italian Feminism: A Transnational Praxis for Today and Tomorrow. From 2021-2025 she is the President of the Women’s Studies Caucus for the American Association for Italian Studies. Her research has been supported by a year-long Fulbright grant to Italy, and Harvard’s Mellon School for Theater and Performance Research among a range of internal grants.

Prior to her academic career, Guzzetta co-authored and acted in numerous plays throughout New York City and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, after studying at the Moscow Art Theater and at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford. Also under development is a non-fiction piece called Eternally Present about grief and mourning for which a chapter received a Hopwood award.

Research Interests: 20th and 21st century Italian culture; dramatic literature; performance studies; cinema studies; gender studies

Degree: PhD, University of Michigan