Salve e benvenuti a tutti! My name is Ryan Calabretta-Sajder and I am a Lecturer in Italian and the Coordinator of the Italian Language and Culture Program housed in the Center for the Study of Languages at Rice University.

My research interests focus primarily on modern Italian literature and cinema and Foreign Language Acquisition.

I am very active in FLA pedagogy, methodology, and study abroad.  I present regularly at ACTFL and have written diverse grants for Technology Workshops at Rice University.  I am interested in the adoption of technology in the FL classroom, in particular, music, the use of E-portfolios, and even gaming.  I have begun diverse ‘action research’ projects concerning micro-blogging and the use of E-portfolios.  I have given an international webinar on Digital Storytelling and am working on a supplementary grammar book with Diana Iuele (Laurentian University, CA) focusing on interferenze lessicali between English and Italian.

When discussing cinema and literature, I tend to examine these genres through feminist and queer theory.  I am also interested in the narrative voice both in literature and cinema (both of the narrator and of the camera).  Additionally, I often work on migration and Sicilian culture.

My forthcoming articles examine feminism through diverse approaches.  I am also working on a transcription of an interview I conducted with Italian feminist author and scholar Dacia Maraini and have submitted an interview with female director Paola Randi for publication.   I have been recently invited to edit a collection of essays entitled Death, Eros, and Literary Enterprise in the Opus of Pier Paolo Pasolini with Cambridge Scholars Press (forthcoming Spring 2013) and have begun work on a book length manuscript focusing on the anti-mafia movement in Italian Cinema.