Mary Ann McDonald Carolan ’89 PhD is Professor of Modern Languages & Literatures at Fairfield University where she directs the Italian Studies program. Prof. Carolan 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. Working across a variety of genres, including neorealism, comedy, the Western, and the art film, she explores how and why American directors from Woody Allen to Quentin Tarantino have adapted certain Italian trademark techniques and motifs. Prof. Carolan’s 2022 cross-cultural study, Orienting Italy: China through the Lens of Italian Filmmakers, which 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, won the American Association of Teachers of Italian award in the category of performance and visual studies. In spring 2019 Prof. Carolan was the Tiro a Segno Fellow in Italian American studies at New York University.
