Ilaria Serra is associate professor of Italian and comparative studies at Florida Atlantic University. Her research spans from Italian cinema and literature to the history of Italian immigration to the United States. She is the author of Immagini di un immaginario: L'emigrazione italiana negli Stati Uniti fra i due secoli: 1890- 1925 (1997); The Value of Worthless Lives: Writing Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies (2007); and The Imagined Immigrant: Images of Italian Emigration to the United States between 1890 and 1924 (2009).