Veronica Vegna

Veronica Vegna specializes in teacher training, foreign language acquisition and contemporary Italian cinema. Her doctoral dissertation examined representations of gender dynamics in mafia contexts in contemporary Italian cinema. She teaches Italian language, culture, cinema, and foreign language acquisition theory and pedagogy. She also directs the Italian Language Program and coordinates the Languages Across the Curriculum Program. 

Veronica’s scholarship and research interests center on language and culture acquisition, Italian cinema (in particular cinematic representations of women in relation to the mafia), and migration. She has also translated essays by Dacia Maraini from Italian into English.

Selected Publications 

Book

• Donne, mafia e cinema. Una prospettiva interdisciplinare. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2017
  • reviewed by Paolo Cherchi in Oblio, VII.25 (2017): 166-169
  • reviewed by Wanda Balzano in Quaderni d’Italianistica, 41.2 (2020): 217-219

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

• “Defying Expectations: Gender and the ’Ndrangheta in Francesco Costabile’s Una femmina (2022),” in Modern Italy special number “Italian mafias and the State, 30 years on: new histories, investigations and narratives,” Cambridge University Press, 2025 
• “Motherhood and the ’Ndrangheta in La terra dei santi", in I.S. Med, Interdisciplinary Studies on the Modern and Contemporary Mediterranean (MIM), 131-149
• “Teaching in the Time of COVID-19”, in Teaching Italian Language and Culture Annual (TILCA) (2020): 47-52
• “A satirical Gaze on Sicily: Ficarra and Picone’s L’ora legale (2017)”, in Sicily on Screen, edited by Giovanna Summerfield, Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2020, 81-99
• “La mafia senza gloria in Placido Rizzotto”, Rivista Luci e Ombre, IV.2 (Summer 2016): 62-77
• Review of Italian textbook Piazza: luogo di incontri, by Donatella Melucci and Elissa Tognozzi, Stamford: Cengage, 2015, in Quaderni d’italianistica, 36.1 (2015): 281-84
• “Il ruolo della madre in relazione alla mafia ne I cento passi”, in Il cinema di Marco Tullio Giordana. Interventi critici, edited by Federica Colleoni, Elena Dalla Torre, and Inge Lanslots, Manziana: Vecchiarelli Editore, 2014, 69-80
• “La mafia al femminile: un’analisi di Angela di Roberta Torre”, in Incontri culturali tra due mondi, edited by Antonio Vitti, Pesaro: Metauro Edizioni, 2014, 249-58
• “Identità e percezione dell’immigrato italiano negli USA”, Voices in Italian Americana, 24.1 &2 (2013): 27-32
• “Madri e mafia ne I cento passi e ne La siciliana ribelle”, Rivista Luci e Ombre, I.3 (March-April 2013): 88-94