In Memoriam: Dr. JoAnne Ruvoli (1968–2018)

MARY JO BONA is professor and chair of the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Stony Brook University with her affiliated department in English. Bona’s expertise in feminist literary studies examines the nexus between gender and ethnicity, with transnational migratory identities, material cultures, and Italian diaspora studies as primary intersections. Her authored books include Women Writing Cloth: Migratory Fictions in the American Imaginary; By the Breath of Their Mouths: Narratives of Resistance in Italian America; Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers, and a book of poetry, I Stop Waiting for You. Bona is also editor of The Voices We Carry: Recent Italian American Women’s Fiction and co-editor (with Irma Maini) of Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates.

DENISE LETO is a poet, writer, editor, and dance dramaturge. She is the author of the book of poetry for the collaborative multi-genre performance Your Body is Not a Shark exploring feminist embodiment and experimental disability poetics (North Beach Press). She is the co-author, with Amber DiPietra, of the collaborative chapbook, Waveform (Kenning Editions). She was awarded the Orlando Prize in Poetry and her fellowships include the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Breadloaf Residency Program in Sicily, and the Sugarloaf Queer Art Residency. She has completed a new poetry manuscript titled Ghost, Body, Map.

MARYANNE LYONS is a lecturer in Native American literatures, film, and English composition at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She and JoAnne Ruvoli have been close friends since they met in graduate school at UIC.

JESSICA MAUCIONE, PhD, is associate professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Gonzaga University where she also co-directs the Underrepresented Minority Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program. Her scholarly publications combine critical race theory with space and place theory applied to popular media and literature. Her publications include articles and book chapters on space and place theory, critical race theory, pedagogy, Nic Pizzolatto’s True Detective, the Rocky series and Ryan Kyle Coogler’s Creed, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, Karen Tei Yamashita’s The Tropic of Orange, Edward P. Jones’s Lost in the City, Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, and John Fante’s Ask the Dust.

CHRIS MESSENGER is professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of The Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became Our Gang.