Serenella Iovino is an Italian cultural and literary theorist, and a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is considered one of the main environmental philosophers of Italy.[1]
From 2001 to 2018, Iovino was a professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and of Modern Cultures at the University of Turin, Italy.[2] From 2008 to 2010, she also served as President of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment (EASLCE).[3] In 2014, Iovino was a J. K. Binder Lecturer at the University of California, San Diego.[4]
In 2019 Iovino became Professor of Italian Studies and Environmental Humanities at the University of North Carolina, the first ever to obtain this double appointment.
Iovino has published extensively on ecocriticism, literature, and environmental ethics. Iovino is the main proponent for material ecocriticism, a current of ecocritical thought.[5] Her book Ecocriticism and Italy: Ecology, Resistance, and Liberation was awarded the 2016 Book Prize of the American Association for Italian Studies and the MLA's 2016 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies.[6][7]