Patrizia La Trecchia

Associate Professor of Italian

I am a cultural studies and film scholar who works in critical food studies and environmental humanities. I am privileged to share my Italian roots serving the Italian program at the University of South Florida where I am currently Associate Professor. I launched and direct the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the University of South Florida under the auspices of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment. I teach the first and only course in the Environmental Humanities at the University of South Florida. The course is usually offered in the fall semester and ideally followed by ITT 4531 Italian Food in Film, a course on the visual politics of food offered in the spring semester that is one of the very first courses selected to be Global Citizen certified.
 
I am the author of two textbooks and the monograph Uno sguardo a Sud. Vent’anni di movimenti, storie, conflitti e trasformazioni nella città di Napoli (2013) that was the first study to analyze the city of Naples in a postcolonial and transnational perspective. My monograph on the politics of food justice is under contract with Routledge. A second monograph on the colonial divide between the Global North and the Global South is under contract with Palgrave. My publications have appeared among others in Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Studies in European Cinema, Mondi Migranti, Italica, Italian Americana, Cinemasessanta.

I have been teaching food studies courses and visual politics of food for the past fifteen years (In the Kitchen). I value kitchen work as political practice of food justice and essential element of a sustainable food system. Until before the Covid pandemic, I was purchasing groceries and cooking for and with my students in the demonstration kitchen of the Diabetes Center at the Morsani College of Medicine.

I serve on the jury of Cinemambiente, the environmental film festival that founded the Green Film Network, the association of the world’s major environmental film festivals. I have been serving as jury and advisory board of the Gasparilla International Film Festival since its inception.

In 2014 I was Visiting Scholar at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. I also served as member of the Habitat Partner University Initiative Hub on Food Security and as supporter of the Milan Protocol. I was selected to deliver a TEDx talk on Food Waste in February 2013.