Matteo Brera is a cultural historian, literary scholar, and trained criminologist whose research weaves together transnational migration, racial discourse, media history, and the politics of censorship. He is the Principal Investigator of DaShoW – A Darker Shade of Whiteness, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship hosted by the University of Padua and Seton Hall University.
Brera’s work explores how diasporic communities narrate identity, negotiate power, and inscribe themselves into the racial landscape of their host societies. With a background that bridges Italian studies, criminology, and modern cultural history, he brings a distinctive lens to the study of immigrant subjectivity and collective belonging.
His current research focuses on Italian-language newspapers published in the U.S. Gulf South between 1877 and 1945. These periodicals, many now endangered or previously unstudied, served as powerful instruments of cultural expression and racial positioning—often articulating a complex, evolving strategy of whitening, assimilation, and resistance.
Equally at home in the archive and in public history, Brera has published widely on ecclesiastical censorship, the circulation of criminological theories, and the politicization of literary canon formation under Fascism. His interdisciplinary approach draws from cultural history, critical discourse analysis, legal history, migration studies, and media archaeology.
Research Interests
Italian diasporic communities in North America
Racial formation and whiteness studies
History of the Italian-language press
Criminology and the Italian School of Positivism
Ecclesiastical censorship and cultural politics
Digital humanities and public memory
Current Project: DaShoW – A Darker Shade of Whiteness
DaShoW investigates how Italian ethnic newspapers in Louisiana and the broader Gulf South helped construct racialized immigrant identities. By analyzing endangered newspapers such as Il Gladiatore, L’Italo-Americano, and La Voce Coloniale, the project uncovers how Italian migrants positioned themselves within – and sometimes against – the racial hierarchies of Jim Crow America.
Monograph Novecento all’Indice. Gabriele d’Annunzio, i libri proibiti e i rapporti Stato-Chiesa all’ombra del Concordato. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2016. Finalist, WIS Onderzoeksprijs 2017, Amsterdam Reviewed in: Il Venerdì di Repubblica, La Stampa, Il Sole 24 Ore Domenica, Corriere della Sera, Italian Studies, Annali d’Italianistica, Italica, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Giornale di storia contemporanea, Osservatorio bibliografico della Letteratura Italiana Online
Edited Volumes and Special Issues (6)
(with Monica Jansen)I violenti anni Settanta. Special Issue of Diacritica, 2024
(with Susanna Grazzini)Tu se’ lo mio maestro e ’l mio autore. Franco Cesati Editore, 2017 Reviewed in: Incontri. Rivista Europea di studi italiani, Annali d’Italianistica
La primavera incompiuta. Studi su Roberto Sanesi. Rivista di Studi Italiani, 2014 Reviewed in: Incontri. Rivista Europea di studi italiani
Roberto Sanesi: The First Day of Spring. Troubador, 2014 Reviewed in: Incontri. Rivista Europea di studi italiani
(with Carlo Pirozzi)Lingua e identità a 150 anni dall’Unità d’Italia. Franco Cesati Editore, 2012 Reviewed in: Modern Language Review, Lingua nostra, Incontri, Bollettino ’900, Osservatorio bibliografico della Letteratura Italiana Online
(Proposed)Scattered Leaves: The Poetic Journey of an Italian American Patriot (SUNY Press series)
Peer-Reviewed Articles (20+)
‘Frank Loria and The Dante Alighieri Society of New Orleans: The Campaign for Italian Language and Identity in the Ethnic Press’, Italofonie, Italiano Lingua Due [Forthcoming]
‘Italian Language Teaching to Cross the Racial Divide in the US South: The Role of the Ethnic Press, Educazione e migrazioni in Nord America (1837-1983), Special Issue of Rivista di Storia dell’Educazione 1/2026 [proposal accepted].
‘The Two Voices of The First Italian Canadian Poet: Liborio Lattoni, Fascist Racial Propaganda, and the Legacy of Giacomo Leopardi,’ Forum Italicum, 57:2 (2023), pp. 660-689.
‘Il crimine proibito: Appunti sulla censura ecclesiastica delle opere di Enrico Ferri, l’omicidio-suicidio e il canone letterario italiano tra Ottocento e Novecento,’ in Alberto Casadei et al. (eds.). Letteratura e Scienze. Pisa, Roma: Adi, 2021, pp. 1-11.
‘Schools of “Italianness”: Language Teaching and Fascist Propaganda in 1930s Toronto’, Italian Canadiana, 33 (2019), pp. 59-82.
‘Primo Bartolini and the ‘Eye-talians’ of Nashville: Becoming American in The Athens of the South’, in Franco Pierno, Alberto Zambenedetti (eds), Becoming Italian-American: Documents and Artistic Experiences of Early Italian Immigration, Special section of Quaderni di italianistica. 38:1 (2017), pp. 9-31.
‘Il Gladiatore e la costruzione dell’identità italo-americana nel distretto di Birmingham, Alabama’, Archivio Storico dell’Emigrazione Italiana, 13 (2017), pp. 154-162
L’ultimo d’Annunzio e l’Indice dei libri proibiti. Le condanne al Libro segreto e Solus ad solam, Quaderni del Vittoriale, Nuova serie 12 (2016), pp. 33-45.
‘Un dannunzista tra due “Indici”. Guido da Verona, il Sant’Uffizio e la censura di regime’, Italian Studies, 71:3 (2016), pp. 356-383.
‘Italiani in Tennessee tra identità nazionale e americanizzazione. Una prima indagine’, Archivio Storico dell’Emigrazione Italiana, 12 (2016), pp. 75-87.
‘“Non istà bene in buona teologia”: Four Italian Translations of Paradise Lost and the Vatican’s Policies of Book Censorship (1732–1900)’, Italian Studies, 1 (2013), pp. 99-122.
Book Chapters (20+)
The Church’s D’Annunzio,’ in Guylian Nemegeer; Luca Somigli (eds), Gabriele D'Annunzio in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge UP [submitted and under review]
‘ ‘I have fought Many Fights with Fire’: ‘Chief Rozetta’ (Antonio Angelo Rissetto) pompiere-eroe a Nashville,’ in Emigrazione: Dalla Liguria al mondo. Special Issue of Quaderni di Casa America [submitted and under review]
‘Cronache del giubileo del 1925 da New Orleans: Il primo Anno Santo di Pio XI nelle colonne della Voce Coloniale (e nella pubblicistica giubilare nordamericana),’ in Pio XI e il suo tempo, Desio, 2025 [submitted and under review]
‘Puramente Casuale: Italian Prison Films and the 1975 Carceral Reform,’ in I violenti anni Settanta, Special Issue of Diacritica, X, 52, 31 luglio 2024, pp. 227-259.
[with Elena Bellina], ‘“Dentro il carcere”. Interviews with Mary Gibson, Patrizio Gonnella, Amir Issaa, Dacia Maraini, and Maria Giustina Laurenzi on Imprisonment’, in I violenti anni Settanta, Special Issue of Diacritica, X, 52, 31 luglio 2024, pp. 227-259.
‘Il Lavoratore: Workers’ Rights, Social Politics and Anti-Fascist Propaganda in Inter-War Canada,’ in Konrad Eisenbichler and Pasquale Sabbatino (eds). A Garland of Gifts: Essays in Honour of Olga Zorzi Pugliese. Toronto: Soleil 2021, pp. 611-627.
‘Henry Furst e le diavolesse: Donne Americane tra modernità e decadenza,’ in Per Henry Furst e Orsola Nemi, eds. Antonio Zollino, Paola Polito, Lugano; Agorà, 2021, pp. 127-148.
‘“Una ‘rozza lettera’” al Papa. La disputa di San Rocco e l’italiano dei semicolti nella Toronto degli anni Trenta’ [with Franco Pierno], in Daniela D’Eugenio, A. Gelmi, D. Marcucci (eds). Italia, Italie. Studi in onore di Hermann Haller. Milano: Mimesis: 2021, pp. 119-140.
‘Ritorno all’Indice? L’Inquisizione nel Novecento, tra tentativi di riforma e sorpassi della politica’, in Alejandro Cifres (ed) Memoria Fidei IV: L’inquisizione romana e i suoi archivi. A vent’anni dall’apertura dell’ACDF. Roma: Gangemi, 2019, pp. 497-536.
Review Articles and Book Reviews (30+)
“Making History through (News)Papers.” Annali d’Italianistica, 2022
Reviews published in Italian Studies, Forum Italicum, Quaderni di italianistica, Italica, and Annali d’Italianistica
Teaching Experience
Developed and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in:
Italian literature, migration studies, cultural history, and translation
Diasporic identity, fascist propaganda, and public memory
Examples: Italian Language and Social Media, Italian Canadian Literature, Language and Identity: The Italian Case, Neorealism: Literature, Cinema, and Political Commitment.
Teaching experience across Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, and the U.S.
Mentorship and Supervision
Supervised:
10+ MA and BA theses on diasporic literature, digital humanities, translation, and censorship
3 postgraduates through Erasmus+ placements and teaching assistantships