Carla Cornette is an Instructor of Italian at Mizzou where she teaches the elementary language sequence and where she will teach a future course on "Black Italy: The Politics and History of Race in Contemporary Italy" as part of the Afro-Romance Institute. She holds a Ph.D. in Italian from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2018) and a Master's in Italian from Middlebury College. She specializes in Italian postcolonial literature and film, focusing on works that feature the voices of African diaspora women and engaging with them via interdisciplinary theoretical lenses including Postcolonial Studies, Black Feminism, Adolescent Identity Development Theory, and Critical Adoption Studies.

Carla has been an invited speaker on Teaching Black Italy for the Italian Embassy-American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI) Professional Development Seminar and the AATI-Teaching Black Italy webinar organized by filmmaker Fred Kuwornu. Carla has been a panel organizer and presenter at several national and international conferences on topics ranging from Sicilian Studies to teaching literature in language courses to fostering inclusivity, equity, and diversity in Italian Studies.

She has published on "Colonial Legacies in Family-Breaking and Family-Making" in gender/sexuality/Italy (2020) which examines the adoption trauma memoirs of an Ethiopian-Italian woman through the lenses of Critical Adoption Studies and Postcolonial Theory. In addition to teaching Italian language, culture, film, and contemporary literature courses, Carla has co-led study abroad programs in Reggio Calabria, Sicily, Bologna, and Rome in her previous positions at Pennsylvania State University and Colorado College. She is thrilled to be joining the School of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Mizzou!