Carla Cornette is an Associate Teaching Professor of Italian at Mizzou where she teaches the intensive elementary language sequence, Post-Intermediate Italian, as well as two new courses she created: "Black Italy: The Politics and History of Race in Contemporary Italy," and "Sicily: Crossroads in the Mediterranean," the latter of which is part of a new study abroad program she leads in Sicily, Italy. She is a proud faculty affiliate of the Afro-Romance Institute at Mizzou and the Interdisciplinary Migration Studies Institute.

Carla 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, among others. She has organized many panels and presented 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 to Open Educational Resources in language teaching, and more.

She published a peer-reviewed article on "Colonial Legacies in Family-Breaking and Family-Making: Carla Macoggi's Memoirs as Semi-Autobiography" in gender/sexuality/Italy (2020). The essay 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 teaching positions. She is thrilled to be a part of the faculty the School of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Mizzou!