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What is called the imagination (from image, magi, magic, magician, etc.) is a practical vector from the soul. It stores all data, and can be called on to solve all our “problems.” The imagination is the projection of ourselves past our sense of ourselves as “things.” Imagination (image) is all possibility, because from the image, the initial circumscribed energy, any use (idea) is possible. And so begins that image’s use in the world. Possibility is what moves us.
—Amiri Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre”, Liberator, July 1965
Alessandra Di Maio
Alessandra Di Maio teaches at the University of Palermo, Italy. She divides her time between Italy and the US, where she taught at several academic institutions (UCLA, CUNY Brooklyn College, Columbia, Smith College). Her area of specialization includes black, diasporic, migratory, and gender studies, with a particular attention to the formation of transnational cultural identities. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, and a MacArthur Research and Writing Grant. Among her publications are the volumes Tutuola at the University. The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor (2000), the collection An African Renaissance (2006), Wor(l)ds in Progress. A Study of Contemporary Migrant Writings (2008), and Dedica a Wole Soyinka (ed. 2012). She has translated into Italian several authors, including Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, whose autobiography Sul far del giorno (2016) she has edited in a special Italian edition, and with whom she has conceived the poetry/photo anthology Migrazioni/Migrations. An Afro-Italian Night of the Poets.
University of Palermo, Professor