Grace Russo Bullaro, was born and raised in Salerno, Italy. She immigrated to the US at a young age. For more than 20 years she has been teaching at CUNY, Lehman College , in the Department of English. Her main academic interests include cultural and intellectual movements. The areas that she works in most frequently are American culture and Italian cinema—particularly the films of directors Lina Wertmüller, Roberto Benigni, and Italian migration cinema. Her most recent books are: "Shifting and Shaping a National Identity: Transnational Writers and Pluriculturalism in Italy Today" (2014) and "The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins" (December 2016). The latter is the first academic volume to be published on the fiction of Ferrante.