Nicco La Mattina
Biography
Teaching in Fall 2026
ANTHRO 169, Anthropology of Italy and the Mediterranean
Teaching in Winter 2027
ANTHRO 153, Language and Identity
Teaching in Spring 2027
ANTHRO 154P, Multilingualism
Research Interests
Linguistic anthropology; semiotics; description and attentionality; language and social life; metalingual discourse and translation; interaction and ethnography of communication; archives and historical change; Italy and Sicily; the central Mediterranean; Italian colonialism and Libya.
Publications
- La Mattina, Nicco A., and Alessandro Duranti. Forthcoming. “The Anthropology of Speech Acts.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Speech Acts, edited by Dániel Kádár and Juliane House. Cambridge University Press.
- La Mattina, Nicco A. Forthcoming. “When ‘Smuggling Is Not Smuggling’: Tubu Mobility and Anti-Smuggling in Libya Under Qaddhafi.” Afrique(s) en mouvement.
- La Mattina, Nicco A. Forthcoming. “Libya Before and After the 17 February Revolution: From ‘North Africa has no Minorities’ to the Fight for Cultural and Linguistic Pluralism.” In The Making of Minorities in the Middle East and North Africa: Essays and Case Studies, edited by Luke Yarbrough, Ali Behdad, and Aomar Boum.
- La Mattina, Nicco A. 2023. “Transposition, not Translation: Recuperating Attentionality on Pantelleria, Sicily.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 33(3): 311-329.
- Duranti, Alessandro, and Nicco A. La Mattina. 2022. “The Semiotics of Cooperation.” Annual Review of Anthropology 51: 85-101.
- La Mattina, Nicco A. 2022. “Secret Language as a “Weapon of Defence”: The Problem of Opacity in Italian Colonial Libya.” Signs and Society 10(2): 191-214.
- La Mattina, Nicco A. 2020. “Writing Ottoman and Italian Colonial Libya: Intelligence Gathering and the Production of Colonial Knowledge.” Hespéris-Tamuda 55(2):123-153.