Department Initiatives
Our Partnership with the Washington National Opera
Five years ago, the Department of Italian and the Washington National Opera undertook a partnership from which our students have benefited a great deal. Working specifically with Plácido Domingo’s Young Artists Program, the Department has been able to introduce Georgetown students to an art form which distinguishes Italian culture: l’opera. Through this partnership, students have been able to attend lectures, receive CD commentaries, and attend live opera performances at the Kennedy Center at no cost. Performances have included Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and, most recently, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. Students’ feedback has been resoundingly enthusiastic, and the Department is confident that these opportunities are helping to create the next generation of opera lovers and Italophiles. This has helped greatly in fulfilling one of the Italian Department’s major goals – to expose students to Italian culture outside of the classroom.
The Department of Italian's Undergraduate Research Fellowship
This program offers our majors the chance to compete for funds to be used for research during their semester or year abroad. The research will ultimately result in students’ Senior Honors Theses. While most fellowships focus on graduate level work, offering undergraduates such an opportunity allows them to develop analytical and intellectual skills that will be of great use in their future careers. The Department would like to acknowledge the generosity of the donors who have made this program possible.
“Integrating Writing in the Teaching of Italian” Project
The Italian Department has been actively engaged in a new departmental initiative, Integrating Writing in the Teaching of Italian, a project designed to both strengthen the writing and analytical skills of our students, and to provide writing activities to colleagues at the high school and college levels. It is our hope that the activities and guides we create will be able to help our colleagues adopt some of the methods of our innovative, writing-oriented curriculum. We are posting the activities on a special website, accessible at: http://www3.georgetown.edu/departments/italian/writing. The Department’s Integrating Writing in the Teaching of Italian initiative has been endorsed by the Georgetown College Curriculum Renewal Project (CCRP), which awarded the Department a grant to sponsor workshops on writing pedagogy. We have collaborated with the University’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), and they are currently showcasing some of our course designs.
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