Department News
Master of Italian Studies
The Italian Department announces a new Master of Italian Studies program which will start Fall 2010. For further information please consult Graduate Academic Programs.
Bocconi University's Campus Abroad
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| In July, the Department welcomed to Georgetown students from Bocconi University's Campus Abroad Program |
Faculty News
Recent Publications:
The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy
Professor Laura Benedetti,
Associate Professor of Italian and Laura and Gaetano De Sole Professor in Contemporary Italian Culture
University of Toronto Press, 2007
The Tigress in the Snow explores how literature was influenced by and helped to shape notions of motherhood in twentieth-century Italy. From late nineteenth-century religious symbolism to the Fascist regime’s campaign to boost Italy’s birthrate and recent feminist challenges to traditional gender roles, this study demonstrates that concepts of motherhood and the social status associated with mothers were subject to constant negotiation. Examining how this negotiation came to be represented in literature, Laura Benedetti looks at four generations of women writers, stressing their similarities and differences, as well as their complex interactions with their male counterparts and their reactions to changes in Italian society. Drawing on examples from a wide range of novels, plays, poems, and short stories as well as from critical and public debate, the book highlights literature’s role in the formation of cultural discourses up to the dawn of the twenty-first century.
The Physiology of Love and Other Writings
Professor Nicoletta Pireddu, Associate Professor of Italian and Director of the Comparative Literature Program
University of Toronto Press, 2007
The Physiology of Love and Other Writings is the first annotated English edition of Paolo Mantegazza’s works. Physician, anthropologist, travel writer, novelist, politician, Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910) was probably the most eclectic figure in late-nineteenth century Italian culture. Pireddu presents him as a forerunner of cultural studies on account of his interdisciplinary approach, his passionate blend of scientific and literary elements in his writings, and his ability to transcend the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Replete with an extensive and informative introduction, the volume includes works of medicine, fiction, memoirs, a treatise on aesthetics, and social and cultural criticism, and offers a detailed account of the circulation of ideas and cross-fertilization of disciplines that defined a crucial period of Italian and European cultural life.
Discourse and Identity
Professor Anna De Fina, Assistant Professor of Italian (with Deobrah Schiffrin and Michael Bamberg)
Cambridge University Press, 2006
The relationship between language, discourse and identity has always been a major area of sociolinguistic investigation. In more recent times, the field has been revolutionized as previous models - which assumed our identities to be based on stable relationships between linguistic and social variables - have been challenged by pioneering new approaches to the topic. This volume brings together a team of leading experts to explore discourse in a range of social contexts. By applying a variety of analytical tools and concepts, the contributors show how we build images of ourselves through language, how society moulds us into different categories, and how we negotiate our membership of those categories. Drawing on numerous interactional settings (the workplace; medical interviews; education), in a variety of genres (narrative; conversation; interviews), and amongst different communities (immigrants; patients; adolescents; teachers), this revealing volume sheds new light on how our social practices can help to shape our identities.
Faculty Awards:
Italian Professor awarded 2008 Summer Academic Grant from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Professor Anna de Fina is the receipient of a Summer Academic Grant from GU's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The grant provides support for two consecutive months of work on
a research or curriculum development project. Professor De Fina intends to use the grant to work on completing one chapter, deals with the construction of identity through narrative, for her book: Non-literary Narrative: A Linguistic Introduction which she is co-writing with Alexandra Georgakopoulou (King’s College London) and for which they signed a contract with Cambridge University Press. In addition, she would like to devote some time to the revision of the chapters that have already been written.
Italian Professor awarded Senior Faculty Research Fellowship
Laura Benedetti is the recipient of the Georgetown University Senior Faculty Research Fellowship and Research Leave. The fellowship allows faculty members to devote an entire semester to research. Laura Benedetti is planning to use this opportunity to work on a volume on Venetian writer Lucrezia Marinella, tentatively titled "In segno de amore”: Lucrezia Marinella’s Times and Legacy, as well as on an English translation of the author’s last book.
Italian Professor wins NEH Fellowship
Professor Nicoletta Pireddu is an honoree of the 2006 Fellowships for University Teachers program. The fellowship, granted by the NEH Division of Research Programs, will support Pireddu's full-time research for a period of one year. Pireddu plans to focus these resources on the completion of her forthcoming manuscript, tentatively titled The Fiction of Europe, Europe in Fiction, which examines the neglected role of literature in the cultural construction of a European consciousness.
Student News
The Department of Italian congratulates its graduating seniors and wishes them great success. Tanti auguri!
2008 Recipient of the Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Donors' generosity allowed the Department to award its second Undergraduate Research Fellowship to Francesca Miele (COL '09). A double major in Italian and History, she will study the change of Italian identity shown through the portrayal of new immigrants in literature and film. Francesca will use the grant to conduct research in Italy, including at the RAI archives in Rome.
Honors Theses
This year two of our graduating seniors, Michael Brown (COL '08) and Maral Avetian (COL '08) researched and wrote Honors Theses.
Maral Avetian, Pier Paolo Pasolini: I dialetti come strumenti di resistenza
According to D.B. Gregor, "Italians are bilingual, and their second language is Italian." In her thesis Maral Avetian analyzes the situation of Italian dialects in the 20th and 21st centuries. Focusing on Pasolini's poetry and novels written in the Friulan and Roman dialects, she demonstrates the difficulties that Pasolini originally faced in creating a written language from oral tradition. She then highlights the threats that the standard Italian language poses to the fate of dialects, as well as reasons for Pasolini's defense of such linguistic varieties. According to Pasolini and other author's of his time, Italian dialects are the only way to accurately describe and represent the "vita quotidiana" and everyday rapports, as they are fundamental to discourse and cultural exchange. In the final section of her thesis, Maral provides evidence documenting the current condition of Italian dialects due to the literary success of Pasolini and his fellow contemporaries, focusing particularly on the growth of Friulan in recent years.
Major Receives Erasmus Mundus Fellowship
Italian major Michael Brown (COL '08) has been awarded a fellowship from the European Union's Erasmus Mundus program to pursue a Master's degree in Italian and European Literature. During the course of the two-year program, he will spend three semesters at the University of Bologna and one semester at the University of Strasbourg. Michael is excited about the opportunity to continue the Italian literary studies he began at Georgetown and we wish him the best.
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