News & Initiatives
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.
Department News:
The Department of Italian congratulates its graduating seniors and wishes them great success. Tanti auguri!
Two Italian Majors Selected for a RAI project in Rome.
Francesca Miele (COL’09) and Erin Coleman (COL’09) have been selected by RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) the Italian public service broadcaster to participate in an exchange pilot project to evaluate the educational material of the RAI International Education site. Both Francesca and Erin have used the RAI material in the context of Prof. Hager’s course on Contemporary Italy and will be asked to prepare didactic units with the help of the RAI material. The two Georgetown students are part of a team of 12 students selected from Harvard, Boston College, Rutgers, and NYU. This is a great honor for the students who were selected based on their credentials and knowledge of the material. The award includes airfare from New York and all expenses for their stay in Rome for ten days, May 14-24. The project is promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is supported by the NIAF (National Italian American foundation) and the RAI. 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.
Two Majors Receive AMHS Scholarship
The Department of Italian congratulates two of our majors, Bridie McCulla and Luca Fiore, who were the recipients of the Abruzzo and Molise Heritage Society (AMHS) Scholarships for the 2006-2007 academic year. Congratulazioni, ragazzi!
2006 Recipient of the Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Donors' generosity allowed the Department to award its first Undergraduate Research Fellowship to Michael Brown (Col ’08). An Italian-Government double major, he will study at the University of Florence during Spring 2007. While in Florence, Michael will use the grant to conduct research on Cesare Beccaria, an influential 18th century Milanese political philosopher. Beccaria’s work, particularly his Dei delitti e delle pene (Of Crimes and Punishments), represents one of the first major intellectual pronouncements against capital punishment. Michael will conduct archival work at a number of libraries in Europe in order to explore the ways in which Beccaria’s thought has influenced modern attitudes towards capital punishment.
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