Position
Academic Background
Sample Courses   
Teaching Philosophy
Research & Interests   
Notable Academic Appointments & Awards
Publication Highlights   
Selected Scholarly Presentations

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• Professor of Italian

Academic Background        

• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC -  Ph.D. in Romance Languages (Italian and Spanish), 1985
• Università Statale di Milano, Italy - Dottorato in English, 1974
• John Carroll University, Cleveland, OH - B.A. in English, 1970

Sample Courses Taught at Providence College

• Plays to Film (Honors Colloquium)
• Italian Cinema (Fine Arts, Core Curriculum)
• Modern Italian Literature: The Early 1900s & The 1950s to the Present
• Modern Italy (Social Science, Core Curriculum)
• Conversational, Elementary, & Intermediate Italian
• Elementary & Intermediate Spanish

Teaching Philosophy

Language, literature, and film open windows unto ourselves and our world.  It is a wonderful and illuminating challenge to guide students in these intellectual journeys of discovery.  My teaching is motivated by a desire to share my academic interests with students and to foster their intellectual and personal growth. I believe in creating a relaxed and safe classroom environment that is suited to the students' individual personalities and personal styles of learning.  As a child growing up in Italy, I was often reminded that Rome was not built in a day, so I wish to make students aware that learning is a life long process of self-discovery that is built on personal experiences weaving trials and errors, successes and failures.  My teaching methodology combines a variety of pedagogical approaches, lectures, paired/group activities, as well as Power Point and other multimedia software to integrate video, internet, and narration that can present more engagingly and productively course contents and materials.  Ultimately, my teaching aims not only at sharing my knowledge and enthusiasm for the material, but to expand their analytical and critical skills so that they will be able to face the challenges that lay ahead in their professional and personal lives.  One of my favorite mottos is sapere è potere (knowledge is power)!   

Research & Interests

My main interest is Modern Italian Literature and Film.  I am keenly interested in the relationship of word and image, more specifically, the interdisciplinary and comparative approaches that link psychology and literature (Jung/archetypes), myth and literature; women authors; film and literature in a global perspective.  I am also devoted to the integration of technology into teaching, such as the use of multimedia software and the Internet to better engage students in the learning process.

Notable Academic Appointments and Awards

• Faculty Instructional Collaborative Technology Davis Grant:  To develop Camtasia and Photo Story multimedia projects.  Providence College, 2005-2006.
• Faculty Instructional Solo Technology Davis Grant:  To develop power point presentations and multimedia project enhancing language teaching and learning, Providence College, 2003-2004.
• New England Foundation for the Humanities, Providence, RI.  Scholar for Encompassing Columbus, a series of Public Humanities Discussions, 1992.
• Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities, Director, Alberto Moravia: The Man and His Works.  The series included a scholarly lecture and a workshop on the pedagogical use of Moravia's fiction.  Conference held at Providence College, 1991.
• President of the Rhode Island Teachers Association, 1985-1988.

Publication Highlights

Books

• Alienation in Giuseppe Berto's Novels.  Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 1987.

Articles in Books

• "Giuseppe Berto," Italian Novelists since World War II, 1945-1965.  Dictionary of Literary  Biography. Washington, D.C.: Gale Research, 1997.
• Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers, I.  New York: Garland Publishing, 1991.  
  Biocritical essays on:  Maria Bellonci: 108-109; Laudamia Bonanni: 148-149; Livia De Stefani: 311-312;  Laura Di Falco: 316-317;  Alba Florio: 414-415.  Milena Milani: 838-839;  Lalla Romano: 1061-1063.
• "Cervantes e Pirandello," Italo-Hispanic Literary Relations.  Potomac, MD:  Scripta Humanistica, 1989. 

Journal Articles

• "Pirandellian Echoes in Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso."  Italian Culture, 20 (2001): 121-36. 
• "La gloria di Giuseppe Berto: Giuda come figura edipica."  Veltro: Rivista della Civiltà Italiana 40, no. 3-4 (1996 May-Aug):  304-10
• "Diabolical Imagery in Grazia Deledda."  RLA: Romance Languages Annual 1, (1989): 210-215
• "Pirandello's Influence on Nino Manfredi's Film Nudo di donna (Portrait of a Woman, Nude)."  Quaderni d'Italianistica: Official Journal of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies 15, no. 1-2 (1994 Spring-Autumn):  95-109

Selected Scholarly Presentations and Activities

• "Southern Journeys of Self-Discovery in Tornatore,"  Second Annual Robert Dombroski Italian Conference," University of Connecticut, Storrs, Sept. 17-18, 2005
• "Film, Memory, Mise-en-scène:  History through the Lens of a Child," American Association for Italian Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill (2005).
• "Multiculturalism and Immigration in Today's Italy."  Cranston H.S. RI, 2004
• "Language and Racism in Italy," Multicultural Student Affairs, Providence College 2003.
• "Power Point presentations for Language Study", 2003 Fall Workshop, Rhode Island Teachers of Italian, Providence College, RI.
• "Dante's Imagery of Selfhood in the Divine Comedy," American Association for Italian Studies, Philadelphia (1999).

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