Studying Italian and being an Italian major at Wellesley has been one of the most life-changing experiences for me. Since I was a teenager in Bulgaria, I had been fascinated with how the Italian language sounds, and wanted to learn to speak it fluently. In the summer of 2009, in anticipation of my freshman year at Wellesley, I was counting down the final months that were separating me from my childhood dream – to study in an American college. I looked up the Italian Department’s webpage because I was curious what Italian courses were being offered, and I found the contact information of Professor Laviosa. I then gathered up the courage to write to her, saying that I was an incoming first-year student from Bulgaria who loves Italian and is considering taking courses at the department. I was not thinking that I would hear back – after all, I was imagining professors as busy and inaccessible people, especially at prestigious institutions such as Wellesley. However, what happened was quite the contrary. The very next day, I was delighted to open my email and find Professor Laviosa’s kind and caring response: she offered her mentorship and invited me to meet with her before the beginning of classes to discuss my interest in Italian.
Throughout my entire time at Wellesley, the Department of Italian Studies felt like my second home. Not only did I find professors who noticed and encouraged my interest in the culture and literature of Italy, but I also had caring mentors on whom I could count for support and guidance during and after Wellesley. At the Department of Italian Studies, I took some of the most interesting and intellectually fulfilling courses in my undergraduate education: Professor Parussa’s “Women in Love,” Professor Ward’s “Italian Mysteries” and Professor Laviosa’s “Italian Women Directors,” to name but a few. Majoring in Italian Studies had not been something I had intended to do prior to coming to Wellesley: indeed, my plan had been to continue taking Italian because of my love of the language, but to major in International Relations or Political Science. After my sophomore year, however, I had discovered that it was precisely through the literature and culture courses that I was taking at the Department of Italian that I was learning about Italian history, culture and politics in much more authentic ways than I would have by taking courses in comparative politics for example.
The dedication and enthusiasm for knowledge and for teaching of the professors from the Department of Italian Studies not only made me major in Italian, but also inspired me to think about academia as a long term career trajectory. My initial post-graduation plan had been to use my senior year to prepare for the LSAT and go to law school after Wellesley. However, I was so engrossed by the Italian seminars I took in my junior year that I decided to apply to PhD programs instead. In my final year at Wellesley, I went on to write a senior thesis on the condition of women in Italy during fascism, then applied and was accepted to do a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Now, as I write this in 2020, I am a recent PhD graduate with a dissertation on early 20th-century women’s writing in Italy, France and Portugal. My passion for Italian literature and culture is just as alive as it was during my undergraduate years, my knowledge has deepened and my conviction in the social importance of the humanities is ever more solid. Had it not been for the Department of Italian Studies at Wellesley, the wonderful intellectual journey I embarked on during my undergraduate years as an Italian major and later as a PhD student at Harvard would not have been possible.