Why did you decide to study Italian?
I grew up speaking Italian because my mother is from Calabria, but once I left for college and spent less time talking to her, I could feel my Italian starting to erode away. More to the point, when you’re speaking in everyday conversation, your Italian doesn’t advance beyond a certain level, and I wanted to make sure that it did. I also wanted a chance to learn about my culture in a more academic way, because until that point, I knew very little about Italy. There were also a number of literary works I wanted to read in the original Italian, and when I started at Wellesley, I wasn’t convinced that I’d be able to do it without formal instruction.
How did it shape your time at Wellesley?
Studying Italian had a huge influence on my time at Wellesley, and only in the most positive way. I took several courses on Italian literature, and it ended up becoming a major focus within my major, which was comparative literature. Within my Italian classes, we spent a good deal of time discussing desire, which in turn became one of the focuses of my senior thesis in my other major, which is Chinese Language and Culture. My Italian classes taught me to think critically about desire, and this was very helpful for researching and writing about it within my thesis because I had a stronger sense of what I should be looking for and analyzing.
Additionally, I was able to participate as a cast member in a MOOC (massive open online course) led by Daniela Bartalesi-Graf. It was a year-long project where a group of us performed short skits in Italian. It was one of my favorite parts of my junior year at Wellesley--there was a lot of laughter and learning.
How has it influenced your life after Wellesley?
It ended up directly influencing where I was hired after graduation! The experience of being a cast member of the MOOC about Italian language ended up helping me earn an internship at an education startup where I now work as a full-time employee. They really valued the fact that I had experience with digital learning resources. That experience with digital media and language instruction continues to influence how I think about online learning resources at work every single day. Professor Bartalesi-Graf’s MOOC taught me to think about how students integrate online educational resources in their lives, along with how to make content that’s engaging and fun to learn from.
On a more personal level, it’s also been very empowering being able to read more complex literature in Italian. The ability to read Dante and Petrarch makes me feel much more connected to my mother and the world. When I think about the way that it’s influenced my life after Wellesley, I often think about the time that I told my mother that I was reading parts of Dante’s Inferno and she immediately recited some of her favorite verses. I wouldn’t have had that moment without studying Italian here.