News

Jennifer Boum Make, French PhD 2019, will take up her position as Assistant Professor of French & Francophone Studies at Georgetown University this fall. She will teach broadly in her fields of Caribbean Studies, Mediterranean Studies, and ethics, and joins a large and diverse French and Francophone Studies facult

Caitlin Dahl, graduate student in French, was awarded an honorable mention by the Early Modern Worlds Biennial Graduate Student Prize committee for her paper, “‘Une certaine mollesse…où nous retombons toujours’; la notion de ‘trans’ et l’expérience pré-transgendre chez les personnages secondaires dans l’Histoire de la Marquise-Marquis de Banneville”.

Celebrations for the 300th anniversary of Giuiseppe Baretti's birth will officially open with an international conference on May 3-4, 2019 in Seravezza (Lucca), Italy. The Sirio Giannini International Center for European Studies has organized the events, with the support of the Municipality of Seravezza and the recognition of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, which decreed the establishment of a special national committee. Prof. Francesca Savoia is a member of the committee and will launch the conference proceedings.

This upcoming fall, Zac will enroll in an MA program in fundamental and applied language research at the University of Cergy-Pontoise in Cergy, France, with the Fulbright US Student Program. In the first portion of the Master’s program, students engage with several disciplines of linguistics and different approaches to academic research, including lexicography, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and computational research. In the second year, students formulate and pursue their dissertation project, which often serves as a precursor to doctoral studies in language research. Zac hopes to work with faculty in the Institute for the Digital Humanities on campus and to continue to employ the methodological tools he’s learned while at Pitt.

Eliza Jermyn, a first-year student in the Italian Master's program, has been awarded the Frances & Sully Nesta Memorial Scholarship in support of intensive advanced language study and archival research on the Italian literary translator Fernanda Pivano. Michael Hayden, a first-year student pursuing dual degrees in the Swanson School of Engineering and the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the Italian Room Committee Scholarship, part of the Nationality Rooms Scholarship program. He will use the scholarship to study Italian literature and culture this summer on the Pitt in Genoa program. Congratulazioni, Eliza e Michael!

Congratulations to Italian major and Italian Club President Mark D'Alesio, who has been named one of only 15 national Leadership Council Fellows by the National Italian American Foundation. Mark will travel to Washington, D.C. during NIAF's Gala Weekend (12-14 October) to participate in the first meeting of the Fellows; all of Mark's expenses for the weekend are paid by NIAF. The Fellows are described in the following way on NIAF's site: "The Program is intended for future leaders who self-identify as active in the Italian American community through their choice of study, their participation in the Italian Club, and their grass root efforts. The ideal candidate is active in Italian or Italian American issues or studies at their college or university."

Congratulations to French & Italian double major Zachary Enick, who has been awarded a Fall 2018 THINK Fellowship (formerly Fall Brackenridge/Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Research Fellowships). This award comes in recognition of Zac's research project, on the use of Anglicisms in the archived minutes of an early-20th c. Italian beneficial society.