(Con)Testo:
Perspectives on Literature in the FL Classroom
Teaching Italian Symposium/Workshop for Instructional Materials—Meeting VII
Read the Workshop Abstracts
Keynote Address—Colleen Ryan
From Page to Stage:
Performative Approaches to Literature in the Foreign Language Classroom
Colleen Ryan is Professor of Italian at Indiana University, where she teaches courses across the curriculum, from the basic language sequence to content-based bridge courses, to full-immersion theater workshops and graduate seminars in foreign language teaching methods and second language acquisition. Ryan’s work conjoins the study of literature, film, and theater in different ways. She is the author of Sex, the Self, and the Sacred: Women in the Cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini and co-editor (with Nicoletta Marini Maio) of two pedagogical volumes: Set the Stage! Italian Language, Literature, and Culture through Theater. Theoretical and Practical Perspectives. (Yale, 2009) and Dramatic Interactions: Teaching Languages, Literatures, and Cultures through Theater. Theoretical Approaches and Classroom Practices (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011). She is also co-author (with Daniela Bartalesi-Graf) of the new intermediate-level Italian program, Caldeidoscopio (2014), which integrates visual literacy, arts analysis, and educational drama with the study of language. Currently she is co-editing (with Lisa Parkes) the AAUSC’s annual volume titled Creative Thinking: Integrating the Arts in the Foreign Language Curriculum.
Tavola rotonda—Moderatrice: Enza Antenos
All’intersezione di lingua & letteratura:
vecchi problemi e nuove prospettive
Partecipanti: Colleen Ryan, Elvira DiFabio, Nicoletta Marini-Maio, Mirtilli Morgani, Anna Rein
Note biografiche:
Elvira G. Di Fabio, Ph.D. (Harvard University), is a Senior Preceptor in Italian, and Associate Director of Undergraduate Education in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She teaches Italian at every level, and has been the director of Italian language instruction at Harvard University since 1990. She is responsible for the training and mentoring of graduate teaching fellows and teaching assistants.
Dr. Di Fabio’s research areas comprise second language acquisition, translation and translation studies. She is currently working on new methodologies for the teaching of language through the visual arts. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association, and of the College Board’s Advanced Placement review and development committees. She has organized and participated in a number of professional development workshops for K-12+ teachers of Italian in the greater New England area.
Nicoletta Marini-Maio, PhD (University of Pennsylvania), is Associate Professor of Italian at Dickinson College, where she has been a faculty member since 2007. She is an elected member of the MLA Twentieth-Century Italian Literature executive committee for the 2015-2019 term and was recently elected in the America-Italy Society of Philadelphia’s Board of Directors for Italian Language and Culture.
Dr. Marini-Maio’s scholarly interests in Italian cinema and culture, teaching pedagogy, and linguistics have cross-fertilized ideas and provided insights both for her teaching and research. Her academic work centers on 20th and 21st century Italian theater and film, particularly the intersections between politics, narrative mode, gender power relations, and collective memory. She has taught Italian language, literature, theater, and film throughout the curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania, Middlebury College, and Dickinson College. She has published articles and book chapters on the representation of the so-called years of lead (1970s) in Italian film and theater, coming of age in Italian film, and Paolo Sorrentino’s cinema, co-edited with Ellen Nerenberg and Thomas Simpson a critical translation of Corpo di stato, by the Italian playwright Marco Baliani (2011, Fairleigh Dickinson UP), and co-edited with Colleen Ryan-Scheutz the volumes Set the Stage! Teaching Italian through Theater. Theories, Methods, and Practices (Yale University Press, 2009) and Dramatic Interactions (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). Her book A Very Seductive Body Politics: Silvio Berlusconi in the Cinema is forthcoming in 2014. She is currently completing her monograph on the Aldo Moro Affair and working on the notions of femininity and masculinity with regard to power gender relations, patriarchy, and sexuality through the analysis of the Decamerotici, a series of Italian films produced in the 1970s and inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron.
She is the co-founder and editor of gender/sexuality/italy (g/s/i ), a new academic journal on constructions of femininity and masculinity in Italian culture, and co-founder of the Culture and Politics of Gender Research Group.
Mirtilli Morgana began her career as a teacher and subsequently assumed the position of Head Mistress in several Italian Educational Institutions. In the course of her career she made a substantial contribution to the transformational process of the Italian School System of the 80s and 90s. While holding a Specialty on the subject of verbal and non-verbal languages, and in the fields of linguistics and teaching of language, her experience spans twenty years in teacher training in the linguistic, artistic and anthropological-social fields.
Researcher since 1981 for Fondazione IARD (research institute accredited by MIUR – Ministry of Education, University and Research) for methodology and didactics of teaching the Italian language as native language and as a foreign language, Ms. Morgana directed the International Training Sector of the Foundation from 1996 to 2004, and assumed the role of Project leader for the numerous training courses for teachers of Italian Language and Culture subsidized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which have been held on five continents. These activities, which she carries out to date, have led to the expansion of her knowledge of Teachers, Schools and curricula in many countries, as well as the enrichment of her own cultural and multicultural awareness. For over 20 years, she has coordinated the creation of educational materials to support the diffusion of Italian Language and Culture worldwide. She plans and develops creative Projects, which promote Italian culture, history, art, folklore, traditions, and daily life.
Mirtilli trains all grade level Italian teachers abroad. She organizes, promotes and manages initiatives for the development of teaching methodology of Italian language and culture. Her teacher training sessions utilize innovative strategies and materials involving teacher interaction and contributions from their classroom experience and knowledge. Mirtilli directed the creation of the New Superciao a Tutti, a text representing a unique, innovative and updated reality in teaching Italian language and culture in the United States.
Anna Fresu Rein, MA (l’Università Ca` Foscari) è nata a La Maddalena, in Sardegna, dove ha frequentato il Liceo Classico. Si è laureata in Lingue e Letterature Straniere all’Università di Pisa. Ha conseguito un Master in insegnamento della lingua e cultura italiana presso l’Università Ca` Foscari a Venezia. E` Senior Lecturer a Bowdoin College dove ha svolto progetti sull’uso della drammatizzazione, della letteratura, e della fonetica nell’insegnamento della lingua italiana. Uno dei progetti è stato pubblicato con sulla rivista Itals, Didattica e Linguistica dell’italiano come lingua straniera, diretta da Professor Balboni.
Ha servito come QL per AP Italian e come Italian Language Expert per il NFLC. Attualmente si interessa particolarmente di editing e traduzione letteraria. È ACTFL tester per le certificazioni OPI e OPI/ILR.