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American Grantees
Glenda Carpio - Senior Lecturer in American Studies, academic year 2011/12
The interview with Ms. Carpio is avaliable on the website of Università Ca'Foscari, Venice: http://www.unive.it/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=94480
Renata Sheppard - Graduate Student, academic year 2010/11
"The Fulbright is an incredible gift. These nine months have been a luxury and life changing opportunity to immerse myself in the Italian culture and multi media research. I did not anticipate the depth of this experience but I know that the minute I stepped foot on Italian soil I was determined to open myself to every possibility on the road ahead. My project unfolded thanks to the support of my colleagues at Virtual Reality and Multi Media Park's ASA Lab and to the tireless energy I wanted to put into realizing my vision for an interactive performance. I managed to cross-over my past, inviting John Toenjes, a former professor of mine from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to collaborate with us in the building of a gesture-recognition based design for the interactive structure of this performance. A collaborative spark with the Sound Designer at Virtual Reality and Multi Media Park has found me building new ideas in the mapping of sound theory to Laban Movement Analysis, with theoretical concepts that serve in practical performance. The ideas and networks that have been ignited here will continue to fuel my artistic and personal adventures in the future. I don't think J. William Fulbright knew how appropriate his name would be for the grant his legislation endowed."
Renata Sheppard, Graduate Student, academic year 2010/2011
Anthony J. Antonucci - Graduate Student, academic year 2010/11
Americans and the Mezzogiorno: United States Relations with the Regno delle Due Sicilie from Thomas Jefferson to Herman Melville, 1783-1861.
The establishment of an American consular office in Naples in November 1796 was an important moment in the newly independent United State's effort to seek international recognition. First proposed by Minister Plenipotentiary Thomas Jefferson in Paris six months prior to the signing of the Versailles Treaty in 1783, Naples's recognition of American sovereignty was hailed by American merchants, diplomats, politicians and missionaries as the foundation for a vital staging ground from which to assert the United State's political and economic interests throughout the Mediterranean. However, over the next fifty years Americans struggled to realize their political, economic and military ambitions in Naples and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Il Regno Delle Due Sicilie). Despite the tireless efforts of eight American presidential administrations, the United States was unable to obtain ratification of a much-desired commercial treaty with the Kingdom until June 1846. Even after this date, American merchants, consuls, crews and travelers in the Kingdom faced both persistent challenges and distinctive opportunities as citizens of a democratic republic viewed as a threat by Neapolitan authorities.
My Fulbright research project, "Americans and the Mezzogiorno: United States Relations with the Regno delle Due Sicilie from Thomas Jefferson to Herman Melville, 1783-1861," aims to provide a comprehensive, integrative study of the social networks Americans formed through their interaction with the people and places of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Regno delle Due Sicilie) prior to 1861. To do this, my project examines American and Neapolitan state papers, diaries, letters, newspapers and travel literature to analyze how a diverse range of individuals and social networks- made up of merchants, diplomats, missionaries and tourists- shaped and defined the political, economic and cultural ties that developed between the United States and Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the years between the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and the outbreak of the American Civil War and Italian Unification.
Uncovering an intriguing body of evidence as to how individual lives and social networks central to U.S exchange with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies often moved above, below, through and around the American nation-state and the sovereignty of the Regno, my project calls attention to the importance of both state and non-state actors in shaping the early history of U.S. relations with pre-unification Italy and, in a larger sense, explores this domain of Americans' experience abroad as an essential component of the United State's global past.
Anthony J. Antonucci, Graduate Student, academic year 2010/2011
Emily Ventura - Graduate Student, academic year 2009/10
Emily Ventura was a Fulbright scholar from March until November 2010, working with the University of Gastronomic Sciences in both Pollenzo and Colorno. The main body of her work has been trying to bridge the appreciation for Italian gastronomy and good food as well as its relationship to healthy living. Thanks to her Ph.D. in Preventive Medicine and her Master's Degree in Public Health Ms. Ventura analyzed Italian gastronomy and how it reflects the health of the Italian people. During her Fulbright experience, Ms. Ventura helped design a research study that looked at the relationship between family meal habits and nutrition.
Ms. Ventura is thankful that her Fulbright experience allowed her to study two of her biggest passions - gastronomy and public health - in the context of Italian culture. She believes that outside of Italy, many people don't understand how the Slow Food Movement practiced in many regions of Italy prevents diabetes and obesity in Italian children while maintaining the great food and culture that Italy is known for.
Emily Ventura, Graduate Student, academic year 2009/2010
Charles D'Agostino - Fulbright Specialist, academic year 2009/10
Charles D'Agostino, Fulbright Specialist, Executive Director of the Louisiana State University Business and Technology Center of the E.J. Ourso College of Business was at the University of L'Aquila for a period of five weeks, sharing his experience in disaster management and business counseling developed after the four hurricanes that struck Louisiana between 2005 and 2008 and the 2010 British Petroleum Oil Spill. He gave a series of seminars covering various topics ranging from lessons learned post-disaster to developing a disaster resilient city, highlighting the role that can be played by the university. Louisiana State University and the University of L'Aquila have now committed to working together to find solutions for disaster preparedness, resiliency and recovery.
Charles D'Agostino, Fulbright Specialist, academic year 2009/10.
Brittany Goodrich - Graduate Student, academic year 2009/10
Brittany Goodrich comes from Los Angeles, California, where she studied public health as her undergraduate degree at George Washington University in Washington D.C.. At the age of twenty four Ms. Goodrich was doing a master in gastronomical sciences and then, finished with her master, she started an internship concerning traditional methods of making cheeses and different types of breads.
Ms. Goodrich decided to come to Italy for her master, after having had a great experience with her study abroad program in 2006. She loved Italy so much that she came back in the summer of that year to improve her Italian and this is her connection with Italian culture started. Ms. Goodrich always wanted to apply to Fulbright and then one day, she happened to go to a Fulbright session. There she found a perfect program for her: a master in Food Culture communication And this is how she ended up coming back to Italy! In Italy Ms. Goodrich attended the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Colorno, Parma. Her one year master degree will end March 2010. After the Fulbright experience, Ms. Goodrich's goal will be to bring awareness about food traditions to the United States.
Brittany Goodrich, Graduate Student, academic year 2009/2010
Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford - Graduate Student, academic year 2009/10
I am working in the city of Palermo for three main reasons: to study Sicilian boat craft, conduct weekly art workshops for disadvantaged children, and make a large-scale sculpture that involves the children from the workshops, while also using visual vocabulary from my research. My project reflects my art practice as a whole, incorporating research, studio practice and social art practice into a systematic inquiry of culture and form. I've been studying with a boat-building master in the town of Porticello and conducting Art and English workshops with underprivileged children from a charity organization called Jus Vitae. I have also been playing a sort of failed Ulysses character, searching for the Cyclops Polyphemus in Sicily.
I plan to find him in June and escape using a large-scale floating boat sculpture that the children from my workshops are helping me design. Italians in Speedos will play the Cyclops with single eye masks. I plan to leave the sculpture to drift in the Mediterranean with my email carved into it in hopes that it might wash up on a distant shore and someone will find it and contact me. In addition to my work in Sicily I completed a project on the Tiber river reenacting an imagined scene from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. I was also invited by the US Consulate in Naples to give a lecture at an art school near Naples and will be co-curating a show this summer with a Sicilian artist focusing on how Sicilian artists are treating the figure in a contemporary context.
Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford - Fulbright Graduate Student grantee to Italy - academic year 2009/10
Elizabeth Robinson - Graduate Student, academic year 2009/2010
U.S. Fulbright Grantee Elizabeth Robinson explored the cultural interactions that took place in the ancient town of Larinum, while also experiencing her own cultural interactions in the modern town of Larino that sits atop the ancient ruins. As part of her dissertation research, she has been exploring the archaeology of Larinum and its surrounding territory. This site was an important independent center in the pre-Roman period, and was made part of the Roman state in the first century BCE. Through her use of the archaeological and historical sources, she is recording the elements of continuity and change at this site during its transition from being an autonomous city to being part of the Roman state.She has also had the opportunity to experience life in small-town Italy. Larino is a town of 7,000-8,000 inhabitants, with a strong sense of local pride and traditions. She has been able to witness several local festivals, including the celebrations for Carnevale, and the festivals for the patron saints of the community. Through her research and her interactions with members of the community, she has helped them to understand the ancient history of their city, and to realize the importance of maintaining the archaeological remains in the town. She will present the preliminary results of her research in a paper at the "Integration and identity in the Roman Republic" conference at the University of Manchester, England, in July 2010
Elizabeth Robinson - Fulbright US Graduate Student to Italy -academic year 2009/2010
Stephanie Nadalo - Graduate Student, academic year 2008/09
Ms Nadalo, from Chicago, Illinois, has an undergraduate degree from Sara Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and has studied history at the American Academy of Rome. Throughout the process of earning a master's degree, Ms Nadalo is completing research for a doctoral dissertation, a continuation of her 2008-2009 Fulbright project, to be finalized in 2011.
Ms Nadalo discovered Fulbright through a promoter for the Program, providing insight into the possibilities during and after the experience. Through the acknowledgment of the prestigious international status Fulbright holds, she chose to apply for a research project in area of history. As a previous study abroad student in Florence, focusing on the fields of art history and art restoration, Ms Nadalo was already well versed and fond of the country.
Her main focus and decision for doing Fulbright Italy was based on her current research, involving issues in religious relations in the 17th century in regards to tolerance.
Though not yet completed, portions of Ms Nadalo's doctoral dissertation has already been produced into several articles and upon completion, will be produced into a book manuscript. Future goals for her are to stay within the field of academia, potentially as a teacher in the disciplinary fields of history.
Stephanie Nadalo, Graduate Student, academic year 2008/2009
Jennifer Ellen Goldman - English Teaching Assistant, academic year 2007/08
Ciao amici, Greetings from Italia! I am writing from the city of Udine, one of the two main cities (along with Trieste) in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of Italy where I have been living for the past month. Friuli borders on Austria, Slovenia, the Adriatic, and the Veneto region with Venice. In other words, if you look at a map, I am living as far to the north and to the right of Italy as you can get.
Udine is a charming city - carina as Italians say - that centers on the Piazza Libertà. The historic center is full of beautiful art (statues and frescoes on otherwise ordinary buildings), farmer's and antiques markets, specialty food shops (the smell of the cheese when you walk past the formaggeria is heavenly), designer clothing stores, and more coffee shops that you can imagine. Just as distinctive a feature of the city's atmosphere is the lack of tourists; nearly everyone who I meet here is a local. I am starting to learn their local Friuli dialect, as well as regular Italian slang/idioms. Trying to get that down takes time. There have been some moments such as when I went to get my hair cut a week ago when the hairdresser started saying something about due livelli (2 levels) and I was just like no no no.
I am improving my Italian by taking a painting course in Venice. The class meets every Thursday afternoon/evening for four hours. I usually arrive in Venice a couple hours before the class meets so I have time to explore. I have visited the nearby cities of Verona (the city of Romeo and Giulietta) and Vicenza. Within Venice I have been to the Piazza San Marco (and inside St. Mark's Basilica), the Jewish Ghetto for a matzoh ball soup/latkes meal that reminded me of home, and along countless winding streets and canals with beautiful, brightly-colored homes on either side.
Although I sometimes enjoy being the tourist... when trying on dozens of glittery, extravagant Carnevale masks and planning weekend excursions in Italy and Europe... I love having the opportunity to live and work here. I have finally gotten settled into life in Udine. It took a week to find an apartment. During that time I lived in a convent. While some aspects of life there especially the 9:30p.m. curfew were very different from life at Yale, I ended up making some wonderful friends with girls who board at the convent and take classes at the University of Udine. I now live in a flat with two guys from Spain who are studying Economics at the university and a German girl who is studying Medicine. Several girls from Romania, Hungary, and Slovenia live across the hall. They also attend the university. It's a fabulous set-up, sort of like L'Auberge Espagnole if you've seen the movie.
From Monday to Thursday I work with twelve classes in two public high schools in Udine. I teach students about American culture: our literature, music, holidays, hobbies, and basically anything else that I can think of. I teach these classes in English although with the lower levels I am allowed to toss in some Italian phrases. The students are wonderful and they are definitely full of questions! On my first day they asked me how old I am (the teachers wouldn't let me answer that... good thing because I am only a couple years older than the students), why did I come to Udine instead of Rome (the government actually made the choice), and what did I think about the Mafia? They continue to ask questions, approaching me after class to ask what television shows I watch (Heroes is big here... all of our TV shows and movies are dubbed) and whether there really are cheerleaders in the US ... they are very curious about how Americans live.
That's about it for now. At some point I will send pictures. In the meantime, keep me posted with how you are doing!
Mandi mandi ("ciao" in Friuli), Jen
Jennifer Ellen Goldman, English Teaching Assistant, academic year 2007/08.
Irma Ned Bailey - Senior Fulbright Lecturer - academic year 2007/08
Buon giorno, Salerno,
The sun dances on the waves as two princesses approach, one in pink and one in red. Each wears a tiara. They are followed by Batman, who is all of three feet tall. The princesses throw confetti on him and laugh when he cries "Mamma" and runs to the dark-haired beauty in jeans and four-inch heels pushing a stroller behind him. It is my first Sunday morning in southern Italy, in Salerno, a city caught between the mountains and the sea on the Amalfi coast. I stroll, together with many of the 140,000 inhabitants, on the lungomare, the walk that extends several miles along the seafront. I learn that this is the custom here; Carnival is celebrated by the children's dressing in costume for several Sunday mornings before Lent, the celebration then culminating with a parade of the children on the pedestrian walkway the Tuesday evening before Lent. Other customs are similar. On Saturday evenings everyone dresses up and strolls through the old city, stopping for coffee or gelato. On Sunday mornings, as I discovered, the parade moves to the lungomare.
I have found Salerno a charming city, largely because it is not inundated by tourists as are so many of its more popular neighbors such as Amalfi. I stay in a Medieval convent, now converted into a bed and breakfast with high ceilings and tile floors in the old city, the centro historico. Names of the narrow Medieval streets change, it seems at random, laundry hangs on clothes lines from windows above the street, and motor scooters whiz by on the flagstones. In this historic district, neighborhood grocers, pastry shops, butchers vie with trendy shops selling boots and leather jackets. Proprietors stand at the entrance of their shops, calling hello to passersby. The atmosphere is safe, friendly, like that of a small town.
Restaurants are everywhere: cave-like small rooms where the father or mother cooks, and the teen-aged children serve. How can pasta and tomatoes taste so good? It is the fresh ingredients, I know, although when I buy produce from the market and try to cook the same dishes, the result is disappointing. So I am forced to go to Cicirinella, named after a nineteenth-century Neapolitan prostitute, or to the Vicolo delle Neve (Little Street of the Snow), located in what used to be a cave and serving as a communal refrigerator after snow was brought in from the surrounding mountains. I indulge in ciamboco, a dish of mixed vegetables, unknown in other regions I am told, and drink falanghina, a local white wine.
Salerno became a Roman colony in 194 B.C. and was the capital of the Norman Empire from 1077 to 1127. In the Middle Ages, especially in the twelfth century, Salerno was known for its medical school, the first in Europe; St. Thomas Aquinas mentions that it was as pre-eminent in medicine as Paris was in science. The Garden of Minerva preserves the flavor of Medieval medicine; plants are labeled for their medicinal properties in treating diseases associated with what the Medievals called the four humors: problems from imbalances of hot and dry or cold and moist, for example. Now the University of Salerno has moved 15 km. away to the village of Fisciano in order to accommodate the growing numbers of students (now 40,000), many from other European countries.
Among the other sights is the Duomo San Matteo, first built in 845 and rebuilt 200 years later by the Norman leader Robert Guiscard. The cathedral, which houses a tooth from the evangelist Matthew, is noteworthy for its mosaics and its detached twelfth-century campanile, the bell tower that rises above the duomo. The courtyard with its fountain provides a peaceful spot.
Salerno has frequent train, bus, and ferry schedules to nearby sights. Easily reached within an hour by train are Pompei, Paestum (some of the best preserved Greek temples in Europe), Pozzuoli (the Solfatara, steaming volcanic vents, and a well-preserved Roman amphitheatre, the third largest in Italy), Naples (the archeological museum with mosaics and paintings from Pompei), Herculaneum (excavations of 2000-year-old houses), and Reggia di Caserta (a Neo-Classical palace labeled the "Versailles of Italy"). In short, Salerno is an unspoiled treat both for itself and for its access to neighboring sights in Campania.
Irma Ned Bailey, Ph.D., Senior Fulbright Lecturer at Universita degli Studi di Salerno, academic year 2007/08.
