Umbra Faculty Present in Sicily
American Association of Teachers of Italian saw a strong contingent of professors from Perugia at its annual meeting.
The Umbra Institute strives to represent the best of American academia in Italy, and key to this is a good mix of both excellence in the classroom and continued research in one’s field. These past twelve months have been especially fruitful in terms of exhibitions, publications, and presentations for professors at the Institute.
This past weekend three of the humanities faculty, as well as the Associate Director for Academic Program Development, headed to the annual meeting of the AATI, an association of educators whose interests include the didactics of teaching Italian as well as the cultural aspects of “teaching Italy.”
Professor Elgin K. Eckert began by both chairing and presenting in a panel on Italian writer Andrea Camilleri (“Camilleri: Writer and Public Intellectual”). The next day, in another Umbra-organized panel, professors Cynthia Clough and Antonella Valoroso discussed the connection between food and identity in Italian literature (“Quantum Nutrition: Food as Sacrament in Fabrizia Ramondino’s Althenopis” and “Cibo, potere e identità di genere in Sabato, domenica e lunedì di Eduardo De Filippo,” respectively). Finally, history professor Zachary Nowak, coordinator of the Umbra Institute’s Food Studies Program, analyzed the link between Trapani’s saltworks and the modern need for “food with a history” (“’The Only Rock We Eat’: Trapani, Salt and Identity”).
All of the presentations were well-attended and the Umbra contingent was the largest of any educational institution represented.