Quality - Italian

Overview

Seaver College’s Italian Studies Program is one of the smallest programs on campus. As such it is a particularly close-knit community which is often able to offer tailor-made academic and professional experiences for students who major or minor in Italian Studies. At the same time, the Italian Studies Program enjoys a deeply collaborative relationship with several other Seaver programs such as Art History, Film Studies, Great Books, Intercultural Communications, and Music, not to mention Pepperdine’s International Programs. A challenging educational experience in the classroom is complemented by rich and formative co-curricular opportunities.

Faculty work closely with students to foster growth in linguistic and cultural proficiency, while stimulating a coherent depth and breadth of thinking that is rooted in Pepperdine’s desire to be academically excellent and unashamedly Christian.

Since 2015, graduates who have majored in Italian Studies or successfully completed advanced work in the program, have included a valedictorian (2018) and four Fulbright recipients. Recent alumni of the Italian Studies program include those who have gone on to medical school, law school, positions in political and global development in DC, and positions in teaching and education in CA.

Guest Speakers

The Italian Studies Program has brought several academics to Pepperdine’s Malibu campus in recent years. Students from the Italian Studies program and the Great Books program benefit particularly from these lectures although the events are open to all. One benefit of being a smaller program is that guest speakers can join Italian Studies faculty and students to continue the conversation over dinner together.

Community Engagement

Italian Studies faculty and Seaver’s student organization CIAO (Cultural Italian American Organization) worked together to bring local filmmakers Joe and Justine Medeiros to campus for a showing of their documentary, Mona Lisa is Missing, in fall 2018. This evening was hosted in the Weisman Museum and enjoyed by members of the Pepperdine and Malibu community alike.

Italian Chapel

Italian Chapel is offered each semester in collaboration with the Convocation Office.

Dr. Fiona M. Stewart leads this chapel. Voice students in the Italian Studies program lead the singing and other students and professors in the Italian Studies program serve on occasion with Scripture readings. Italian Chapel is conducted in such a way as to welcome the participation of students at all levels of language study.

Gamma Kappa Alpha:

The National Italian Honor Society

Fulbright Recipients

Students who have majored in Italian or done advanced work in the Italian Studies program have competed well for Fulbright Fellowships in recent years, with four recipients since 2015:

• Molly Pasquarella – Malaysia (2018)

• Jazmin Guardado – Brazil (2018); Faculty mentor: Dr. Stewart

• Amelia Dal Pra – Malaysia (2017); Faculty mentor: Dr. Stewart

• Catie Golitzin – Russia (2015)

Internships in Italy

In recent years, several students in the Italian Studies Program have had the opportunity to complete internships in Italy.

Thanks to the contacts of Professor Patrizia Lissoni, Darin Daffin (Italian Studies, 2016), a pre-med. student, spent May and June 2014 interning with Dr. Ravasi, an orthopedic surgeon, based near Milan.

Jennie Olivia (Music, 2015), a voice major minoring in Italian, spent June to August 2014 (with time out for the Pepperdine European Choir tour) interning at the De Marco family's Bed and Breakfast in Fiesole, just outside Florence. This internship was set up with the assistance of Elizabeth Whatley, Director of Pepperdine’s Florence Program.

Milan Loiacono (International Studies & Italian Studies, 2020) initiated and completed an internship as a photojournalist while studying in Pepperdine’s Florence Program. During the fall semester of 2019, Milan worked with Dr. Stewart to convert her work, firstly, into a photographic exhibition (Firenze dai fiorentini) with bilingual explanations of the cultural realities behind each collection of images. This exhibition currently adorns the hallway of the Pendleton Learning Center in which ISL is housed. Secondly, Milan produced an online collection of these images with a fuller accompanying cultural explanation in Italian to serve as a resource for other students in the Italian Studies Program. The online collection can be accessed here: https://www.italian-excursions.com/firenze-dai-fiorentini.html

Academic and Spiritual Mentoring

 Students in the Italian Studies Program have the opportunity of one-on-one academic and spiritual mentoring with faculty; often the two intertwine.

 Highlights from the last five years include:

 In spring 2015, Allia Alliata, a major in history and a student with advanced proficiency in Italian, worked with Dr. Stewart as her research assistant to redraft a peer-reviewed article. This project went through a number of permutations and submissions before eventually being published in April 2018 in the Journal of Modern Italian Studies with the title “Guerra civile: experience, memory and contrasting histories of the Resistance in Italy.”

 Catherine Golitzin (Italian Studies, 2015) conducted a research project supervised by Dr. Stewart which culminated in a twenty-page paper entitled “Something or Nothing? A Study of the Void in Calvino’s Later Fiction”. Catie also gave a presentation of her work entitled “Creation, Word and Relationships: Implicit Christian Theology in Calvino’s Later Fiction” at Seaver’s Undergraduate Research Presentations in April 2015.

 More recently, Meghan Doyle (Italian Studies & Art History, valedictorian 2018) worked with Dr. Stewart to prepare a paper entitled “Piccolo ma forte: The Child Narrator’s Role in Cultural Collective Processing.” Meghan and Dr. Stewart travelled to Pittsburgh together so that Meghan could present her paper at the University of Pittsburgh’s undergraduate research conference, Migrations of Culture, in March 2017.

 Numerous students in the Italian Studies Program have engaged in spiritual mentoring with Dr. Stewart. Some of these relationships last a semester; most endure for years and continue beyond graduation.