PARLIAMO ITALIANO! - PROGRAM SAMPLER

ix ABOUT THE AUTHORS Suzanne Branciforte was born and raised on Long Is land, New York. She completed her B.A. in His- tory & Literature at Har- vard University. Recipient of a Rotary Foundation Scholarship, she attended the University of Genoa (Genoa, Italy). She sub- sequently completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in Italian Literature at UCLA. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Florence, Italy. Her teaching experience includes positions at Holy Cross College (Worcester, MA), the University of Michigan and Stanford University programs in Florence, Italy, and at the University for Foreigners in Siena. She has taught Methods of Teaching Italian to Foreigners in a Masters program at the University of Genoa, at the Università Cattolica in Milan, and at Study in Italy, Genoa. In 2000, she founded Consortium Educational Consulting in Genoa, Italy, which became Study in Italy in 2009 (www. studyinitaly.it) . A boutique language school, Study in Italy offers a full range of language and culture courses and study abroad experiences in Genoa, Pavia and Siena. Her research and scholarly writing focus on Italian American cultural identity, the experience of Italian emigration, the Italian Renaissance, the narrative of World War II in Italy, and women’s literature. She has published numerous articles on these subjects. An experienced translator of prose and poetry, her translation of Renata Viganò’s collection of short stories, Partisan Wedding (1999) was favorably reviewed in the NY Times . Her translation into Italian of an American short story in the volume Zoetrope: All- Story (Mondadori, 2001, introduction by Francis Ford Coppola) was cited in La Repubblica newspaper’s review of the volume. She collaborates regularly with Il Sole 24 Ore and was responsible for translating the Sunday Domenica insert into English for the first time. Branciforte has also published a textbook for learning Italian in Italy for middle school students ( Sì, lo so! , Juvenilia Editore, 2004). A cultural and linguistic mediator, Branciforte was the interpreter for the Mayor of Genoa at the G8 Meeting held in that city in 2001. Among her numerous engagements as an interpreter and translator, she has translated and interpreted for Nobel Prize winners Wole Soyinka, Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stieglitz. Over the past 20 years, she has lived between the U.S. and Italy. She currently makes her home in Genoa, Italy. Elvira G. Di Fabio has over 25 years of experience in the field of language ped- agogy. She holds a B.A. in Russian from Boston Uni- versity, an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Boston College, and finally came to her senses and took an M.A. and Ph.D. in Italian from Har- vard University. She has been the director of Ital- ian language instruction at Harvard University since 1990 and is responsible for training and mentoring teaching fellows and teaching assistants. Di Fabio teaches Italian at every level and most enjoys the energy and engagement found in the beginning Italian courses. Her advanced instruction covers Italian comic cinema, historical linguistics, and Romance food cul ture. She has recent ly developed a community-service course that places undergraduates in local elementary schools to teach Italian to pre-K and Kindergarten children through arts-enhanced instruction. This experience has since developed into a partnership with the Harvard Art