Arianna Fognani taught Italian language and content courses in English and Italian at Franklin & Marshall College and Coastal Carolina University. At CCU, she coordinated the Italian program and co-led a study abroad program in Tuscany in May 2022. Last spring, she received the "Faculty Innovation and Excellence Award" from the provost Office. She was also the recipient of a "Professional Enhancement Research Grant" for a project that aims to infuse digital humanities practices into the Italian curriculum. In June, as part of the grant, she flew to Vancouver to participate in the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria.
In addition to digital humanities, her scholarly work focuses on transnational subjects and the concepts of space, identity, and culture in relation to various forms of mobility. Her research examines Italy’s recent cultural challenges within the Mediterranean context as well as patterns of transnational migration to debunk the implicit bias in western literary constructions of Northern African cities, in particular Alexandria in Egypt during the interwar period.
Her articles have appeared in peer-reviewed publications, including California Italian Studies and the Georgetown University Digital Collection. Recently, she was invited to contribute to the upcoming issue of Altreitalie (an international journal specializing in Italian diaspora) with an article on "il turismo delle radici" (tourism based on family and cultural roots). She is finishing another article titled "Social Justice in Italian Classes. Reading and Translating Zerocalcare and Takoua Ben Mohamed" that will appear in the next issue of Italica dedicated to pedagogy innovation.
Arianna enjoys involving students in digital mapping projects, podcasts, and culturally annotated translations. She also likes riding motorcycles.
Ph.D. Italian, Rutgers University
MA, Italian, Rutgers University
BA cum laude, Foreign Languages and Literature (English and French), University of Siena (Arezzo)
- 20th and 21st Century Italian literature and history
- Italian Cinema
- Italian Cultural Studies
- Italian Mediterranean Studies
- Human Geography
- Transnational Mobilities
- Italian American Studies
- Digital Humanities
- Language Pedagogy
- ITAL0120 - Accelerated Elementary Italian
- ITAL 1900 - Italian History on the Screen
"Mapping Italian Narratives with StoryMaps JS" ILCC - Challenges in the 21st-century Italian classroom, vol 1, Fall 2020, pp. 70-88 https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/1060512
"(Resistenze in conflitto nella narrative di Anna Messina e Fausta Cialente ambientata ad Alessandria d'Egitto." California Italian Studies (Special Issue on Boardless Italy), vol 9.1, April 2020. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/67p224k3
"Tra sole done. Dalle Memorie sull'Egitto di Amalia Nizzoli alle testimonianze di viaggiatrici europee." Viaggi e viaggiatori nell'ottocento. Ed. by Marsilio Editore, 2023, pp. 281-295.
"Identità e ImmagiNazione di Annie Vivanti in Terra di Cleopatra." La Fusta, Fall 2012, 28-42.
"Dall'America all'Italia: il viaggio di ritorno dei discendenti degli emigrati italiani." Bollettino ITALS, Feb.2008. https://www.itals.it/articolo/dallamerica-allitalia-il-viaggio-di-ritorno-dei-discendenti-degli-emigranti-italiani
"Teaching Italian Language within a Transnational Framework: Mahomood's Soldi in the Elementary Italian Classroom" with Giovanni Faleschini-Learner and Maya Greenshpan. H-Italian Diaspora Network. Nov. 2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/7645/blog/transnational-italian-studies-working-group/8928783/blog-teaching-italian