Education:
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin - Madison - 1985 (Italian)
M.A., University of Wisconsin - Madison - 1982 (English Applied Linguistics)
M.A., University of Wisconsin - Madison - 1982 (Italian Literature)
Areas of Expertise:
Foreign language acquisition, theories and practice; Romance linguistics; educational technology; cross-cultural communication; Holocaust literature; 20th-century Italian literature, in particular Primo Levi and Cesare Pavese.
Research Activities
I am working on a series of articles on the linguistic evolution of Italian under the pressure of English. In addition to the obvious acquisition of neologisms and sectorial micro-languages--such as the language of information technology--I am focusing on the phenomena of re-semanticization of common, everyday terminology; borrowings at the level of idioms and cultural/linguistic memes, metaphors and cliches; even at the syntactic level. 2008
Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums
"Reification of Democratic Principles in the Contractual Dynamics and the So-Called Internal Democracy of Unions in This Country." Symposium on the Italian perspective on U.S. trade unions and their relationship to the notion of democracy. SUNY Stony Brook. Stony Brook, N.Y. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008
Professional Leadership
Director, Center for Teaching, and director, Computer Language Instruction Center (CLIC). The two combined count for a full-time work load. Also teaching an upper-tier Core course. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2007
Serves on at least a dozen of committees, task forces, work groups, etc., both at the College and University level. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2007
