Chapman Italian Studies News

At the 2025 Annual AATI Conference at Princeton University, Dr. Mattavelli contributed meaningfully to the ongoing dialogue around innovation in Italian language education. She organized a very well-attended roundtable titled “Challenges and Innovations in Italian Language Programs Direction,” co-sponsored with the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators (AAUSC). This session brought together program directors and educators to explore the evolving challenges of leading Italian language programs, from administrative complexities to pedagogical innovation. In her presentation, “From Numbers to Nuances: Leading Italian Language Programs Today,” she reflected on the shifting responsibilities of language program directors and emphasized the importance of the AAUSC in supporting professional growth and collaboration.

Dr. Mattavelli also co-organized the session “Ungrading: The Key To Student Retention In The University Italian Classroom?” which sparked vibrant discussions about the role of assessment in student motivation and retention. Her paper, “Unquizzing Our Students: Alternative Assessment Practices in the Italian Classroom,” explored ungrading as a transformative pedagogical strategy. She highlighted how moving away from traditional grading can reduce student anxiety, foster deeper engagement, and refocus attention on learning and progress. Both presentations were met with enthusiasm and underscored the importance of pedagogical research in the field of Italian language education.

Professor Corrado Confalonieri’s 2025 began in Germany, where on January 14 he was invited to give a lecture on the concept of time in Renaissance epic poetry at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. The following day, he presented his book Torquato Tasso e il desiderio di unità (2022) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Upon returning to California directly from Germany, Dr. Confalonieri prepared and taught two courses during the Spring 2025 semester: an intermediate Italian language course and an advanced course, also in Italian, on the history and forms of theater. Both courses concluded with student projects in which participants created short films, allowing them to explore creative writing and acting, as well as to apply their understanding of regional nuances in Italian, including words and accents in local dialects studied throughout the semester.

Even after his trip to Germany, Professor Confalonieri’s semester remained full of commitments for conferences and presentations, both at Chapman and at other institutions. At Chapman, he collaborated in organizing and participated in several events sponsored by the Ferrucci Institute, including Stephanie Malia Hom’s lecture for the “Windows to Italy” series. On the same day, Professor Hom also visited Professor Confalonieri’s Italian theater course for a discussion of her work on Italia in Miniatura, a theme park in Rimini that explores miniature representations of Italy. Other events included the screening of Fred Kuwornu’s documentary We Were Here: The Untold Story of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, and the “Italian Perspective” event, which this year focused on the theme “Space and Culture.”

In March, Professor Confalonieri participated in the RSA annual meeting in Boston, presenting a paper on the theme of ruins in Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata. His presentation was part of one of four panels and a roundtable that he co-organized with colleagues from other universities. The sessions were well attended and featured around twenty presentations exploring various aspects of Tasso’s work and its reception.

In April, Professor Confalonieri introduced the writer Andrea Bajani at Chapman University as part of the 2025 Reading Series organized by the John Fowler Center for Creative Writing, directed by Mark Axelrod. On this occasion, he focused primarily on Bajani’s latest novel, L’anniversario (2025), which has not yet been translated into English but was recently shortlisted for the Premio Strega 2025, Italy’s most prestigious literary award. The novel has already won the Premio Strega Giovani, awarded by a jury of readers aged 16 to 18.

Also in April, Confalonieri presented a paper on the reception of Ariosto’s and Tasso’s poems in popular music at the annual conference of the American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI) at Princeton University. The following day, before returning to the West Coast, he was invited to participate in a workshop on Tasso at Duke University in North Carolina, alongside colleagues from Duke, Wake Forest, NYU, Yale, and Bryn Mawr.

After the end of classes in late May, Professor Confalonieri made one final trip dedicated to Tasso—this time to Sorrento, Italy (Tasso’s birthplace), where he presented a paper on the late 18th-century visual translation of Gerusalemme Liberata at the conference “The Wonder of Italy: Torquato Tasso’s Legacy in International Culture”, organized by Georgetown University and the Sant’Anna Institute.

In addition to working on various essays and reviews scheduled for publication in the summer and fall, Professor Confalonieri also joined the organizing committee for the upcoming series “Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Environment and Building Resilient Futures,” hosted by the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. As part of this program, he will teach a first-year seminar in the fall titled To Call You ‘Nature’: Italian Literary Ecologies, and in October he will host Martin Puchner (Harvard University), author of Literature for a Changing Planet (Princeton University Press, 2022), for a conversation open to the public. Also in the fall, in addition to teaching another Intermediate Italian course, he will help organize the annual meeting of the Renaissance Conference of Southern California (RCSC), which will be held at Chapman on November 1 and will conclude with a film screening sponsored by the Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research.

Fall 2024 marked the first semester at Chapman University for Corrado Confalonieri, the inaugural Bernardino Telesio Endowed Professor of Italian Studies. Dr. Confalonieri taught an Italian language course, participated in various on-campus activities, and began mentoring a student selected as an Emerging Creative Scholar at the Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research.

Outside of Chapman, Dr. Confalonieri presented a paper on architecture and time in Torquato Tasso’s “Gerusalemme Liberata” at the annual conference of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) held in Palm Springs (November 7-10). He also worked on various research projects and publications, some of which were released in recent months, with others expected to be published in early 2025.

Since August, he has published an essay in “Studi Culturali” – the most important Italian journal of Cultural Studies, published by Il Mulino – titled “Knowing and Believing: The Flood of the Po River in History, Literature, and Popular Culture.” Additionally, he published an article entitled “Il Gadda di Gifuni tra guerra, storia e filosofia della storia” in the proceedings of a conference held in Naples in 2023, and two essays on Ariosto: one providing an overview of international scholarship dedicated to Orlando Furioso and the other on the Mauriziano, the house of Ariosto’s family in Reggio Emilia, exploring its reality and literary representation. The book that includes this latter essay was presented on Saturday, December 14, at the Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, at a conference attended by Marco Massari, the Mayor of Reggio Emilia.

Professor Javitch and Professor Confalonieri

Other publications on Tasso and Ariosto are forthcoming. Among these are an essay titled “Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Ariosto, and ‘the small wins’: Chess, Poetry, and Philosophy of History” for “Schifanoia,” the journal of the Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali in Ferrara; a chapter dedicated to irony and harmony in “Orlando Furioso” in a collective volume on Ariosto to be published by Carocci; and a dialogue on Ariosto with Daniel Javitch, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at NYU and author of “Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso,” for a new journal also published by Il Mulino, “ITER” (Immagini e Testi per l’Europa del Rinascimento).

In addition to essays, Dr. Confalonieri was invited to write reviews for “Italian Culture” and “Renaissance Quarterly,” and he has co-edited the review section of “Between,” the journal of the Italian Association for the Theory and Comparative History of Literature, where he is part of the editorial board. In the latest issue of “Between,” Dr. Confalonieri also wrote a review-essay of a book dedicated to the invention of the entrelacement in the Middle Ages (L’invenzione dell’intreccio. La svolta medievale nell’arte narrativa by Claudio Lagomarsini).

At the end of the semester at Chapman, Dr. Confalonieri, together with Emilio Russo, Professor of Italian Literature at the Sapienza Università di Roma, has organized “Trame tassiane. Per uno studio dell’intertestualità nella Gerusalemme liberata,” a conference on intertextuality in Gerusalemme Liberata that brings together several of leading Tasso scholars internationally. The conference will be held in Rome, at the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, from Monday, and Dr. Confalonieri will give the inaugural lecture dedicated to intertextuality and literary theory.

In January 2025, before returning to California, Dr. Confalonieri will make a stop in Germany, where he has been invited to give a lecture on Renaissance epic for graduate students at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (January 14) and to present his book Torquato Tasso e il desiderio di unità. La Gerusalemme liberata e una nuova teoria dell’epica at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in a discussion with Florian Mehltretter (LMU München), Christian Rivoletti (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), and Francesco Lucioli (Sapienza Università di Roma) on January 15.

This will be the tenth presentation of the book since its release in September 2022, following those held in Sorrento (December 2022), Sapienza Università di Roma (January 2023), Centro di Studi Tassiani in Bergamo, Universitat de València (March 2023), New York University, Harvard University, University of Genoa, New Books Network Podcast (April 2023), and at the Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali in Ferrara (April 2024).