Every spring the Department of World Languages and Cultures selects outstanding graduating majors in each language. The award stands for consistency and quality of academic achievements, intellectual curiosity, engagement in the Italian experience as well as contribution to the university’s Italian Studies community. The Italian Studies faculty is delighted to announce that this year the recipient of the award is Drew Murphy.
Drew Murphy completed two B.A.s, a self-designed major in Italian Studies and a major in Literature, Rhetoric and Cultural Studies. He is now working toward an integrated M.A. in English. During his studies, Drew consistently pushed himself outside of his confort zone and demonstrated a rare passion for the study of Italy, its society, literature, and cinema. He worked diligently and with maturity in all of his projects, bringing added intellectual vitality to all of his courses. Drew’s coursework in Italian Studies culminated in a capstone thesis focusing on contemporary media representation of the Medici family, which effectively identified several historical gaps and cultural inaccuracies in popular films and television series on the Italian Renaissance.
Drew is also the Director of the Florentines of San Lorenzo, at the Original Renaissance Pleasure Faire, a connoisseur of Italian Renaissance fashion and a talent tailor in his own right. Recently, Drew was invited to deliver a virtual demonstration about Renaissance fashion to the students of Dr. Pacchioni’s course Imagination and Power in the Italian Renaissance.
Below a photograph of Drew wearing one of his costumes.
