This semester FRIT welcomed several new instructors: Luca Peretti, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Italian, April Weintritt, a Senior Lecturer in Italian, and Danielle Schoon and Harry Kashdan, both Post-Doctoral Researchers in The Global Mediterranean program.
Peretti earned a PhD at Yale University in the Department of Italian, Film and Media Studies Program in the summer of 2018. He works on Italian cinema, film history, non-fiction cinema, Jewish Italian culture, and Italian intellectual history. He has been published in Senses of Cinema, The Italianist: Film Issue, Cinema e storia, and Historical Materialism. A co-edited volume on Pier Pasolini Pasolini is forthcoming in December 2018 for Bloomsbury Academics. During his first semester at Ohio State, Peretti taught both undergraduate and graduate courses. In addition, he has become very involved with the Practice for the Profession, a series of professionalization workshops for graduate students.
Weintritt has joined us as a Senior Lecturer in Italian. She specializes in Renaissance theater, food studies, and foreign language pedagogy. Her research charts the appearance of culinary professionals -- cooks, bakers, deliverymen, and innkeepers -- on the Renaissance stage and their importance in 16th-century Italian society. Her teaching interests include technology in the communicative classroom and teaching for intercultural competence. Weintritt has had a great time working with her students and seeing their diversity. “There really are a million reasons why someone chooses to study Italian at OSU, and seeing some of that passion and motivation in action has been wonderful,” she says. Outside of the classroom, Weintritt has enjoyed embracing the Buckeye mentality and wardrobe, though as a Louisiana native, she is cautious of the winter to come.
Danielle Schoon and Harry Kashdan have both joined the department as Post-Doctoral Researchers in The Global Mediterranean. Schoon has been working with us this semester and has helped kick-start The Global Mediterranean program. Schoon earned a dual PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona and a Master of Arts in Dance from UCLA. She has interests in migration, performance, and the politics of identity. Her current research focuses on the 'politics of presence' for Roma ("Gypsies") in Turkey and Turkish migrants in Europe and the United States. Schoon also teaches the Turkish Studies curriculum in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC) at OSU. She has had an amazing time with her Global Mediterranean course this fall. “There may be only five students,” she says, “but they get things done!” As part of the course, they have visited the Silk Road and Lost Egypt exhibits at COSI, the Map Room in the Thompson Library, and they plan a trip to Mediterranean Food Imports and Lavash towards the end of the semester.
Harry Kashdan will take over the position next semester and stay until spring 2020. Kashdan completed his doctorate in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan in 2018, with a dissertation on the role of food in contemporary Mediterranean migration narratives. His research is broadly on Mediterranean food culture, with a specific focus on how cookbooks express personal and communal stories of migration, diaspora, and other forms of displacement. During his fellowship term at Harvard, he has been working on a project about the Italian and American legacies of the Italian cookbook author Ada Boni. “I'm excited to join the OSU community in January,” says Kashadan, “and I am particularly looking forward both to getting back in the classroom and working with students and faculty on strengthening Mediterranean Studies initiatives.”
