Dear FRIT Alumni and Friends,
Bonne année/buon anno to all! Let me first express my gratitude to you for your continued interest in the department and for your generous contributions to our scholarship and programming funds. Despite all the hardships the pandemic has caused around the world for nearly two years now, the Department and the University are going strong and are ready for a productive as well as joyous 2022.
As for the challenges we faced in 2021, one silver lining for faculty and graduate teaching associates was the “opportunity”–indeed, the necessity–to continue to hone our skills in online pedagogies. Teaching online is no longer a daunting (some might have said menacing) prospect for those of us who had never done it before, and many of us now deploy skills we learned in doing so to enhance our in-person teaching. We have been glad, however, to resume more personal contact with colleagues and students than we had during much of 2020, contact we will no longer take for granted going forward.
Some sad news that reached us last year was the passing of two distinguished Professor Emeriti, Robert Cottrell in French and Albert Mancini in Italian. We honor these outstanding scholars and colleagues in this newsletter and hope it will stir fond memories among many of you.
A happier event of last year was the appointment of our former chair, Professor Dana Renga, as Dean of Arts and Humanities. Dana was a truly outstanding chair, which was recognized by college leaders and prompted them to secure her skills for the benefit not just of FRIT but of the twenty-one departments now under her leadership. Her extraordinary vision, creativity, determination, and professionalism have already invigorated the division and will surely make Ohio State’s Arts and Humanities programs models to be emulated across the country. We thank Dana for her exceptional contributions to the department and look forward to continuing to flourish under her guidance.
Even if we can only highlight here a few of the many remarkable activities of the faculty, students, staff, and alumni of the Department of French and Italian over the last year, we hope you will enjoy reading about them. We also hope you will continue to stay in touch with the department and to let us know about your own, extraordinary activities as Ohio State graduates.
Please stay in touch by subscribing to our Friends of FRIT listserv, and following us on Twitter and Facebook where you will receive news of all of FRIT’s happenings.
Jennifer Willging,
Associate Professor and Interim Chair
