Faculty Accomplishments

Was selected to be Visiting Professor at Sapienza University of Rome in early Spring 2022.

Was invited to deliver the following two lectures in Italy: 1. “American Dante: The Divine Comedy Revisited”, Centro Studi Americani, Rome, 13 September 2021 2. “Una congiura di buoni. L’esilio dell’anima in Una fra tante”, University of Rome La Sapienza, 15 September 2021 She also delivered a paper on “Archaeological Recollections in Pirandello’s Sicilian short-stories” at The Tales of Archaeology. Towards a Literary 'Memory Map' of the Mediterranean Space Conference at the Academia Belgica in Rome on 16-18 September 2021.

Was invited to speak at an event to “Celebrate Dacia Maraini on International Women’s Day” at the University of Rhode Island on March 5, 2021.

Was invited to speak at a Career Panel at Harvard University’s Department of Romance languages on April 19, 2021.

Was invited to deliver a lecture at the University of Illinois Chicago titled "School as Family, and Magazines as Social Media: A Nineteenth Century Girl’s Education” on February 26, 2021.

Frau, O. (23 October 2020) Un rompicapo incompleto: il triangolo Antelling, De Gubernatis, Serao fra mentoring e documenti inediti [An Unfinished Puzzle: the Antelling, De Gubernatis, Serao Triangle between Mentoring and Unpublished Documents], Presented at the Ottocentismi: Inaugural Symposium of the Interdisciplinary Network for Nineteenth-Century Italian Studies (INNCIS), Seton Hall U. (delivered on Zoom)

Invited to deliver a lecture at the University of Rome La Sapienza on December 12, 2019, titled "Un 'Cuore' in esilio. Le memorie di Mantea” [An Exiled ‘Heart’. Mantea’s memoir”].

Ombretta Frau and Sabra Thorner led a gallery talk in the Mount Holyoke Art Museum on “The Afterlives of Objects” on November 7, 2019.

Ombretta Frau and Morena Svaldi held a workshop for teachers at the NEMLA conference in Springfield on October 25, 2019. The title of the workshop was "Learn In-Context Around Campus.”

Just completed a series of film screenings in 22 African countries from October 19 – 25, 2020, with the goal of getting African stories back to Africans and summed up in the phrase: “Some say we are made of flesh and blood but we believe we are made of stories.”