Veronica Vegna specializes in teacher training, foreign language acquisition and contemporary Italian cinema. Her doctoral dissertation examined representations of gender dynamics in mafia contexts in contemporary Italian cinema. She teaches Italian language, culture, cinema, and foreign language acquisition theory and pedagogy. She also directs the Italian Language Program and coordinates the Languages Across the Curriculum Program.
Veronica’s interests and publications are on language and culture acquisition, contemporary Italian cinema (in particular cinematic representations of women in relation to the Mafia), Italian-American literature and literature of migration. She is currently working on a project that explores ways of raising cultural awareness in language classes through the use of social media.
Book
- Donne, mafia e cinema. Una prospettiva interdisciplinare. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2017.
Review: Oblio, VII, 25 (2017), pp. 166-169.
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
- “A satirical Gaze on Sicily: Ficarra and Picone’s L’ora legale (2017)”, in Screening Sicily, McFarland & Company (2020): 81-99.
- “La mafia senza gloria in Placido Rizzotto”, Luci e Ombre, www.rivistalucieombre.com (Summer 2016)
- Review of Piazza: luogo di incontri, in Quaderni di italianistica, vol 36:1 (2015): 281-284
- “Il ruolo della madre in relazione alla mafia ne I cento passi”, in Il cinema di Marco Tullio Giordana. Interventi critici, Vecchiarelli Editore (2014): 69-80
- “La mafia al femminile: un’analisi di Angela di Roberta Torre”, in Incontri culturali tra due mondi, Metauro Edizioni (2014): 249-258
- “Identità e percezione dell’immigrato italiano negli USA”, Voices in Italian Americana, Vol. 24, Nos 1 &2, Bordighera Press (2013): 27-32
- “Madri e mafia ne I cento passi e ne La siciliana ribelle”, Luci e Ombre, www.rivistalucieombre.com, (March-April 2013): 88-94
Awards, Honors and Professional Experience
- Grants from the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning, The University of Chicago
- College Teaching Innovation Grants, The University of Chicago
- Fulbright Grant, Bard College, NY
- Italian language teaching award, Italian Ministry of Education and the British Council, London, UK
- Leonardo Project, European Commission
- Erasmus project, European Commission, Zaragoza, Spain
Recent Courses in RLL
- ITAL 20100 Language, History, and Culture I (Autumn 2017, Autumn 2018, Autumn 2019)
- ITAL 20200 Language, History, and Culture II (Winter 2017, Winter 2018, Winter 2019, Winter 2020)
- ITAL 20300 Language, History, and Culture III (Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019)
- ITAL 20600 Cinema italiano: lingua e cultura (Spring 2020)
- ITAL 27500 Women and the Mafia in Contemporary Italian Cinema (Spring 2019)
- RLLT 38800 Foreign Language Acquisition, Research and Teaching (Autumn 2016)
