Phone: (413) 585-3424
Fax: (413) 585-3415
Email: abotta@smith.edu

146 Elm Street - Office 204
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063, USA

 

Anna Botta
Associate Professor of Italian Language and Literature
Department of Italian Language and Literature

I came to the States to study foreign literatures and to compare them to the literature of my country. Although my primary interest remains literary studies, my first teaching experience was in language classes. It was in the classroom that I first discovered that I really enjoyed the day-to-day, practical experience of teaching -- in particular the form of education that takes place whenever students are introduced to a foreign culture through the study of its language. I have found that this experience involves real communication -- that the teacher continually learns from her students, learning to see her own culture through their fresh and varied perspectives. 

As for my scholarly interests, I believe that the most satisfying results can be reached through interaction between teaching and research work. This is the reason why, in the future, I would like to continue to teach courses in my area of expertise (comparative literature in the modern and postmodern periods), but also to explore related areas (such as film studies and cultural studies of contemporary Europe).

Here at Smith I have taught courses in the Italian Department (surveys, modern Italian literature, theater, film, interior and exterior landscapes) as well as a single course in the Comparative Literature Program (on the postmodern novel). Each time I've taught it, the course has allowed me to investigate different works and different issues (such as literary experimentation as a form of play, literature and the "minor" senses, narration and the practices of everyday life, memory and the art of forgetfulness and the "two cultures"of literature and science). Although the chosen perspective varies from year to year, the course stresses an interdisciplinary approach (works of fiction are analyzed in conjunction with theoretical, philosophical and critical essays).

I believe that works of fiction in this new millennium can rightly claim the status of open encyclopedias, that they offer a summa of the ongoing dialogue between skepticism and knowledge. Their self-reflexive narratives constantly engage readers to question the most fundamental forms of perception, comprehension and competence, processes whose functioning normally depends on their invisibility. Reading the work of such authors teaches us to challenge these hidden presuppositions and, thus, to discover knowledge that we don't even know we possess, knowledge that, nonetheless, we use every day.