- Professor of Italian & Film Media | Section Head, Italian Program
- Phone: 401.874.4721
- Email: csama@uri.edu
- Office Location: Swan 106
Biography
Catherine Sama came to Rhode Island to pursue her doctorate at Brown University and–aside from frequent trips to her home-away-from-home in Venice, Italy–she has never left “Little Rhody”. She enjoys teaching a wide range of courses at URI, from Italian language & culture classes to advanced courses in Italian literature and film. Specific areas of focus include early modern Italian women writers; Italian dramatic cinema from Neorealism to the present; genocide in Italian literature & film; and the use of online platforms to enhance students’ learning experience(i.e., video-chats with native speakers; news platforms of current world events reported in Italian).
Research
- Women in the Italian Resistance
- Collaboration between Italian Partisans and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services
- Digital Humanities
- Gender Studies
- Correspondence Networks
- Eighteenth-Century Italian Women Writers and Artists
- Teaching & Learning Language /& Culture with Online Platforms
Professor Sama’s current research project is focused on the activities of Italian women partisans from the Veneto region who collaborated with the United States Office of Strategic Services to end Fascist and Nazi control of Italy. The project explores the actions, dilemmas, fears, and hopes of individual women and men involved in this fight, as seen through primary sources such as interviews with the partisans and OSS agents; military documents now de-classified; private letters and papers; and interviews with descendants on both Italian and American sides. Her goal is to create a limited series podcast in order to bring these stories to a broad audience.
Education
- Ph.D. Italian Studies, Brown University, 1995
- B.A., French major, Italian minor, University of Virginia, 1985
Selected Publications
“Going Digital: Re-Searching Connections between Rosalba Carriera and British Grand Tourists,” in Giovanna Ceserani, A World Made by Travel: The Digital Grand Tour (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2024).
“Integrating ‘Talk Abroad’ into an Intermediate Foreign Language Course: Building Learner Autonomy and Engagement Through Video Conversations with Native Speakers,” co-authored with Yu Wu. In Teaching Language and Teaching Literature in Virtual Environments, edited by Maria Luisa Carrió-Pastor (Springer Singapore, 2019): 73-94.
“Access to the ‘Other Voice’: Reading Italian Women Writers in North America,” in La storia di genere in Italia in età moderna (Roma: Viella Editrice, 2014), 197-211. Italy’s Eighteenth Century: Gender and Culture in the Age of the Grand Tour, edited by Paula Findlen, Wendy Roworth, and Catherine M. Sama (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).
“‘On Canvas and on the Page’:” Women Shaping Culture in Eighteenth-Century Venice,” in Italy’s Eighteenth Century: Gender and Culture in the Age of the Grand Tour, edited by Paula Findlen, Wendy Roworth, and Catherine M. Sama (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 125-150; 383-393.
“Luisa Bergalli e le sorelle Carriera: un rapporto d’amicizia e di collaborazione professionale,” in Luisa Bergalli poetessa drammaturga traduttrice critica letteraria, edited by Adriana Chemello (Mirano-Venice: Eidos, 2008), 59-75.
“Liberty, Equality, Frivolity! An Italian Critique of Fashion Periodicals.” Eighteenth-Century Studies vol. 37, no. 3 (2004): 389-414.
Elisabetta Caminer Turra, Selected Writings of an Eighteenth-Century Venetian Woman of Letters. Edited, translated and with an introduction by Catherine M. Sama (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)
Grants/Fellowships/Awards
- URI Foundation Teaching Excellence Award winner, 2017
- National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship, 2014