With film, music, and humor, this webinar will examine representations of the Italian language in the American media and how they affect Americans’ perceptions of the language and culture. In contrast to these portrayals of Italian as truncated, fragmented, and unrefined, we will consider how grammar has been embraced by Italians historically as a means of unifying Italy when it lacked a centralized government and clear political borders. Finally, we will look at the congiuntivo, or subjunctive, as a contemporary example of Italian’s elegance and complexity, and discuss the centrality of the Italian language to Italians’ conception of national identity.

Erin McCarthy King, Ph.D. has been teaching Italian Language and Literature since 2004. Erin earned a combined B.A. and M.A. in Italian Language and Literature from Yale University in 1998 and then her Ph.D. from Yale in 2009. She has taught Italian as a Lector at Yale and as an Instructor at Sacred Heart University, Southern Connecticut State University, Quinnipiac University, The Hopkins School, and is currently an affiliate faculty member at Fairfield University. Erin has published several articles, including “The Voyage of Columbus as a ‘non pensato male‘: The Search for Boundaries, Grammar, and Authority in the Aftermath of the New World Discoveries” © 2012, and has presented several conference research papers including “The Logic of the Clock: Dante’s Similes of the Horologe in Paradiso X and XXIV” and most recently, “Language and the Expansion of the Ecumene in the Mondo nuovo of Tommaso Stigliani.” Erin serves as an alumna interviewer for Yale College Admissions and as a member of the Yale Alumni Schools Committee. In her spare time, Erin and her husband are very busy parents to their four children.