Profile

Anna Cellinese joined the Department of French and Italian in 2016. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Italian literature from Stanford University, where she also taught and coordinated the Italian language program. She has published articles on Fenoglio and Pavese as well as on popular culture and language pedagogy. Her research addresses Italian contemporary culture, second language acquisition, and curriculum development.

Anna founded the Summer Immersion program in Pisa, Italy, in collaboration with the distinguished Scuola Normale Superiore. The summer program offers a full immersion experience and allows students to interact with the territory on a linguistic, cultural, and social level. Through the analysis of concepts such as beauty, diversity, language and identity, art and social redemption, multiculturalism, race, and Afro-Italian issues, students acquire a better and deeper understanding of Italian literary and cultural outlook of societies.

In light of the transitional nature of the 21st century and its fast technological pace, Anna has designed and initiated, in collaboration with the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, a project to create an Italian digital platform that provides a dynamic and flexible approach to language acquisition suited to the well-versed minds of Princeton students.

Research Interests

Her research delves into different aspects of pedagogy and second language acquisition: from transformative learning theory to social justice in the language classroom, from writing development in higher education to language acquisition through special learning dis/ability. Through her research, she brings out the idea that, within the multilingual and cross-cultural nature of the 21st century, second language acquisition offers an opportunity to rediscover the importance of words and invest them with the power to name our past, present and the future we desire.

Books

Voci italiane: Contemporary Readings for Intermediate to Advanced Students, Routledge, July 2022.