UMass Boston

The Center for Italian Cultural Studies was generously funded by Catherine Frisone Scott, in memory of John B. Frisone. It received official recognition by the University in August 2019. 

The Center aims to be student-focused, encouraging students' passion for Italian language, literature, history and culture to enrich and augment their experiences in these subjects. It will also serve as a site of engagement for faculty, students, and the local and global community to reflect on topics of Italian cultural studies. Finally, it will be a resource for the many instructors throughout all units in the university.

Its mission includes but is not limited to:

• Facilitating research and creating an interdisciplinary resource for faculty scholars and students on campus and beyond to promote Italian Studies and generate high quality scholarship;
• Showcasing a strength of the University of Massachusetts Boston in producing scholarship and teaching with an emphasis on multilingual and global issues through the study of Italian culture;
• Attracting additional funding from public and private sources for research and scholarly programs in a humanistic field that typically does not attract funding.

Through these activities, the Center will contribute to the realization of UMass Boston’s stated mission to “serve as a catalyst for intellectual interactions with scholarly communities, students, alumni, and the public” and to “address critical social issues and contribute to the public good, both local and global.”