California State University International Program Florence

Professor Beatrice Fabbri is currently a professor of Italian Literature at the California State International program in Florence. Dr. Fabbri graduated cum laude in History (with a specialization in the Age of Enlightenment) from the University of Florence in 2004. Her thesis concerned Olympe de Gouges, one of the  most prominent French revolutionary women that had been either a political activist or a playwright and writer of novels. The meeting with this poliedric and passionate woman of the XVIII century influenced her academic experiences in finding closer relations between history and literature.  Her thesis is currently awaiting publication.

She also attended, in Ireland, Trinity College in Dublin, 1985 and in France Université de Grenoble, 1989 and Reims, 1991 where she obtained degrees in foreign languages. In Reims, she attended some courses in classical history (especially roman history).  
During the 90s she was chosen to participate for two years in a  Summer School devoted to Women’s History and Literature held at the Certosa di Pontignano (Si) and arranged by the Università degli Studi di Siena. She participated actively in workshops and seminars and wrote for the Bulletin of the Women Historical Society about gender issues and on new approaches in teaching and transmission of knowledge between different generations of women.  

Back in Florence she also obtained a degree in Library science (1994) and worked as reference librarian for scholars and teachers at the Institut Français de Florence and planned the reorganization of the internal archives.
       
She worked as teacher of Italian, history and philosophy in some High-schools in Florence (2004-2007) where she increased her skills in teaching and communication on literary and historical topics. At the beginning of 2007, she was chosen to collaborate with the Regione Toscana in a project concerning vocational training for young women.    

Her collaboration with CSUIP in Florence has reinvigorated her passion for Italian literature and especially for women writers. Her first course (spring term 2006) obtained great success with students and allowed her to return to her literary interests. The course was devoted to Sibilla Aleramo, Natalia Ginzburg, Elsa Morante, Anna Banti and last but not least the poet Alda Merini.   During her fall course devoted to an Italian Survey of literature, she included in her syllabus some relevant women writers such as Catherine of Sienne, Veronica Franco and Vittoria Colonna.

Since her studies and personal interests recurrently touch gender issues she loves to teach and enjoys the presence of several young women in the courses as well as young guys interested in broadenning their interests. She encourages students in reading and approaching texts directly, and to experiment the beauty of each single word no matter if they are dealing with a short-story, a poem or a novel.  Neverthless she always offers an historical background to literary works and movements because it's useful to  her philosophy of teaching in a mixture of stylistic analysis of texts and emotional training given by writers. She believes that “Literature masterpieces give us a challenge to be better in our daily life, no matter if they lived a century or more or simply 40 years ago”.   

She has been working, since 1990, as a translator for some Italian publishing houses devoted to history and religious themes.  Currently she is also working on the role of classical mythology (especially the myth of Artemis in some relevant ItalianWomen writers' works such as Sibilla Aleramo, Elsa Morante, and the american writer Mary Alcott). 

She loves to swim and to cook during her spare time.