Beppe Cavatorta, Professor of Italian, is the 2024 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the American Association of Teachers of Italian.
The national recognition is given annually in two categories, College/University and K-12. The AATI, founded in 1924, is unique in the field for including teachers at all levels, both high school and university, Cavatorta said.
“The Committee especially recognized Dr. Cavatorta’s invaluable, tireless, exemplary, and distinguished service and commitment to the AATI; dedication and distinguished record as teacher, mentor, scholar, and advocate of Italian Studies; and collaborative spirit and collegiality,” according to the award announcement.
Cavatorta was previously elected president of the American Association of Teachers of Italian, with a three-year term beginning in January 2018, and also served as a regional representative. Additionally, he’s been involved with the Advanced Placement test in Italian since it began in 2006, including serving as Chief Reader for several years.
“This association is what best represents Italian in the United States. Having the possibility to work with high school teachers has been one of the perks of the association. For me, it has been a great opportunity to learn what high school teachers do, support their work, and, at the same time, learn from them,” he said.
The award is one of the few national awards given to scholars of Italian, and the only one given not for scholarly performance, but for service and for teaching, which Cavatorta said he’s most passionate about. And with the University of Arizona having one of the largest Italian programs in the country in terms of majors, it’s a passion shared by all faculty members.
“We have extremely talented people teaching our language courses and that makes students fall in love with Italian,” Cavatorta said. “We try to make everything relevant to the students and their lives and we offer courses based on how Italy is today. The main goal for us is for students to master the language so they can go to Italy and experience it the way it’s meant to be experienced.”
For example, one of the courses Cavatorta is teaching this semester is one he was initially hired to teach, 310 – Italian Encounters: Spoken Italian in Context. The course explores Italy through the decades, from the 1940s to today, through the lens of literature, art, music, cinema and more.
In the spring, he’ll teach a section of the popular general-education course 160D – Food for Thought in Italian Culture. Again using literature, cinema and more, Cavatorta and students will explore Italian food from the Middle Ages until today, learning the myriad ways food impacts culture and history. Food for Thought is a course that was created with input from the entire Italian faculty.
For another ongoing project, Italian in Wonderland, Cavatorta is collaborating with fellow faculty members Maria Letizia Bellocchio and Borbi Gaspar to create a digital platform that transforms Italian classes to deliver language instruction combined with relevant, up-to-date cultural lessons. The project, funded by a three-year, $150,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, represents a fundamental shift away from expensive textbooks to modules that can be updated regularly as culture changes and will be an open resource for Italian teachers anywhere.
“Having an Italian major or minor is great for students,” Cavatorta said. “When they reach the fifth semester, it’s really like a big family. The classes become closely knit and everyone knows each other.”