Italianist Spotlight: Alumnus Brian Tholl

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I recently caught up with former Penn State Italian student Brian Tholl in Hartford, CT at the Northeast Modern Language Association’s annual conference. He is currently a graduate student in Italian at Rutgers University.

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Brian and colleague Eleanora Sartoni at the 2016 NeMLA convention.

What is your research about?

My research concerns confino – the forced peripheral exile of Italians during Mussolini’s fascist regime. I hope to explore the relationship between imprisonment and southern Italy.

What is your favorite thing about Italian culture?

My favorite thing about Italian culture is that it encompasses so many different things and is hard to define. We often think of the country’s past, including its tremendous accomplishments in literature, art, and and architecture, to name a few, but equally as important is the local culture of the country, which varies greatly from region to region. There’s always something new to learn about the culture!

How has your perspective regarding the language changed as you shifted from being a student to a teacher?

I think as a student I was always trying to make the language fit into a neat, little box. However, Italian is a living, breathing language and cannot always be organized using a specific set of rules. My classes encompass far more than memorization, and I like to convey this idea to my students. I think it allows them to be curious and engage with the language in different ways. They start to question why you say certain things in one way in Italian, and begin to wonder what this means for a speaker of the language.

What is the best advice that you could give to students studying Italian at Penn State?
Learning a language is such a tough, but rewarding experience. It requires work, but you don’t need to treat it like a job. Try to have fun with the language and interact with it as much as possible. Listen to Italian music, watch Italian films, go to Tavola Italiana, or grab a coffee with your professors and chat in Italian. There are approximately 67 million speakers of Italian in the world – you never know who you’ll meet or what kind of opportunities you’ll find because of your ability to speak the language. Forza!
Interview by jrwagner

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