In 2006, I moved to Italy after graduating with a BA in Italian and English literature from DePaul University. As coordinator of the language program at an Irish cultural association in Rome, I discovered a passion for teaching second-language acquisition as well as literature and other contemporary forms of cultural productions. These interests led me to return to the US five years later and pursue a PhD in Italian studies, which I completed at Harvard University in 2017. Since then, I have taught Italian-language at Harvard and USC, and Italian and comparative literature at Tsinghua University. My first book, Mythologist in Microgroove, published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in 2023, analyzes popular Italian countercultural cantautori (singer-songwriters) and modern mythologies. This and my other research interests are born out of and feed back into my pedagogical goals in both language and literature/culture courses, as they are, to my mind, topics that are of great interest to students today and/or are of central importance to the contemporary world. You can read more about my teaching philosophy here.