Family heritage, love of culture inspire grad student to study Italian

Bridget Pupillo is a born storyteller. She has a talent for not just yarns, but true facts, as well.

For the past five years, Pupillo, an Italian Literature Ph.D candidate in the German and Romance Languages and Literatures department, has worked at Hopkins in varying capacities, first as an instructor of Italian elements, and now teaching a Dean’s Teaching Fellowship course on Medieval literature.

Pupillo took a few moments to sit down with The News-Letter to discuss the roots of her interest in Italian, as well as why she proposed the class she did for the Dean’s Teaching Fellowship.

 

News-Letter (N-L): What got you interested in studying Italy?

Bridget Pupillo (BP): My grandfather is actually Sicilian so I have an Italian background. I did not learn Italian at home — my parents don’t speak Italian, but I have always felt a connection to the culture and I decided to study there my junior year in college, sort of on a whim. I was actually a studio art major and I knew it would be a good place to study art and art history, but when I got there I just fell in love with the culture and the food and the language. I tried to find any opportunity possible to get back there — it just felt like I belonged. That’s where my interest began. And after I got back I started taking more literature courses and I realized that there was so much to learn about the literature of Italy and that’s really what I decided to focus on.

 

N-L: So how did you end up at Hopkins?

BP: I had a friend, actually, who was in the department here. He was finishing up his Ph.D in Italian studies when I was looking to apply and he really encouraged me to apply here. I didn’t know if I had any chance of getting in here, so I applied to many different programs at many different schools, and then I was accepted here and it really did sound like the best place for me. I’ve been really happy since I’ve gotten here and it’s a great place to be studying literature. I know when I tell people I’m at Johns Hopkins they say, “Oh it’s a great medical school”. They don’t realize that we have a really strong language program here. So it’s been a really great experience and I feel like people are very positive and encouraging of interesting scholarship and even though there aren’t any professors that study specifically what I am doing, they are more than happy to accommodate me and help me find people with whom I can work.

 

N-L: Can you tell me a bit about some of the classes that you teach?

BP: Up until now I’ve taught only language classes. I’ve taught Elements, which is beginning Italian, and I’ve taught Intermediate and I really love teaching those classes. It’s so much fun and we have a great time. This semester, I am actually teaching a Dean’s Fellowship course that I applied for, and this time, it’s literature instead of language. It’s something completely different and new, but I’m really liking it so far. It’s a great group of kids — they are really smart. We are looking at the perspectives on Islam that Europe had in the Middle Ages.

We are not just doing Italian literature, but also French and Spanish. And we are looking mostly at Europeans’ perspective, as in Christians, but not exclusively, as we are also looking at someone who lived in Spain and was Muslim, but wrote in Arabic. We are looking at some stereotypes that are a little bit negative in the beginning, but we are going to work towards the positive influence.

N-L: Do you have a background in Islamic Studies?

BP: I don’t have a background, let’s say, officially. But I always knew that it was something I wanted to focus on for my Ph.D. So, I began taking Arabic courses when I first got here and I also worked when I was studying in Rome this past semester, and I worked together with someone who was an Arabic speaker and I read some Medieval literature in Arabic. I’m mostly working on my own, to gain a knowledge of Arabic culture, particularly mystical traditions in the Middle Ages. So, it’s a little bit tough because we don’t have a religious studies department here at Hopkins, but my professors are really open and encouraging, so that’s been really helpful.

 

N-L: So, I’m curious. How many languages do you speak?

BP: I speak Italian fluently and I can get by pretty well in French. I can understand Spanish just fine. We have to be able to read Latin at a certain level to finish the Ph.D so I can read Latin fairly well. I’m working on Arabic — that’s definitely the toughest of all of them, so it’s going to be a long process.

 

N-L: What are your plans for the future?

BP: Well, I hope to finish next year, so that’s the first goal. I really want to be a professor when I finish my Ph.D. I love teaching — it’s my number one goal so I’m hoping to find a job where I can teach not only language, but literature like I am doing now — it would be pretty great to be able to do both. I hope that I can continue to do more inter-disciplinary things in my future scholarship because I really enjoy combining diverse things together.