Alessia Valfredini

EDUCATION

• MA University of Turin, Italy
• PhD The Graduate School of Education, Fordham University

BIOGRAPHY

After earning her MA at the University of Turin (Italy) and teaching in Italian public schools, Dr. Valfredini moved to New York and pursued a PhD in Language, Learning, and Literacy at the Graduate School of Education of Fordham University, where she's been teaching since 2004. Dr. Valfredini believes in engaged, value-based pedagogy and is invested in raising questions of identity, social justice, and racial justice in world language classrooms and curricula. She is interested in the sociocultural dimensions of language and in multilingual academic literacy.

What she likes the most about teaching is being an active part of the community that emerges in each classroom. She enjoys any collaborative interaction with her students. She values languages as a remarkable entry point to world-views and perspectives. She strives for her courses to raise important questions and for the journey spent seeking answers to be worthy and transformative.

COURSES TAUGHT

Italian Community Engaged Learning: Art & Society

Introductory Italian I and II, Intensive Introductory Italian, Intermediate Italian I and II, Advanced Italian, Italian Language and Literature, Italian Conversation and Composition.

PUBLICATIONS

Publications and Presentations:

For a Critical pedagogy of Genuine Commitment to All Students in Italian Studies. Studi d’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe/Italian Studies in Southern Africa (2022, Vol. 35, 1, 64-70)

Reflections of and on Diversity: (Re) Discussing Course Materials. In Gibby, S., and Tamburri, A. (Eds.), Diversity in Italian Studies, (177-192). Calandra Institute, Diversity in Italian Studies (2021).

What’s in a book? A social justice approach to FL textual contents (and discontents). Co-authored with Chiara Fabbian and Emanuela Zanotti Carney. In Dupuy, B., and McNichols, K. (Eds.), Pathways to paradigm change: Critical examinations of prevailing discourses and ideologies in second language education. AAUSC (2019).

Developing cultural literacy: The contrastive study of TV advertisements. The Journal of Language Teaching and Technology (2018, Issue 1, 2-14)

(Trans) formative by Design: Curricula for 21st Century Citizenship. Textbook Content and Cultural (Mis) Representations Presenter In absentia. Co-presenters: Chiara Fabbian and Emanuela Zanotti Carney Italian Language and Culture Conference: Innovation in Italian Programs and Pedagogy Georgetown University, Washington D.C. (October 26, 2019)

Fostering a Culture of Diversity: Classroom, Curriculum, and Institutional context Presenter, Roundtable “Fostering Diversity in the Italian Classroom and Beyond" NeMLA 50th Anniversary Convention, Washington, D.C. (March 21-24, 2019)

Effective Course Design for L2 Writing Development Presenter, Roundtable “Crossing the Intermediate Border: Towards Advanced Writing Competency” NeMLA 50th Anniversary Convention, Washington, D.C. (March 21-24, 2019)

Reflections of and on Diversity: (Re) Discussing Course Materials Presenter, The Calandra Institute Symposium on “Diversity in Italian Studies: Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality, Disability Studies, Class” (January 17-18, 2019)

The TILCA paper was forthcoming but should now be 2018.

Preparing for life and career in the 21st Century: A Role for Italian courses from a multilingual, multicultural, interdisciplinary, and critical perspectiv TILCA Journal - Teaching Italian Language and Culture Annual (forthcoming)

An interdisciplinary, multicultural, multilingual, critically-engaged take on Italian conversation and composition Presenter, Italian Language and Culture Conference: Innovation in Italian Programs and Pedagogy Georgetown University, Washington D.C. (October 21, 2017)

Nutella a colazione: Examining cultural representations in commercials Presenter, NeMLA Annual Convention Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (March 23-26, 2017)

Teaching 21st century skills through collaborative multimodal writing Co-Presenter with Dr. Kathleen LaPenta, ACTFL American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Boston, MA (November 18-20, 2016)

A study on the impact of contextual elements on the internal resources that mediate writing Presenter, SSLW, Symposium on Second Language Writing Arizona State University, Tempe (AZ) (October 19-22, 2016)

Laurie: A case study of undergraduate writing across languages Presenter, NYS TESOL Annual Conference White Plains, NY (November 13-14, 2015)

Studying the process of writing in a foreign language: An overview of the methods Published in the Journal of Language Teaching and Research (June 2015, issue 5)

Conversation and composition, redesigned Presenter, ACTFL American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages San Antonio, TX (November 21-23, 2014)

Undergraduate academic writing across languages: A sociocultural study Presenter, SSLW, Symposium on Second Language Writing Arizona State University, Tempe (AZ) (November 13-15, 2014)

Providing effective feedback to student writing: Contexts & purposes Presenter, IUP Spring Methodology Conference on Foreign Language Teaching Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Blairsville, PA (April 25, 2014)

Teaching foreign language composition in the 21st century Presenter, ACTFL American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Philadelphia, PA (November 16-18, 2012)

An Italian mode of thinking: Perspectives from college foreign language writers Presenter, AERA American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, BC, CANADA (April 16-18, 2012)

Cross-language relations in composition: Understanding the multilingual nature of composition courses Published book review, Journal of Second Language Writing (February 2012) B. Horner, M. Lu, P.K. Matsuda (Eds.), Cross-language relations in composition Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL, (2010) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2012.01.002

How to teach our students to be active foreign language readers Presenter, NECTFL, North East Conference for Teaching the Foreign Languages, New York, NY (April 1, 2006)