Francesca Santovetti received a doctorate, summa cum laude, from the University of Rome La Sapienza in English and Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in Italian Studies. She has taught Italian and Cinema at UCLA, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Mt. Holyoke College.
Professor Santovetti’s principal research interests are modern literature, cultural politics, intellectual history, linguistics, and film studies. She has written, edited, and translated books and essays on eighteenth-century aesthetics, modern topography, fluvial culture, the cinema of poetry, film adaptation, public intellectuals, and slow food. Most recently she edited and wrote the introduction to Modernitalia by Jeffrey T. Schnapp (London: P. Lang, 2013) --a comparative study of Italian modernities.
She has served on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music since 2007, teaching Italian to undergraduates. At NEC, she developed in 2012 the model for the Modern Languages curriculum and recently proposed an Italian III course. She is a member of the Foreign Language Center.
Last but not least, Francesca holds a diploma from the French Cordon Bleu Cuisine School, and likes to think of herself as an educated, trans-national chef. After all, gastronomic recipes have always helped her students to overcome the difficulties in learning the secrets of the 'imperativo', and the 'forma impersonale'.