Background
Stefania Buccini was born in Naples, Campania, Italy to the family of a scientist.
Stefania Buccini studied at the University Of Naples where she achieved Italian Laurea degree.
Stefania Buccini continued her education at Brown University to become Doctor of Philosophy in 1989.
(The curiosity with which Europeans approached the New Wor...)
The curiosity with which Europeans approached the New World was reflected in the writings of Italian historians, missionaries, travelers, and explorers, who described with fascination the customs of the peoples they encountered in their travels. In this study Stefania Buccini examines the representation of the Americas in Italian literature during the Age of the Enlightenment. She begins by analyzing the motivations and circumstances behind the emergence of the myth of the "noble savage." Eighteenth-century Italy had a strong orientation toward the more "advanced" American societies of the Incas and the Aztecs, and these pre-Columbian civilizations became the preferred myth, dissociated from any notion of wildness and easily compatible with illuministic canons of progress. However, a new America - revolutionary and democratic, animated by noble principles of liberty and equality - was soon formed, onto which the old Europe projected its dreams of renewal. As the New World came to be associated with the English colonies, Benjamin Franklin, scientist, writer of political and moral works, and founder of the new republic, gained the stature of an illuministic myth in Italy. Buccini finds that the myths of the old and new Americas meshed and created a more complex image of the New World for the Italians.
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1997
Stefania Buccini was born in Naples, Campania, Italy to the family of a scientist.
Stefania Buccini studied at the University Of Naples where she achieved Italian Laurea degree. She continued her education at Brown University to become Doctor of Philosophy in 1989.
Buccini joined the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1988, becoming a full professor in 1999. She has taught subjects ranging from Italian language courses through graduate seminars with phenomenal success.
She has developed and sustained important educational opportunities for both undergraduates and graduate students in international settings, through her leadership in study-abroad programs; her contributions to the University of Wisconsin Italian language immersion program “Piazza Italia,” housed in the campus’s International Learning Community; and her innovations for international seminars.
(The curiosity with which Europeans approached the New Wor...)
1997Stefania Buccini possesses liberal and progressive political views.
Quotations: “I never had a flash of enlightenment concerning vocation, nor did I decide to be a teacher. Becoming a teacher wasn’t a rational choice. It was the natural progression of an instinct that I felt very early in life.”
Quotes from others about the person
Patrick Rumble, professor and chair of French and Italian: “Professor Buccini is profoundly Italian, while at the same time an American citizen fascinated by this, her second country and culture. The result is an enlightening body of work revealing a deep understanding of the intersection of the two.”