Professor Clorinda Donato appointed George L. Graziadio Chair of Italian Studies at California State University, Long Beach

The College of Liberal Arts at California State University, Long Beach is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Clorinda Donato as the George L. Graziadio Chair of Italian Studies. A professor of both French and Italian, Professor Donato has devoted her career to promoting the study of global languages and cultures. She received a BA in Italian from UC Berkeley. She received her MA in Italian and a PhD in Romance Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics from UCLA. Professor Donato brings a deep and abiding commitment to Italian Studies to her new position. With more than two decades of service to California State University, Long Beach, Professor Donato has been instrumental in the success of the undergraduate and graduate programs in languages at the university, in particular in the establishment of the BA Program in Italian Studies, the Single-Subject Credential in Italian, and a proposal to offer the Master’s Degree in Italian Studies at CSULB.

Professor Donato’s academic record reflects a longstanding commitment to excellence. In 2005 she was awarded the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Government. She has published over 40 articles on the reception of the French Enlightenment in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Spain, with a particular focus on encyclopedism and Fortunato Bartolomeo de Felice’s Encyclopédie d’Yverdon. She published The ‘Encyclopédie’ in the Age of Revolution_with Bob Maniquis (1992) and has co-edited (with Alain Cernuschi, Jean-Daniel Candaux and Jens Haesler) L¹Encyclopédie d¹Yverdon et sa résonance européenne: contextes contenus prolongements, Slatkine, 2005. A co-edited volume (with Hans Boedeker and Peter Reill) Discourses of Tolerance and Intolerance in the Eighteenth Century was published by Toronto University Press (March 2009). Her current research achievements are reflected in the recently- completed manuscript, Dissecting Gender in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Italy: The Case of Catterina Vizzani, the co-edited manuscript Jesuit Accounts of the Colonial Americas: Textualities, Intellectual Disputes, Intercultural Transfer and a forthcoming article in Italian Studies, “Where ‘Reason and the Sense of Venus are Innate in Men’: Male Friendship, Secret Societies, Academies, and Antiquarians in Eighteenth-Century Florence”.

Professor Donato looks forward to working closely with the Italian-American community of Southern California in advancing the George L. Graziadio Center to new levels of academic excellence and outreach to the community whose vision made the creation of the Chair and the Center possible.

The College of Liberal Arts and California State University, Long Beach are proud of Professor Donato’s many achievements and pleased to announce her appointment to this prestigious position.