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Department ofModern Languages and Literatures

Stories

Emma Ferrell

Emma Ferrell

A Passion for Italian

During her college search, Emma Ferrell '17 knew she wanted to pursue Italian and credits the SCU Italian program as a main deciding factor for attending Santa Clara. She recalls declaring an Italian major after Professor Bubula-Phillips convinced her it was the right thing considering her experience with Italian in high school and passion for the language. Besides being an Italian Major, Emma majored in English and minored in Urban Education. When talking about the impact Italian had on her other classes and studies, she said, “there is a lot of overlap between what we study in Italian Studies and in English, especially when it comes to literature. We’ll talk about post colonial literature, ... immigration and racism, cultural divides, [which] ends up overlapping a lot with stuff we talk about in urban education or ... in English so they actually complemented each other pretty well.” During her time at Santa Clara, Emma had the opportunity to study abroad in Perugia, Italy in the fall of 2015 and take part in an internship at a local shop. “The internship I had was really incredible because …  for 2-3 hours a week I was sitting there, with another Italian and volunteer who usually didn’t speak any English… If there was no one there or nothing to do, we would just be talking about politics or social movements and music and it was really wonderful, just to talk to another young person who was in a similar position as me but living in a different country in terms of the things we were concerned and passionate about…” Overall, Emma advices people to study a language they are passionate about, mentioning the community and skills she has gained, such as, “learning to see the world through a different syntax and a different set of vocabularies.”