Congratulations to our student Rachel Hickman, who just won the National AATI Essay Contest 2019!

This is a national competition selecting the best academic work written each year by a college student in the US on an Italian-related topic. The AATI Essay Contest committee unanimously chose Rachel's essay, entitled "Donne danzanti: Subverting Social Norms in Le notti di Cabiria and Il conformista” as the winner.

Rachel, a major in Dance Studies, brought an original perspective to two masterpieces of Italian cinema, Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist. She thoughtfully reflected on the female characters' use of dance to political aims, and showed how dance serves different, yet essential purposes in the two movies. Her essay originated as the final paper in the Italian Cinema (ITT3523) class she took in Fall 2018. Her instructor, Silvia Valisa (Associate Professor of Italian Studies, FSU) found the paper so unique and well-written that she nominated Rachel for the prize.

We are excited for Rachel and are looking forward to hearing about her next steps in her academic career.