The Department of Transnational Italian Studies has created a new open educational resource (OER) textbook for the beginning Italian courses offered at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, to better serve, and include, BIPOC and minority students. Cotto e Mangiato: Corso di Italiano Multiculturale volumes I and II are authored by Professor Roberta Ricci and Assistant Professor Luca Zipoli, and are tailored to Tri-Co students’ interests and expectations.
“The price of Italian-language textbooks increases the financial burden of attending college, especially for under-represented students, first-generation college students, and those from low-income backgrounds,” says Zipoli. “Having this material available drastically reduces that cost.”
Furthermore, Ricci adds: “The vocabulary, language, and images most American and Italian elementary textbooks use today reinforce existing biases by presenting discriminatory and stereotyped pictures of Italian society, especially with regards to issues such as family, professions, gender, and race. By contrast, Cotto e Mangiato is an OER textbook that promotes diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion with immediate access to a zero-cost learning platform.”
Thanks to its open structure, the authors will constantly update the material to reflect the changing standards of Italian culture(s), such as femininity and masculinity, racial and gender discrimination, geopolitics, migration, incarceration, issues of power, inequity and justice, cultural diversity, and LGBTQIA+ rights.
“With Cotto e Mangiato, students will understand the transformations of 21st-century Italy through cross-cultural comparisons and will familiarize themselves with exclusivity in the Italian language regarding non-binary genders, the plural agreement, and adjectivation”, adds Ricci.
The department’s OER materials, created using Pressbooks, have been funded through four digital grants awarded through Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College libraries. Olivia Colace ’25 and Ava Panetto (HC ’23) collaborated with the department on the project. “Their contributions were essential to creating the OER online platform and to shaping the textbook based on the needs of Bryn Mawr and Haverford language learners,” says Ricci.
This new textbook is derived from Voci: Corso Elementare di Lingua e Culture Italiane, a former online platform previously distributed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license and used by the Department for the last two academic years. Voci is no longer the official textbook of Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College. In Cotto e Mangiato: Corso di Italiano Multiculturale Ricci and Zipoli included significant changes and added materials on accessibility, culturally responsive teaching, inclusive education, gender diversity, and multiculturalism. Within the framework of DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) and intersectionality, this new OER moves towards tools for creating accessible documents and centering marginal voices by responding to students’ concerns perceived as heteronormative, cisnormative, and socio-political constraints. Ricci and Zipoli wished to make an intervention on certain topics, such the nature of multi-faceted, queer family.
“For example, we revamped the way vocabulary related to family is taught, replacing traditional terms with authentic materials that challenge the notion of familial relationships as solely biological or legal bonds, a perspective that many learners find exclusionary,” explains Zipoli.
Ricci and Zipoli will continue to update their work and welcome any comments, questions, or suggestions.
Cotto e mangiato. Corso di Italiano multiculturale is under development.
NOTA BENE: Any comments, questions, or suggestions are truly appreciated. Please, feel free to contact authors Roberta Ricci and Luca Zipoli (rricci@brynmawr.edu and lzipoli@brynmawr.edu.) Grazie e buona lettura!
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