Italy Reads Goes to Naples!
JCU Italy Reads in Naples
JCU’s Italy Reads program is John Cabot University’s community-based reading and cultural exchange program that began in 2009 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for The Big Read Rome. The success of The Big Read Rome led John Cabot University to expand this American cultural exchange program to a wider Italian high school community and create our own program which we called Italy Reads. This year’s novel is F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
As part of this year’s activities, Italy Reads student volunteers have been busy visiting Italian public high schools or helping out in the English Theatre of Rome’s theatrical performance of The Great Gatsby.
On Friday, 9 November six Italy Reads 2012 Volunteers together with JCU Prof. Elizabeth Geoghegan traveled to ISIS ‘E. De Nicola’ in Naples for the second visit between students in the framework of the Italy Reads 2012 program. On 26 October, 100 students and professors from ISIS ‘E. De Nicola’ traveled to John Cabot University to meet with Italy Reads Volunteers, enjoy lunch and 1920s foxtrot lessons together in the Marc and Peggy Spiegel Student Center and participate in the theatrical performance ‘The Great Gatsby: Five Parties and a Funeral’ by The English Theatre of Rome for JCU’s Italy Reads.
Students and teachers from JCU’s local community are enthusiastic about all that JCU volunteers are doing to contribute to their experience of American culture. Here’s what some of them have to say about it:
My students and I greatly enjoyed interacting with the JCU Community and were fascinated by the international environment at the University.
-Maria, teacher at Istituto Superiore Statale ‘Niccolò Machiavelli’ (Rome)
I was very pleased with the volunteers, [..] so joyful, full of energy and competent so well prepared and professional. They added their personal experience of reading the book, and shared aspects and nuances we could only learn from American students.
-Grazia, head of English department at Liceo ‘Virgilio’ (Rome)
