President's Showcase
Angelina Dobbs She/Her
Supervising Professor: Dr. Irene Zanini-Cordi
Angelina Dobbs is a junior from Denver, Colorado, majoring in English and Neuroscience. While at FSU, she completed the Women's Leadership Institute and Florida's Sex Trafficking Prevention Program. She also helped to publish a Summer 2024 edition of FSU's magazine, FLOR, when she studied abroad in Florence, Italy, with the Editing, Writing, and Media program. Passionate about research, Angelina joined Dr. Zanini-Cordi's UROP team in the Fall of 2023 to study eighteenth-century Italian women's writings. With her team, Angelina co-authored a peer-reviewed, pedagogical article for Eighteenth-Century Studies slated for publication in the Spring of 2025 and won an IDEA Grant. Using this grant, she researched, wrote, and produced three podcast episodes on the development of science and fashion in Italy. Angelina plans on further developing her research skills in a neuroscience lab, and upon graduation in 2026, she intends to become a developmental editor or pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience.
Abstract
A grand tour into the intricate networks of 18th-century sociability reveals the social connections that shaped the modern intellectual and cultural fabric of European society.
This IDEA Grant project expands our UROP research and podcast experience, which focused on how Italian Salonnières contributed to the Enlightenment. By developing the podcast series Sip and Connect: Social Networking Italian Style, we examine cultural components that shaped Italian Sociability during the eighteenth century and consider how they embodied Enlightenment Ideas. Our episodes explore the origins and growth of these innovative technological and cultural developments facilitated by social connections. We discuss topics like coffee culture, journalism, politics, early science, religion, fashion, social etiquette, art, and opera.
We researched these themes, interviewed experts, and drafted and edited scripts, culminating in our production of twelve podcasts over the summer. This series will be an integral part of an undergraduate course on 18th-century Italian Enlightenment and Sociability. In addition to our primary goal of helping students explore Enlightenment culture, we learned how to engage a broad public in scholarly topics in a conversational way and to utilize modern media to disseminate knowledge.
Our peer-reviewed article "Conversations That Shape Identity," slated for publication in Eighteenth-Century Studies, reflects on the overall meaning of our pedagogical experience and these learning outcomes, concluding with the IDEA Grant. By considering the efforts of women artists, writers, and scientists in our research, our contribution aims to reshape the androcentric conversation on Italy's cultural and scientific development during the Enlightenment.
Presentation Materials
Project Materials
