Bella Dante, ELTS PhD candidate in Italian Studies
Bella Dante was selected as a 2025 winner of the Casola Prize, a prestigious honor given by the Patrons of Italian Culture (picla.org), a California non-profit operating under the auspices of the Consul General of Italy. Their Casola Prize is a competitive college scholarship that rewards the academic study of Italian and the expansion of Italian culture at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Dante was one of three winners out of a pool of more than thirty. In addition to teaching Italian for three years in ELTS, Dante also highlighted a specific class that helped her pivot her teaching capabilities: the Italian Cinema course on Spaghetti Westerns (alongside Professor Thomas Harrison and Hiju Kim) in the of Fall 2024. With this scholarship, Dante will be able to carry out archival research at Cineteca in Bologna for her dissertation.