The twelfth ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession will be presented to Christopher Kleinhenz, Carol Mason Kirk Professor of Italian at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, at the MLA Annual Convention in Philadelphia. The first Italianist to be presented with this award, Christopher Kleinhenz is honored for his exceptional contributions to the field of foreign languages and literatures at the postsecondary level. During his tenure as president of the American Association of Teachers of Italian (1999-2003), he spearheaded the movement to create an Italian language advanced placement (AP) program with the College Board. This major achievement was made possible through his tireless efforts in bringing together representatives of high schools, universities, consulates, the Italian Embassy, and Italian American organizations; the AP program was established in 2003. A task force recommended by Kleinhenz is now in place, designing and developing the AP curriculum and examination. He has served as chair of the Department of French and Italian and as associate chair for the Italian faculty at the University of Wisconsin, overseeing the spectacular growth of Italian at the university. He also assisted in the creation of Italian courses in a number of Wisconsin high schools. He has designed an elementary Italian curriculum and accompanying textbook that are widely used in the UW-Extension system. For his dedication in promoting Italian in North America, he received the University of Wisconsin’s Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2004. He is an advocate for a unified curriculum formed of courses in language, literature, and civilization and a promoter of the idea that senior scholars must not disdain teaching language in the undergraduate curriculum. He has served as president of the American Boccaccio Association and the Medieval Association of the Midwest and has been a member or chair of numerous committees and editorial boards. He has operated as an external consultant for many grants, awards, doctoral committees, and program reviews and has organized over a dozen conferences in the United States and Italy. He is the author of many scholarly books, articles, translations, book reviews, and bibliographies and is currently preparing a teaching guide on Petrarch for the MLA.
The colleagues who nominated Christopher Kleinhenz for the ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession write glowingly of his accomplishments, his determination to bring Italian to the community at large, and his singular personal traits. As one writes, “One marvels at the energy that any one person could have devoted, not only to his career, but to every aspect of it.” Another colleague writes of the unique qualities that have sustained his career, “selflessness, dedication, the willingness to take on often thankless tasks that contribute to the good of the whole, diplomacy, thoughtfulness, and, I believe, great joy in what he does.”
ADFL welcomes nominations for this award. Criteria specify that the award is given for outstanding service to the profession in the larger community, not for recognition of scholarly accomplishments. Anyone wishing to nominate a candidate should write a letter of no more than two typed pages, gather three supporting letters, and forward these materials, together with the nominee’s vita, to Nelly Furman, Director, ADFL, 26 Broadway, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10004-1789 (adfl@mla.org). The ADFL Executive Committee acts on nominations at its spring meetings and confers the award only in years when a particularly outstanding candidate is nominated.
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