When you walk into Italian Professor Francesca Seaman’s office, you feel a sense of home. Hidden in the basement of East College, her office walls are covered with pictures of her six children, old photographs of her and her husband (Professor Michael Seaman of the Classical Studies Department here at DePauw), and the sunlight that floods in through the windows that line the top of the walls. Francesca has been teaching at DePauw for ten years, and has a true fairy tale success story.
Born and raised on a little island in Italy, Francesca needed a change of scenery by the end of her high school career. At eighteen, she fled to France where she met and fell in love with her husband. Francesca moved to the United States with her husband and worked as a waitress in Las Vegas. She did not speak much English at the time and did not have an undergraduate degree. She and her husband eventually moved to Fresno, California where Francesca attended Fresno State and studied foreign language. Francesca went on to study at Stanford University, École Normale in Paris, and then to Yale where she received her Ph.D. She was the first woman in her family to go to college! Since then she and her husband began one of the greatest school’s of Italian in Italy. Francesca has been married for twenty-five years and is the mother to six beautiful kids.
As she told me her story of love, adventure, drive, and perseverance I found myself completely forgetting about everything else that was going on. Francesca’s story is a captivating tale of what hard work and incredible courage can lead to.
HerCampus: Good morning Professor Seaman! Thank you so much for allowing HC to interview you. You have one of the most incredible stories, and we are so grateful that you are sharing it with the women of DePauw. To start things off, Can you tell us where you are from in Italy and what your high school experience was like?
Pr. Francesca Seaman: I was born on an island near Venice, In Italy, and I grew up there until I was eighteen. I went to high school in Italy, and I hated high school. On the last day of high school I burned all of my books and I swore that I would never go to school again. I left Italy when I was eighteen and I went to France. I wanted to learn other languages.
HC: Oh wow. You have definitely come a long way since high school. Now, is France where you met your husband? Can you tell us about how you two met?
FS: Yes! We met at college in Cannes, France where I was learning French, and he was learning French. He was a junior in college and I was just out of high school, running away from everything. I felt at that point that my island was very confining, and there was a sense of suffocation. The island was too small for me. Then we said that we either get married or break up, so we got married at twenty years old. We had the world against us. It was not an easy thing.
HC: That is beautiful. That is true love. It was obviously the right decision! Look how far you two have come together! When you came to the United States you went on to study at a couple of the best universities in the country. Stanford and Yale are pretty prestigious schools for someone who swore they would never go to school again. What changed your mind after your high school experience in Italy?
FS: There is something very different about the American schools, which does not exist in Italy. I think it started from the type of relationship the professor was able to install in the classroom. The idea of producing new knowledge and not just regurgitating something from the textbook was completely new and fascinating, and that gave a purpose to education and to become an educator. When I was an undergraduate student I decided that was the most exciting world in which to work, and I decided then that I would become a professor.
HC: Do you try and create that relationship with the students in your class?
FS: I hope so! I think it is more difficult in a language class than a literature class because the language is a technical skill. I do try and teach my students to become teachers. That is one of the reasons why we have the privilege and the opportunity to go and teach outside of DePauw, in the community.
HC: It sounds like you were born to become a teacher. It has become your passion. You and your husband even lead a May-Term trip to Italy each year! Can you elaborate on this trip?
FS: The main idea was born in 1991 when I was a sophomore in college. The idea was to go back to Italy, and create an authentic experience for my fellow students to come and learn the Italian language. I then founded a school of Italian for foreigners. There would be very high academic standards and I would take them to places they would have never seen by themselves. I proposed to DePauw the same opportunity to take the students in May, and to show them Italy from an insider’s perspective.
We take the students to places off the beaten path; we take them to smaller towns, the wine country, and to historical treasures that are not as visited by foreigners. The students come and live within a community on the island where I was born, and we travel from there. Everything that they see is something they wouldn’t have seen if I did not take them there. Then there is obviously the historical perspective that my husband, Michael brings that is very important.
HC: That sounds like a once in a lifetime experience for the students who attend. Wow. What an amazing opportunity you have given to this school. You are obviously very passionate about this program. What do you love about teaching Italian every day here on campus?
FS: I think it’s the relationship with the students. It’s making a change in the way a student perceives his or her potential, and trying to make a student more ambitious. When you go out a change the way you perceive your own ability, it says a lot.
HC: Would you say that building relationships with the students is the most rewarding experience you get from teaching?
FS: There are a lot of rewarding experiences, but yes, the students more than anything else, and perhaps the Winter Term in May in the sense that you live 24 hours a day with the students. You finally enter their lives in a different way, in a more informal way but a more substantial way. We have very long dinners that give us the moments where we really get to know each other. Those are the conversations that change perspective on life, not only in scholarship but also in the values that become central in your life. It’s a life-changing experience for all of us.
HC: That is a very compassionate way of looking at your profession. How much you care about your students is obvious by the way you talk about them. I have one final question for you, Professor. You are a mother of six children; Mattia, Nicholas, Selene, Hannah, Sabina, and Chiara. As a teacher, how do you teach your children about their culture? Do you speak mainly Italian at home?
FS: It’s a daily fight (laughs). It’s hard because they bring home American homework. When we speak Italian, it is usually confined to when we are in Italy. In Italy they are only allowed read Italian books. The main thing for them has been the constant coming to Italy for three months each summer.
At home we are Italian in many ways. We eat Italian foods, we talk at the dinner table in Italian, and the smells in the house are Italian. The way they are brought up is Italian for the most part. Although in many ways I would consider myself an American mother. Italian mothers are very obsessed, almost suffocating with their children, and I give them a lot more freedom.
HC: I bet your children love being able to go back to Italy each summer to see where you grew up and to experience their culture. Thank you so much Professor Seaman for telling us your incredible story.