Dear CAIS colleagues,

I hope that you are well. I write today to let you know that, after much reflection, I will need to step down as President of CAIS.

It was a very difficult decision as I have enjoyed this role and working with all of you tremendously.

On October 1, 2022, I began my term as Interim Provost & Vice-President, Academic at Toronto Metropolitan University and, as such, feel that I can no longer dedicate the time and effort necessary to do a great job as President of the Association.

I have felt extremely honoured and privileged to represent CAIS over the last two years, during and coming out of the pandemic. As an Association, we have organized two wonderful conferences on important themes, such as Black Italy in 2020, and we have collegially undertaken the review of our Constitution to make it more modern and more flexible, a living document that reflects the needs of our membership and our discipline.

I have had a few days to reflect on the importance of our discipline and of the Humanities in general and, while I am worried (like many of you) about enrollments and retention, I am also hopeful that Italian Studies will continue to thrive but only with our hard work in advocacy and ensuring that the work we do at our respective universities continues to be innovative and speaks to the students we have in front of us today.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support and my request is that you keep promoting CAIS to your networks for us to recruit more scholars as members of our Association.

I would also like to thank our CAIS Executive especially for their efforts in these last few days. They have sprung into action, and I am happy to announce that our past president Cristina Perissinotto has agreed to step into the role of interim President for this academic year. In addition, Luisa Canuto (UBC) has generously agreed to be interim Vice-President of CAIS. Together with the other members of the Executive, they will share, over the next few weeks, the Call for Papers for the 2023 Conference.

Carissimi saluti a voi tutti e sinceri ringraziamenti!

Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano, PhD

Full Professor, Italian Studies

Interim Provost & Vice-President, Academic (TMU)