The (very) bright spots of a rough week

Last week was a pretty rough one for me personally, for reasons that are not at all worthy of being mentioned here...

Luckily, however, some very good things happened to people I love very much.

For example, these cuties here finally got legally adopted by their wonderful parents, C and J:






And this other cutie here (on the right) finally got her PhD, after a successful Friday afternoon defense:



Congratulations to all of yous!!

Snapshots from the past 30 days

My fellow Italian (and chair of the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department) Paola and her husband Rick at the Tour de Fat parade in September.


Rick with "Miss Alaska" at the Tour de Fat parade.


My Basque friend Maite (also a new assistant professor at CSU) at the Highlands Festival in Estes Park.


My colleague Eric at an art gallery during Fort Collins' First Fridays art walk.



Fellow Italian (also an assistant professor) Domenico near cowboy restaurant Charco Broiler.


Me at home.


Maricela, Maite and I at the Celestial Seasonings guided tour in Boulder (with hair nets).


Maite and I in Boulder.



Irooshka and I in Syracuse.


Conference lady friends in Syracuse.


Irooshka, Craig and I by "Quickway".



Craig, Irooshka and I by the NiMo building in Syracuse.



Dan in Denver.

Dissertation award!

I've been a very bad blogger lately. Life's been too busy with teaching and other commitments, including trips to Boulder, Denver and, most recently, Syracuse for the Visible Memories conference.

Anyways, I promise to start posting some of the pics I have been taking in the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, I have great news that make me really happy. I have just received a national award for my dissertation!

Here is part of the email I received I got announcing this victory:

"Dear Dr. Gi.,

I am delighted to inform you that your dissertation (“Visions of Europe: The Semiotic Production of Transnational Identity in Contemporary European Visual Discourse”) has been chosen as co-winner of the Critical and Cultural Studies Division’s Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2008.

The Awards’ Committee was very impressed with the theoretical sophistication of your dissertation. As one reviewer put it, “It brilliantly combines cultural studies, semiotics, political economy and international relations theory in its approach to visual communication.” In the words of another reviewer, “Rigorous and engaging to the point where you wonder how she could have accomplished this, but she did.”

Yay! I especially liked the reviewers' comments...I am very very happy to see the fruits of my hard labor recognized in such a gracious manner.