Across the bustling corner of the entrance of the American University of Rome, on a bench in Villa Sciarra amid the shady plumage of trees and the ambient trickle of fountains, I sat down with senior EWLP student Liliana Zimberg to discuss her capstone project. Liliana is also a film and fine arts double minor and will be graduating in December of 2024. Though closing her chapter as an undergraduate resident student in Rome is bittersweet, she is glad that she will be able to join her peers in May 2025 to participate in the celebratory walk and ceremony.
Born and bred in New York, Liliana, like so many of us resident and study abroad students, ventured across the Atlantic in search of a new beginning. Having already completed three years of an undergraduate degree in animal sciences, she sought out a major Major change, and, being half-Italian, settled on the Eternal City. At AUR, she found an invaluable peer community in the EWLP major, along with professors who have been instrumental in her navigation of the difficult path that is writing.
A skilled prose writer, Liliana wanted to try something different with her capstone and write a work of creative fiction. She says, "I wanted to take a stab at something new under the guidance of one of my favorite Professors, Dr. Lisa Colletta. I chose to take a chance by doing something completely new and different for me, something I might not have the opportunity or time to do after I graduate." In the EWLP program, the capstone is an optional senior project, much like a thesis, but most students choose a creative project rather than a scholarly study. Liliana expressed that she wanted to write something that reflected her time at AUR and her creative and intellectual interests, so she settled on using her academic strengths to write a modern story inspired by Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, a creative project that pushed her out of her comfort zone of research-based writing.
Normally, a capstone begins in the fall semester of a student's final year, progressing and reaching its finished state in the spring. However, Liliana is doing it a little differently. As she is graduating in December, her work with Professor Colletta has been flipped. She began last spring, and she and Professor Colletta worked together through the summer to bring Liliana's novella to life. During our conversation, Liliana expressed that her novella's genre was influenced by a specific course she had taken during the fall 2023 semester.
“Introduction to Drama” with Professor Paul Rock proved to be instrumental in her decision to modernize one of Shakespeare's plays. She explains, "My story is set in a small town. It is a tight-knit, family drama taking place in Vermont in the early 2000s. Everyone is high all the time and wounded by family trauma, but it's still rooted in something historical." She explained that delving into some of the most well-known dramatic plays in history during the course with Professor Rock gave her the critical eye for structural, rhythmic, and plot focused basics that has influenced her desire to contribute to the tradition of the 'callback to the past greats.' Nonetheless, the EWLP senior candidly stated that, "It's challenging in this stage of life to separate inspirations from your own original thoughts."
In essence, the formulation of Liliana's novella, title to be determined, reminded her that she had the freedom to write what she wants to write without thinking about other people and, therefore, what they may or may not do with it after the fact. She could write as a reader, therefore, focusing on a different kind of audience. Her ability to write fiction was impacted by her experience as a strong reader, so her awareness of writing as a reader inspired her to focus on the intimate relationship between the two things. Since the novella is a self-directed project and not just another of many graded assignments, Liliana noticed the shift in her attention to the craft of storytelling.
Thus, Liliana's advice for others contemplating a capstone is to be sure that your topic is something you want to invest your time in. It must be personally exciting and something you are committed to. In closing, I inquired about Liliana's experience with REMUS, the literary journal that the EWLP program publishes each year. In spring 2024, Liliana submitted a chapter of her capstone, and she had this to say about the experience: "To have something I was writing seemingly for myself and only shown to a professor then sent off to my peers to edit, oversee, and ultimately publish was surreal. After the fact, when people approached me and said they had read it in REMUS, I thought, 'how did you get a hold of my diary?' It was, in a word, shocking, but also, somehow, immensely rewarding."
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