Dr. Ann Jablon Receives 2017 Cornaro Award

The Sons of Italy’s New York State Grand Lodge Foundation has recognized Dr. Ann Jablon, Professor and Chair of Communication Sciences and Disorders, with the 2017 Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Award.

 This award recognizes outstanding Italian-American women in education for their significant contributions to their profession and their communities. It is named for the first woman in history to receive a Ph.D.  Elena Cornaro earned her doctorate from the University of Padua, Italy, in 1678.

While Ann has a wealth of professional experience in service to the College and her field, of particular relevance for this award is a project that bridges her expertise in Speech-Language Pathology and her Italian-American heritage.  In April, she and her co-author, Lori DiBella Wallach, presented “Italian/American? Second-Generation Voices in Search of an Identity” at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute’s 2017 conference, “Italian Sonorities and Acoustic Communities: Listening to the Soundscapes of Italianità.”  In this project, Dr. Jablon and her co-author analyze recently discovered recordings of their immigrant ancestors to think about what they reveal about how Italian immigrants and their first-generation children sought to assimilate into American culture by adopting its linguistic styles and idioms.  This work is both intellectually sophisticated and quite personal as Ann looks at her own history and uses it as a model for thinking about the shared experiences of Italian immigrants and their families as they worked to find their place in American society.

Congratulations, Ann!

Published: April 19, 2017