“Where are you from?”
For Nanovic Faculty Fellow Giovanna Lenzi-Sandusky, the answer is a bit more complicated. The onetime winner of the University’s Kaneb Teaching Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching is the daughter of an Italian diplomat, and spent her early years moving to various far-flung locations where her father was stationed: Iran, Pakistan, Greece and Japan, to name a few.
Still, Lenzi-Sandusky has an unmistakable cultural identity, even if confirmation of the fact came a bit later in life.
“Italian to the core,” she says.
“Teaching languages gives you a lot of flexibility because you can talk about so many things: history, current events, food, art and the changing society.”
Lenzi-Sandusky grew up all over the world, returning with her family to Italy every couple of years. She would attend American schools with people from all over, a truly international education in every sense that cultivated a rich curiosity about the things that help to ground the human experience. Ultimately, this curiosity gave way to passions in her life that remain to this day.
“I began university thinking that I might either go into languages or art history,” she says. “Those were the two areas that were strong in me because living abroad, those were the vehicles by which I managed to stay in touch with where I was.”
Originally published by on March 08, 2022.