Jonathan Combs-Schilling enters the Department of Italian Studies this year with a B.A. in Italian, summa cum laude, from Columbia. He spent 2002–2003 in Italy on a Fulbright studying opera libretti and is the recipient of the Marraro Prize in Italian Studies in 2001, as well as the Scholastic Art and Writing Award of the New York Times in 1997. While at Berkeley, Combs-Schilling plans to pursue his interests in both opera and Italian literature, continuing his work as the West Coast opera critic for the Italian journal L’opera while he develops a scholarly project rethinking the relation between operas and their literary precedents. His mentor will be Jennifer Scappettone, a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department and a Townsend Fellow in 2003–2004.