Emerita/us Faculty is a title used to refer to a retired, tenured, female/male faculty member who has given generous and distinguished service as a teacher. The process of granting emeritus status is initiated and supported by the faculty member’s department. We use the plural form, that includes female and male awardees with the Latin word "emeriti" for our distinguished group of retired faculty.
Henry Batterman, M.A.
University of Michigan
Associate Professor of Italian, Emeritus
batterman@gonzaga.edu
Associate Professor Emeritus Batterman was first appointed as instructor at Gonzaga University in 1984, then promoted to Assistant Professor of Italian in 1992 and then Associate Professor of Italian with tenure in 2002. Since 1992, he was posted to the Gonzaga in Florence program where, besides his faculty role with a full teaching load, he performed various service and administrative roles, including Interim-Director and then Associate Director for Outreach and Immersion. Over time and under his constant supervision and innovative spirit, Prof. Batterman continue to develop original curricular and extracurricular activities that transformed the program in Florence into an immersive linguistic and cultural student experience. He dedicated himself to this work with rare zeal, logging countless 12-hour days between the classroom, office hours, phone calls to community partners, and serving as a faculty leader on cultural and linguistic activities. He is a legendary fixture at GIF, he has impacted thousands of students.
Gabriella Brooke, M.F.A.
Eastern Washington University
Professor of Italian, Emerita
brooke@gonzaga.edu
Professor Emerita Brooke spent a magical childhood in Sicily, on the Ionian Sea, at the foot of Mt. Etna. The island’s chronicles and legends, and the ever-present traces of its earlier inhabitants and conquerors--Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans--nurtured her imagination and awoke her passion for story-telling. Love for history and literature, particularly women’s literature, has driven Gabriella’s academic career. At Gonzaga, Prof. Brooke started in 1980 and designed and taught courses in Italian Women Literature and Italian Historical Fiction. In 1999 she co-edited Gendering Italian Fiction: Feminist Revisions of Italian Fiction (Farleigh Dickinson University Press), the first critical collection of essays on Italian women’s historical fiction. She published a historical novel, The Words of Bernfrieda: A Chronicle of Hauteville (EWU Press,1999), which employs contemporary accounts of the 11th century Norman conquest of Southern Italy to write a different chronicle, from a woman’s perspective. Her novel was mentioned by George Garrett in the “Year in Fiction” of 1999 Yearbook of the Dictionary of Literary Biography. It was later translated into Italian and published by Sellerio Editore in 2001. During that same summer, the novel was serialized over several weeks in the “Giornale di Sicilia”. During her years at Gonzaga Prof. Brooke served as Chair of Modern Languages and Literature, Director of Italian Studies; Regent, Faculty Senator, and has served on the Rank and Tenure Committee, Academic Freedom, and several other University committees. She retired in 2020.
Françoise Kuester, M.F.A
Eastern Washington University
Associate Professor of French, Emerita
kuester@gonzagau.onmicrosoft.com
Associate Professor Emerita Kuester grew up in the Lorraine region of France and came to teach French part-time at Gonzaga University in 1978. She created the French major curriculum and directed the French program for twenty-eight years. She chaired the Department of Modern Languages and Literature from 1982-1990, and then again from 2001-2003. During her tenure as chair, she focused on expanding the Spanish Program, introducing Asian languages to the department, and promoting student participation in study abroad. Outside of the department, she directed the International Studies Program for two years, after which she persuaded the University to create a permanent directorship in International Studies. Prof. Kuester is most remembered for her passion for teaching. She had high standards and demanded the utmost of students while also expressing heartfelt care for the whole person. Her door was always open to students when they needed additional help or simply wanted to chat. She placed great value on service to others, on the promotion of community, and on cultural diversity. She frequently hosted department gatherings where faculty delighted in her gourmet cooking. She still makes her home in Spokane. She retired in 2009.
Stefania Nedderman, Ph.D.
University of Oregon
Associate Professor of Italian, Emerita
nedderman@gonzaga.edu
Associate Professor Emerita Nedderman was born in Sossano (Vi), Italy and transferred to the U.S. in 1978. She received her Ph.D. in Romance Languages from the University of Oregon in 1993. Before joining the Modern Languages and Literature Department at Gonzaga in 1995, she was the supervisor for first year Spanish courses at the University of Oregon. She also taught for one year at the University of South Dakota. Her areas of interest are Spanish and Italian Renaissance and Baroque Literature. She delivered several papers on the subject. Her research interest extends to Modern Italian writers. Her article "Trascolorare. Metamorphoses in Rosetta Loy's Le Strade di polvere" appears in Gendering Italian Fiction: Feminist Revisions of Italian History. Her current research focuses on Early Modern Spanish mystics. She has directed both the Cuernavaca, Mexico and Granada, Spain programs and served on the Women's Studies Advisory Board.