The Karofsky Award is given annually to "an outstanding Bowdoin teacher who best demonstrates the ability to impart knowledge, inspire enthusiasm, and stimulate intellectual curiosity."
Saiber joined the Bowdoin faculty in 1999, and teaches courses in Italian literature, culture, and language.
Known for teaching with enthusiasm, imagination and high expectations, Saiber exposes her students to everything Italian through film, television, art, books, the Internet, and field trips. She has taken classes to an Italian restaurant in Portland, where students conversed in Italian all evening, and to Boston's North End, where students were introduced to the culture of an Italian-American neighborhood.
Saiber is also an exceptional scholar. She earned a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University's the Radcliffe Institute for 2003-04. Her project, titled "Well-Versed Mathematics in Early Modern Italy," investigates the impact that mathematics and mathematical sciences had on the literary imagination of Renaissance Italy.
Saiber's other research interests include early print typography of mathematical treatises, Renaissance Neoplatonism, and technology and cyberculture.
She earned her B.A. in philosophy at Hampshire College in 1993, and her Ph.D. in Italian literature at Yale University in 1999.
The Karofsky Prize is given by members of the Karofsky family, including Peter S. Karofsky, M.D. '62, Paul I. Karofsky '66, and David M. Karofsky '93. It is conferred by the dean for academic affairs in consultation with the Committee on Appointments, Promotion and Tenure (CAPT) on the basis of student evaluations of teaching. The prize is given to a member of the faculty who has taught at Bowdoin for at least two years.
