Hot for Teacher
It may be chilly outside, but these two professors are warming up the classroom. We spoke with two of OU’s finest.
Photographs by Denise Pansing and Courtney Gross
Annalisa Zanuso loves chocolate, Gelato and wine. She’s all Italian, but calls Athens home for now. In the meantime, she truly earns the title of OU’s resident Bella Donna.
What’s your favorite word in the Italian language? Truzzo — it means yuppie.
What is your favorite drink? I love wine. Normally I like the white ones, because it’s sweeter.
What is your favorite flavor of gelato? I’m a big fan of chocolate, and I love stratatella. There’s so many… Is there anything in Athens that reminds you of home? Winter and fall, with all the colors and leaves that fall down. If you could have one superpower, what would it be? I’d like to be a genie in a bottle.
What did you want to be when you were 12 years old? I wanted to be a math teacher or be an engineer or do architecture.
What’s your favorite thing to do in Athens? We have this Italian club called Ciao Club. We eat, watch movies and I really have fun. It’s my way of making people aware of the Italian culture.
Tell me about a bad dating experience. Well, I have been dumped on my birthday…
What was your reaction when you found out your name came up for this? I was happy. And you know, it’s not an article about the worst teacher ever, so I must not be that bad.
Andre Gribou hails from New York and brings to Athens a little bit of class and a lot of rock’n'roll. Whther he’s lecturing on ’70s punk, or teaching Beethoven, Gribou knows how to keep the beat hot.
What’s the worst thing that’s happened to music in the past 50 years? Because of the perfection of recordings, spontaneity and variation in performance has been drastically affected. The other thing is that the commercial deification [of musicians] takes away from the spontaneous excitement of, for example, the Beatles, that you can’t reproduce.
If you could relive any time in history, when would it be? I’m thinking 1906, I’m about 18, in Paris. Oh yeah.
If you could have one superpower, what would it be? To fly would be wonderful… but the ability to heal— that would be my answer.
What’s your favorite magazine? I have two: The New Yorker and Mojo, a British music magazine. It’s everything that Rolling Stone should be.
What did you want to be when you were 12 years old? A musician, and I was really drawn to politics, but I kept coming back to music.
What was your reaction when you found out you were recommended for this? I laughed and thought that was very sweet and thought the title was extremely funny.