In Memoriam: Portia Prebys (1944-2026)

It was a cloudy spring morning in Manhattan. The phone rang very early in my hotel room, where I’d fortunately been awake for a little while thanks to lingering jet lag. So I picked up, and immediately recognized the smooth, high-pitched voice on the other end of the line: “Ciao, Marco. You were expecting my call, weren’t you?” Unable to lie prior to my first cup of coffee, I replied quite frankly: “No, Portia, I really wasn’t. I’m in New York for a board meeting, so it’s six a.m. for me over here.” But sure enough, she was right: I already knew what the call was going to be about.

Portia Prebys, the founder and Secretary-Treasurer of the Association of American College and University Programs in Italy (AACUPI), didn’t call anyone just for some small talk. She was calling me from back in Rome to tell me that it was my organization’s turn to host the quarterly gathering of the Association, which the Paideia Institute had been a proud member of for over a decade by that point. I’d personally been to dozens of AACUPI meetings all over Italy, and indeed I was expecting our turn to come rather soon. “How much time do we have to set it up?”, I asked. To my relief, her response was: “A year and a half. You’ll be hosting in Fall 2026. Good luck.”

Without a doubt, Portia loved being organized and planning ahead. No wonder that, under her leadership, AACUPI had steadily grown over almost fifty years since its 1978 inception into a major powerhouse encompassing more than 150 North American schools and study-abroad programs from the Alps to the Amalfi Coast and beyond, with a combined total of over 35,000 students enrolled on an annual basis. As it happens, when she first crossed the Atlantic, Portia herself was one of them.

Originally from South Bend, Indiana, she moved to Italy in 1966 on a Fulbright Fellowship, with the goal to study abroad and focus on Renaissance history. Like many American students in Europe, she had initially planned to only stay for an academic year or so before moving back to the U.S. She never left. In 2010, she became one of but a handful of American nationals ever to be knighted by the Italian Republic’s President, receiving the title of Cavaliere dell’Ordine al Merito for her long career in international education and her achievements in strengthening U.S.-Italy relations and cultural exchanges.

Yet Portia wasn’t content with resting on her own laurels. She wanted the concrete, tangible impact of American study abroad in Italy to be widely known and understood. And to be sure, the numbers speak for themselves: for the past four years in a row, Italy has been the world’s leading destination for U.S. study-abroad students, consistently overtaking tough competitors such as Spain and the U.K. (source: IIE Open Doors).

In 2024, the aggregate share of Italy’s GDP represented by American schools and college programs on Italian soil was calculated to be nearly 700 million Euros, according to the most recent Educating in Paradise report, an independent statistical analysis periodically commissioned by AACUPI through the government-sponsored Istituto Regionale per la Programmazione Economica della Toscana (IRPET).

Those numbers alone, however, cannot tell the whole story of the amazing community that Portia helped create. The painstaking work of welcoming American students to Italy and designing the best possible learning experiences for them would be far harder, and much lonelier, without the Association. Over the years, AACUPI has been an invaluable source of guidance and support for legions of study-abroad programs, including the Paideia Institute.

When we were a fledgling organization still learning how to navigate the often-stormy waters of Italian bureaucracy, ever-changing visa regulations, Rome’s chaotic housing market, and all the countless practical details of managing student travel abroad, it was peers and colleagues throughout the country-wide AACUPI network who lent us a compass and shared what they had learned the hard way. Above all, Portia and the Association gave us sodalitas, a communal friendship grounded in shared purpose, a sense of being together among people who partake in the conviction that studying in Italy is one of the most transformative experiences a student can have.

Besides her pivotal contributions to the community of American study-abroad programs, Portia was also well-known in the Italian literary world. For over twenty years, she was the muse and life companion of acclaimed novelist Giorgio Bassani, author of The Heron (her own favorite) and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis among other masterpieces. They had met in Rome in the late 1970s, and stayed together until his death in 2000.

During one of the opulent lunches which traditionally follow the Association’s quarterly meetings, I remember noticing a wistful, pensive expression on Portia’s face. She looked completely detached from the lively table conversation that was going on around her. “Mi manca tanto Giorgio [I miss Giorgio so much],” she told me in Italian when I asked her if she was alright. “Have you been to Ferrara?” she added, after a long pause.

Bassani’s hometown in north-eastern Italy, a true hidden gem often -undeservedly- overshadowed by more popular neighbors like Venice and Bologna, is certainly one of the places where Portia’s legacy will live on most profoundly. In 2022, her donation of thousands of the late writer’s books and belongings to the city of Ferrara gave birth to the Centro Studi Bassaniani, a treasure trove for scholars of 20th-century Italian literature that includes all kinds of rare volumes and original manuscripts by Bassani himself, replete with his own corrections and second thoughts (he was notorious for his relentless perfectionism, not unlike Portia herself).

In the literary domain, too, Portia poured her efforts into bolstering the cultural ties between Italy and America. For many years, she taught Contemporary Italian Literature at the St. Mary’s College Rome Program, which she directed since its inception in 1970. In 2011, she and colleagues from John Cabot University convened a groundbreaking conference on Alberto Moravia e l’America, exploring one of the greatest modern Italian writers’ long and complex relationship with the New World (the conference proceedings were then published by Edisai in 2012).

By the time we finally got around to hosting the AACUPI gathering less than three weeks ago, we all knew that, alas, Portia wouldn’t be able to attend. In fact, back in September, we’d learned that her health had taken a turn for the worse. It was with great sadness and grief that we received the news of her passing last Friday, October 16, 2026. But the memory of her energy and dedication will continue to inspire us every day as we keep working hard to bring Italy into the hearts and minds of every student we teach.

Addio, Portia. Sit tibi terra levis.

The funeral will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, October 20th at 2:30 pm in the Cimitero Acattolico per gli Stranieri in Rome, Via Caio Cestio 6

Marco Romani Mistretta is Director of European Operations and Treasurer at the Paideia Institute.