Daniela D'Eugenio, assistant professor of Italian in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures, was awarded the 2022 First Book Award Prize. D'Eugenio's book, titled Paroimia: Brusantino, Florio, Sarnelli, and Italian Proverbs from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, was published with Purdue UP in 2021. Boasting 572 pages and six illustractions, the book is an important contribution to the field of Italian studies.

The Book Award Committee of the American Association of Teachers of Italian said:"The book makes an original, in fact a seminal, contribution to the understanding of the understudied form of the proverb, and shows how paroemia were used and how they managed to affect diverse genres of writing, as well as linguistic codes and the production of meaning itself..."