By SOPHIA VERNON ‘26
“What is the craziest stupid thing you have ever done?”
“Getting a PhD”
“But that’s useful…”
“It’s absolutely not useful but it’s beautiful. Learning for the pure love of it is beautiful.”
When asked why she became a professor, Silano replied, “I didn’t want to stop studying. You don’t think in your mind ‘I’m going to be a professor.’ You become a professor because of the PhD.”
Dr. Francesca Silano is a newer assistant professor of history at Houghton University. She is also a walking encyclopedia of anything and everything to do with Russian history, and a fresh addition to the team of professors that take turns teaching the London Honors program.
Silano applied for an open position at Houghton and began teaching at the university in 2020 as a professor in the history and political science department. As a devout Catholic, she was eager to experience serious and deep teachings of history through the lens of a Christian university, alongside colleagues who were just as enlivened as she was in these subjects.
Silano earned her PhD in history through the University of Toronto in 2017, specializing in late-imperial and Soviet Russian history and the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, specifically during the early years of the Bolshevik regime. She has spent her career doing extensive research and numerous publications on the Russian Orthodox Church. She brings her passion for Russian history and the church into her research and teaching.
A significant part of being a history and humanities professor at Houghton is the requirement to teach and travel for the London Honors program every three years. This upcoming spring will mark Professor Silano’s first spring semester in London. When asked what her favorite part of this program is so far, she elucidated the main factor of always being able to build and teach the program with another colleague as the best aspect of being a part of the program.
Silano will be teaching this upcoming spring semester in London with Dr. Jonathan Case, and
has been teaching this fall semester’s proseminar alongside Professor Lipscomb. She expressed excitement for the pass-fail structure of the program, along with the ability to “dive into the texts and discuss them” and to “just learn together.” She is eager to “spend a year with students thinking about the most important questions of life.”
In an interview with Dr. Benjamin Lipscomb, he described Dr. Silano as the “ideal recruit” for the London Honors program. He stated, “I don’t know if there is anyone who has been more well-prepared and well-disposed in starting this program.”
Professor Lipscomb has led the fall semester of London Honors proseminar for many years, and has embarked on numerous spring semesters in London with Honors cohorts.
Dr. Lipscomb expanded on the value of Silano’s ability to be “unapologetic in sharing her expertise and simultaneously be extremely eager to learn and expand on what she does not know.” Lipscomb recounts Silano as a nurturing role model for students and he applauded her scholarly expertise, which is paired with humility and vulnerability.
Dr. Silano has the ability to connect with people and inspire them to learn through her own passion for the pursuit of knowledge. Her love of both students and learning shows throughout her teaching and adds to the long list of reasons why she was selected as a new asset to the London Honors program.★
