By Maitreyee Majumbar Note: Maitreyee wrote this blog post in connection with Italian 5150, Italian Ecocinema, a course exploring contemporary environmental issues through Italian cinema. Thanks to Maitreyee for agreeing to allow me to publish it here. What do we talk about when we discuss the environment? The conversation typically includes plants, animals, bodies of…
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So, let’s imagine that a global pandemic shuts down your university’s study abroad program in Italy, but you still want your students to be able to connect with your home-away-from-home. You want them to experience the magic of putting their Italian to use, to see firsthand the nuances of culture enmeshed in the words of…
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I wrote this piece for the new website of the Office of Campus Sustainability. Tomato tales I have a vivid memory of being on a slow regional train, adventuring north from Siena while studying abroad in Italy. Two Italian grandmothers in the same compartment struck up a conversation with me. I was proud to chat…
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Planet WSU: the walk down Green Street continues Wayne State held its second annual celebration of Sustainability in Higher Education Month, Green Street, throughout the month of October. The first event happened on October 6, 2020, and featured a stellar line-up of speakers who reflected on possible sustainable futures for WSU and Detroit. The guests…
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I wrote this piece about Federico Fellini for the inimitable Dante Alighieri Society of Michigan. The year 2020 marks 100 years since Federico Fellini’s birth in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast, and Italian film scholars have been making plans to mark the centenary of the prolific Maestro for years. Back in 2017, as I was…
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Introducing P30 I took this picture of DeRoy Auditorium with an old Yashica camera that belonged to my partner Ed’s grandfather. I’m pretty sure it’s older than I am. I developed and printed the roll in a friend’s darkroom, and if you look closely you can see grains and a tiny scratch near the middle….
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Thanks for visiting! I’m a faculty member in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, an Italianist, a film scholar, and an environmental humanist. I am currently researching analog media, specifically celluloid filmstock, and am interested in the way analog (vinyl, board games, typewriters, Polaroid)…
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