Skip to main content

Non capisco!


About once a week I get an e-mail from something called the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.  I don't know why.  I know nothing about them and have no idea how I got on their mailing list.  But I generally take a quick look at the e-mail, because every now and then I see something interesting.

The other day I got one of these and saw what appeared to be a potentially interesting lecture today.  It was by a professor named Stefano Jossa, currently at Royal Holloway, the University of London.  He was going to be speaking on his new book, in Italian, but the title of which in English would be The Most Beautiful in the World: Why Love the Italian Language.  It sounded intriguing, it was free, all you had to do was register and get a Zoom link.  So I did.

It turned out that the lecture was actually being sponsored not by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, but rather by the one in Montreal.  But who cares, right?  As long as it's not in French, which didn't appear to be the case.

And wasn't.  Not in French at all.  Unfortunately -- the whole thing was in Italian.

Needless to say, I left the Zoom meeting reasonably quickly.  But if you're interested, you can evidently see a recording of it here!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New History Professor!

I am very excited to announce that the college has hired a new history professor!  Dr. Francesca Silano will be joining our department next fall. Dr. Silano , who has her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, specializes in Imperial and Soviet Russia.  She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Miami of Ohio.  She will strengthen our ability to offer coursework in European and non-Western history. Next fall, in addition to teaching in the general education Humanities sequence, she will offer courses on Russian history and on modern Europe.  We are looking forward to welcoming her to the department.
Post a Comment
Read more

Rabbits and Wrens

I didn't have 15 of them, to be sure.  But when I looked out the front window after getting dressed this morning, I saw not one, but two rabbits out on the front lawn.  They weren't very large, so I assume they were still young.  But I saw them do something I don't think I've ever seen before: play with each other.  They would run toward each other, and then one would hop over the other, bouncing off its back as it sailed over and while they made a kind of squeaking noise.  It was really quite funny. After a minute of that, they stopped and went back to eating dandelions, not fresh yellow ones, but old ones that had gone to seed, the kind you used to blow the heads off when you were a kid.  They bit them off at the base, so that the stems were sticking straight out of their mouths like a straw, with the heads at the end.  And then, phwoosh, in they went, nibbled right up--like a person sucking in a spaghetti noodle.  (Not that any of us would...
Post a Comment
Read more

Summer Vacation

Let the summer begin!  I finally finished off my grading yesterday.  Now the summer opens up before me. Well, not exactly.  I do have a few random independent study papers hiding in my inbox, which has been overflowing for the past week.  But I can get them taken care of.  And a handful of students still owe me late work, which will come in over the next few days.  I'm also teaching a couple of online courses; the first exams from one of those come in next Monday. At noon today I have a committee meeting, a group pulled together to work on curricular planning for next fall in the face of continuing uncertainty.  And this afternoon all faculty have to attend the first of several Zoom sessions devoted to online teaching, to help us prepare for all eventualities moving forward. Hmmm.... And oh, yes, I just remembered -- rats! -- that today is the deadline for reviewing the department's catalog copy for next year.  There is also that long o...
Post a Comment
Read more