Study Abroad Resources

What is Europe? Who is European? What do Europe and European identity mean in the twenty-first century? This collection of sixteen essays seeks to answer these questions by focusing on Europe as it is seen through its own eyes and through the eyes of others across a variety of cultural texts, including sport, film, literature, dance, cartography, and fashion. These texts, as interpreted here by emerging researchers as well as well-established scholars, enable us to engage with European identities in the plural and to understand what these identities mean in larger cultural and political contexts. The interdisciplinary focus of this volume permits an exploration of European identity that reaches beyond the area of European studies to incorporate understandings of identity from the viewpoints of both insider and other. Contributors explore diverse understandings of what it means to be ""other"" to a country, a culture, a society, or a subgroup. This book offers a fresh perspective on the evolving concept of identity - in the context of Europe past, present, and future - and expands on the existing literature by considering the political tensions and social implications of the development of European identity, as well as its literary, artistic, and cultural manifestations.

Shortly after her father's death, Elisa Brodinsky Miller uncovered a cache of letters among his belongings. Written in Russian and Yiddish, with datelines in Tsarist and early Soviet Russia, the letters detail eight long years (1914-1922) during which Elisa's father, his five siblings, and their mother spend apart from Elisa's grandfather who had left for America, believing their separation would be short.Miller, a Russian affairs specialist, learns bit by bit with each translation about the family she knew so little about, and the eight years of history they lived through, enabling her for the first time to connect her own experiences with those who came before her. This captivating memoir bridges the past with the present, as we learn about her grandparents'struggles to escape Tsarist Russia, her parents'hopes for their marriage in America, and her own reach for meaning and purpose: each a generation with dreams—first theirs, now hers.

Why don't' you...run away with the gypsies? Ten-hour shifts in a high-end department store and catering to snooty customers...Nellie Bennett's life wasn't supposed to turn out this way. But maybe all she needs to do is infuse a little passion into her routine--through flamenco dance lessons, for instance. What Nellie doesn't realize is that flamenco is not just a dance--it's a way of life that seems much more enticing than her depressing retail gig. So she packs her suede dance shoes and leaves everything she knows behind, flying halfway around the world to seek the authentic experience in Seville, where the dark-eyed gypsy boys and mouth-watering tapas are enough to make Nellie want to stay in Spain forever. And why shouldn't she? Only in Spain is a foot-stomping, full-on firecracker of a memoir--crackling with energy, food, dance, gypsies, and love--that will capture your heart with the first "Olé!" "A vivid, entertaining memoir...Bennett had me itching to pack my bag and join her."--Ann Vanderhoof, author of An Embarrassment of Mangoes and The Spice Necklace

Nevada sheep rancher Joe Juaristi spoke for years about making a trip back to the Spanish Basque Country that he left sixty years earlier, but each time the subject came up the discussion evolved into a family debate about the scope and members of the journey. Finally Joe's son, Vince, secretly resolved to organize the trip that his father wanted and needed--the two of them, traveling alone, making a quiet reunion with Joe's twin sister, who suffers from Alzheimer's, visiting other aging siblings and friends, and recounting the places that formed Joe's memories of his youth. Back to Bizkaia is part travel book, part memoir of two men exploring their mutual roots and their unique father-son bond. The narrative intertwines an engaging account of the contemporary Basque Country with Joe's experiences as an immigrant making his way in a new country and Vince's memories of growing up in a close Basque-American community in the American West. This is a book about Basques and their American families, but on another level it is every immigrant's story of return to a beloved homeland.

Traveling two and a half months and one thousand miles along the ancient route through southern France and northern Spain, Conrad Rudolph made the passage to the holy site of Santiago de Compostela, one of the most important modern-day pilgrimage destinations for Westerners. In this chronicle of his travels to this captivating place, Rudolph melds the ancient and the contemporary, the spiritual and the physical, in a book that is at once travel guide, literary work, historical study, and memoir.

"This is a story about two people, but I'm the only one telling it." Many authors have wrestled with the death of a father in their writing, but few have grappled with the subject as fiercely, or as powerfully, as the brilliant Spanish writer Marcos Giralt Torrente does inFather and Son, the mesmerizing and discomfiting memoir that won him Spain's highest literary award, the Spanish National Book Award. Giralt Torrente is best known for his fiction, but it is in this often savage memoir that he demonstrates the full measure of his gifts. In the months following his father's death from cancer, Giralt Torrente could not write--until he began to write about his father. In many ways, they were strangers to each other; after his parents' relationship ended, when he was quite young, Giralt Torrente's father remained in contact with him but held himself at a distance. Silences began to linger, prompted by Giralt Torrente's anger at his father's lies and absences and perpetuated by their inability to speak about the sources of theconflicts between them. But despite their differences, they had a strong bond, and in the months leading up to his father's death from cancer, they groped toward reconciliation. Here the author commits to exploring it all, sparing neither his father nor himself, conscious of their flaws but also understanding of them. Weaving together history and personal narrative, Giralt Torrente crafts a startlingly honest account of a complex relationship, and an indelible portrait of both father and son. Beautifully translated by Natasha Wimmer, the award-winning translator of Roberto Bolaño, and as lyrical and clear-eyed on mourning as Joan Didion'sThe Year of Magical Thinking,Father and Sonis an uncommonly gripping memoir by an uncommonly talented writer.

The writer David Plante has kept a diary of his life among the artistic elite for over half a century. It is an extraordinary document, both deeply personal and a rare window onto disappearing worlds. This extracted memoir spans the 1980s, a period of exploration and growth for Plante and his lover Nikos Stangos, a partnership which will endure for forty years. David Plante and Nikos Stangos first made a life together in London in the mid-sixties, when as newcomers they were introduced by Stephen Spender to his circle, connections criss-crossing, dazzlingly, through the air of their adopted city, interconnecting so many admired figures. Now navigating worlds beyond London - from a house-share with Germaine Greer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a trip to Jerusalem with Philip Roth; from the loss of parents to the growing spectre of AIDS; and in New York, Umbria, Lucca, the Aegean and rural Ireland - these are stories of expanding horizons and of a deepening and developing love: the challenges of monogamy, the strains of separation, of a growing maturity and awareness - and of what it is to belong. Worlds Apart is a poignant, moving portrait of a relationship and a luminous evocation of a world of writers, poets, artists and thinkers.

Amanda Knox spent four years in a foreign prison for a crime she did not commit, as seen in the Netflix documentary Amanda Knox. In the fall of 2007, the 20-year-old college coed left Seattle to study abroad in Italy, but her life was shattered when her roommate was murdered in their apartment. After a controversial trial, Amanda was convicted and imprisoned. But in 2011, an appeals court overturned the decision and vacated the murder charge. Free at last, she returned home to the U.S., where she has remained silent, until now. Filled with details first recorded in the journals Knox kept while in Italy, Waiting to Be Heard is a remarkable story of innocence, resilience, and courage, and of one young woman's hard-fought battle to overcome injustice and win the freedom she deserved. With intelligence, grace, and candor, Amanda Knox tells the full story of her harrowing ordeal in Italy--a labyrinthine nightmare of crime and punishment, innocence and vindication--and of the unwavering support of family and friends who tirelessly worked to help her win her freedom. Waiting to Be Heard includes 24 pages of color photographs.

Jane Tylus's Siena is a compelling and intimate portrait of this most secretive of cities, often overlooked by travelers to Italy. Cultural history, intellectual memoir, travelogue, and guidebook, it takes the reader on a quest of discovery through the well- and not-so-well-traveled roads and alleys of a town both medieval and modern.             As Tylus leads us through the city, she shares her passion for Siena in novelistic prose, while never losing sight of the historical complexities that have made Siena one of the most fascinating and beautiful towns in Europe. Today, Siena can appear on the surface standoffish and old-fashioned, especially when compared to its larger, flashier cousins Rome and Florence. But first impressions wear away as we learn from Tylus that Siena was an innovator among the cities of Italy: the first to legislate the building and maintenance of its streets, the first to publicly fund its university, the first to institute a municipal bank, and even the first to ban automobile traffic from its city center.             We learn about Siena's great artistic and architectural past, hidden behind centuries of painting and rebuilding, and about the distinctive characters of its different neighborhoods, exemplified in the Palio, the highly competitive horserace that takes place twice a year in the city's main piazza and that serves as both a dividing and a uniting force for the Sienese. Throughout we are guided by the assured voice of a seasoned scholar with a gift for spinning a good story and an eye for the telling detail, whether we are traveling Siena's modern highways, exploring its underground tunnels, tracking the city's financial history, or celebrating giants of painting like Simone Martini or giants of the arena, Siena's former Serie A soccer team.             A practical and engaging guide for tourists and armchair travelers alike, Siena is a testament to the powers of community and resilience in a place that is not quite as timeless and serene as it may at first appear.

In this much-lauded memoir, acclaimed for its blend of literary elegance and political passion, Rossana Rossanda, a legendary figure on the Italian left, reflects on a life of radical commitment. Active as a communist militant in the Italian Resistance against fascism during World War Two, Rossanda rose rapidly in its aftermath, becoming editor of the Communist Party weekly paper and a member of parliament. Initially a party loyalist, she was critical of the party's conservatism in the face of new radical movements and moved into opposition during the late 1960s. The breach widened after she and others publicly opposed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and were expelled in 1969. She went on to help found the influential paper il manifesto, which remains the most critical daily in Berlusconi's Italy. Her unique experience enables her to reconstruct that period with flair and authority. She paints a revealing picture of fascism, communism, post-war reconstruction and the revolts that shook Europe in the 1960s. In The Comrade from Milan, one of the most influential intellectuals of the European Left relives the storms of the twentieth century. Both cool-headed and precise, Rossanda provides a rare insight into what it once meant to be politically engaged.

Imagine spending a carefree summer in the Italian sun, beachcombing, eating and drinking with abandon, drifting without restraint from island to island, from port to port. Summer in the Islands is the record of Matthew Fort doing just that in his third Italian voyage on a Vespa - first down the length of Italy in Eating Up Italy, then around Sicily in Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, and now hopping between the Aeolian Islands, something he hadn't done since his early 20s. Traveling by Vespa and by ferry, Fort tours the islands at his leisure. He takes us to Elba, where Napoleon was once imprisoned; to Salina, famous for its capers, just as Pantelleria is famous for its dessert wine; to Pianosa, where dangerous Mafia bosses were kept and which Joseph Heller used as the setting for Catch-22; to Capri, where Maxim Gorky ran a school for revolutionaries which was visited by Lenin and Stalin... ...to all of Italy's 52 islands which he has never written about before. With 30 years of experience as a food critic, travel writer and adventurer, Fort is an excellent guide through the culinary and cultural history he encounters during his summer in the islands.

The bestselling author of Under the Tuscan Sun discovers the hidden pleasures of Italy in a sumptuous travel narrative that crisscrosses the country, with inventive new recipes celebrating Italian cuisine.   Don't miss Frances Mayes in PBS's Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special! "Reading this book is a vacation in itself."--The New York Times Book Review (Best Travel Books of the Summer) The Roman Forum, the Leaning Tower, the Piazza San Marco: these are the sights synonymous with Italy. But such landmarks only scratch the surface of this magical country's offerings. In See You in the Piazza, Frances Mayes introduces us to the Italy only the locals know, as she and her husband, Ed, eat and drink their way through thirteen regions--from Friuli to Sicily. Along the way, she seeks out the cultural and historic gems not found in traditional guidebooks. Frances conjures the enchantment of the backstreets, the hubbub of the markets, the dreamlike wonder of that space between lunch and dinner when a city cracks open to those who would wander or when a mind is drawn into the pages of a delicious book--and discloses to us the secrets that only someone who is on intimate terms with a place could find.

The critically acclaimed Dutch novelist, poet, and travel writer Cees Nooteboom pays tribute to Venice--the city, its history, and its treasures   "Mr. Nooteboom . . . [has] a highly distinctive voice--and often a new angle of vision. . . . The whole book is the illuminating testimony of a man who cannot look away and so sees things that others, even those with more specialist knowledge, have missed."--Gregory Dowling, Wall Street Journal For over fifty years, celebrated author Cees Nooteboom has been captivated by the city of Venice, that "absurd combination of power, money, genius and great art." Beginning with his first visit in 1964, Nooteboom deftly weaves together his many travels to the floating city, vividly bringing to life the destination he discovered and admired from the alleys, locked gates, and countless canals. Surrounded by the dead, he pays homage to the painters and writers who lived and worked there, to the palaces, bridges, painting, and sculpture that give the city a kind of immortality.   With his ability to penetrate to the core of his destinations, Nooteboom produces a radiant tribute to Venice, in the vein of Steinbeck, Forster, or Theroux.

A charming narrative and "pop historical" look into how Italy has shaped the Western world's most vibrant passions, from literature to love, music to art, food to wine. What makes Italian passion so undeniably unique? Dianne Hales unspools the answer to this question with gusto in La Passione- How Italy Seduced the World, her ambitious follow-up to La Bella Lingua- My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. Whether they built aqueducts, chiseled arches, conducted choirs, directed movies, raced cars, or designed fashion and furniture, Italians have done so with a full-hearted zest that transforms everything they touched. What didn't exist, they invented- the first universities, public libraries, and law and medical schools; the first modern histories, satires, and sonnets; the battery, barometer, radio, and thermometer-even the gift of music. Dante and Petrarch, titans of the Italian language, translated their fervid love for idealized muses into literary landmarks. Michelangelo carved a Bacchus so sinuously delectable that a Florentine sniped, "Buonarotti could not have sinned more with a chisel." Puccini swept listeners, in a biographer's words, "into that place where erotic passion, sensuality, tenderness, pathos, and despair meet and fuse." La Passione traces this earthly, earthy drive back to its roots, follows its course through the centuries, and chronicles its impact on the realms of literature, art, music, cuisine, and style, as its people came to embrace, fully and deeply, a passion for life itself. Combining her adroit journalist's eye with extensive research, Hales delves into passions of the heart, senses, and soul across the ages in this perfect read for the casual Italophile, inquisitive tourist, or history buff in your life.