Video
A discussion, in English, of my book, Il secondo occhio di Ulisse: Saggi di letteratura e cultura italiana (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 2019), a collection of my previously published essays, selected, translated, and edited by my former collaborators Simone Dubrovic, Silvia Carlorosi, and Maria Silvia Riccio. The virtual session was part of the annual conference of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, CUNY, organized and hosted by Joseph Sciorra and Anthony J. Tamburri, Dean: "Italian Borderlands: Restrictions, Breaches, Encounters," 5-21 April 2021. Participants included: Anthony Tamburri, Chair; Silvia Carlorosi, Organizer; Simona Wright, Peter Carravetta, Wiley Feinstein, and Daniele Fioretti, Discussants; and me, briefly, as respondent. Available on YouTube, 1h28m.
An interview conducted by Professor Daniele Fioretti, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, on my experience as an Italian immigrant, for his research project: "Italian Americans in Ohio," on 6 Feb. 2020. To view, click title, image, or here, 1h5m.
Presentazione Secondo Occhio Urbino.mp4Presentazione, in italiano, del mio libro ospitata dall'Accademia di Raffaello e tenuta alla Casa nativa di Raffaello a Urbino, il 26 luglio 2019, presentata dal Presidente dell'Accademia, Prof. Luigi Bravi, con interventi dei curatori/traduttori del volume: Simone Dubrovic, Silvia Carlorosi, e Maria Silvia Riccio, e una lettura magistrale di Mauro Bersani. Grazie al dott. Fabrizio Maci per la registrazione e le foto. Cliccare sull'immagine, sul titolo, o qui, 46m.
Intervistato da Ilaria Canali per la pagina Facebook della Rete Nazionale delle Donne in Cammino e il gruppo Ragazze in Gamba, durante un'altra presentazione del mio libro Il secondo occhio di Ulisse tenuta al mio paese di nascita, 3 agosto 2019, durante una tappa di Cammina Molise. L'intervista su Facebook si vede qui, e infomazioni su Cammina Molise, qui.
Sante Matteo, now professor emeritus of Italian studies at Miami University, planted a seed when he taught an Italian course for the Gambier Experimental College as a senior at Kenyon during the 1970-71 school year. That seed blossomed into the current Italian program at the College. One of the two professors in that program, Simone Dubrovic, was Sante's teaching assistant at Miami University prior to assuming his position at Kenyon.
During our virtual event for alumni, parents and friends of the College, Sante and Simone will discuss their entangled journeys from and to Gambier, as well as their collaboration on two collections of Sante's essays (translated into Italian, published in Italy and edited by Simone):
Radici sporadiche: Letteratura, viaggi, migrazioni (Sporadic Roots: Literature, Voyages, Migrations), 2006
Il secondo occhio di Ulisse: Saggi di letteratura e cultura italiana (The Second Eye of Ulysses: Essays on Italian Literature and Culture), 2019
A virtual event with poet Daniel Mark Epstein, Kenyon class of 1970, in conversation with his Italian translator, Kenyon professor Simone Dubrovic, and with moderator and fellow Kenyon student (’71) Sante Matteo.
If you were on Kenyon's campus in the late 1960s, you likely read Daniel Mark Epstein's poetry in various student publications. Following graduation, his poems were published in prestigious venues, such as The New Yorker, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and The Kenyon Review. He went on to publish several volumes of poetry and become one of the country's most important poets.
In 2011, Daniel published a best-seller, The Ballad of Bob Dylan, which was translated into many languages. He has also authored award-winning biographies on Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat King Cole, and Edna Vincent Millay, as well as three volumes on Abraham Lincoln and his entourage.
Daniel moved back to Gambier a few years ago and met Italian professor Simone Dubrovic, the author of several books of what can be considered prose poems in Italian. They became friends and collaborated on Dall'alba al crepuscolo (2020), Simone's Italian translations of the collected poems in Daniel's Dawn to Twilight: New and Selected Poems (2015). At this virtual event, Daniel and Simone will read poems and discuss their collaboration with Sante Matteo '71.
While professing at Brigham Young University (1980-89), I was recruited to play an Italian immigrant in Australia for a movie about the Book of Mormon.
Several days of shooting (but not much actual "shooting," mostly just waiting around--for airplanes to fly over, for traffic noise to stop, for cows to stop mooing, for the light to be right, etc.--for three lines and a minute and a half on screen: 27-28.30 mm. Still, since I had spoken lines, I was actually paid as an actor, not just an extra.
The woman in the pew behind me was my colleague in the Italian program at BYU, Cinzia Donatelli Noble.
The movie, How Rare a Possession: The Book of Mormon - The Story of Vincenzo Di Francesca (1987), is available on YouTube.
When my colleague Denise McCoskey, in the Department of Classics, asked me to participate in this "Are You In?" event, my initial reaction was incredulity. I had always studiously avoided dancing in public (even eloping to the Cinque Terre--still remote and fairly inaccessible back then--to avoid a reception that would involve such unseemly activity).
"Let me get this straight," I scoffed, "after devoting my whole life trying to project an image of dignity and decorous reserve, I'm now supposed to make a complete fool of myself in public, in front of my colleagues and students, and that it's going to be filmed and projected throughout the whole world?"
"Precisely," Denise agreed, "that's the whole point!"
This was during a rise in suicides among students. The "I'm In" message was to show that it's possible, even for fogyish professors, to step outside our comfort zone and benefit from doing so--even enjoy it.
So, I became a flashmob dancer (second row, extreme right, from viewer's perspective): "Official" Miami faculty flashmob video 11/10/2011.