On March 20, the Calandra Institute hosted professor and author FK Clementi, who read from her captivating and charming memoir, South of My Dreams. Clementi, born and raised in Rome, came to the US as a young student after having nursed romantic fantasies about New York City. It’s safe to say that her trajectory to teaching Holocaust studies at the University of South Carolina was an extremely atypical one for an Italian immigrant: The details are by turns funny, alarming, and downright horrifying. It is a cautionary tale like no other from a newly minted American citizen who has looked at the US from many angles and has a rich and appropriately complex impression of the nation.
On the anniversary of the death of Professor Bob Viscusi, poet, teacher, theorist, friend of the Calandra Institute, we hosted a commemoration of him and his work. The event included readings from the Festschrift put together for him in 2021,