the nunnery

I taught my first class at the University of the Eastern Piedmont, in Vercelli yesterday. It's about 45 minutes by train from Turin. One passes through the rice-growing region of the Piedmont. Before rice production was mechanized in the 1950s the growers used female labor from northeast Italy, migrant farm laborers who left their families and children for the seasonal work.
Vercelli is a medieval town, my office in the Dept. of Literature and Philosophy is in an old nunnery, with outside balconies overlooking the church courtyard (see photo). My class--on legal and illegal immigration in US history--comprises MA students from the American studies program at University of Turin and undergraduates from U-Eastern Piedmont. I met the Americanist faculty here at lunch, all very interesting people.

My host had a cocktail party at his apartment in Turin last night, where I met migration scholars and other Americanists from Italy and Germany. One of the migration specialists told me she is now reviewing my book! More punt e mes, and cheese and Italian salami. We then went out for a late dinner, pizza with mussels and calamri, and an outrageous salad with fish and octopus, the latter the most tender and tasty I've ever eaten. I learned later from a colleague that the octopus is prepared by boiling it and then leaving it in the water for a couple of hours until it is cooled.