Event in Italian

Presenter: Tommaso Munari (University of Turin and Italian Academy, Columbia University)

Moderator: Pier Mattia Tommasino (Columbia University)

In 1868, the executive board of the newly founded Higher School of Commerce of Venice (later known as Ca’ Foscari University) decided to create a chair of ‘living Oriental languages.’ The school intended to train the future consular agents of the Kingdom of Italy. This initiative was a first for nineteenth-century Europe and was closely linked to the imminent opening of the Suez Canal, in which Italy, recently unified in 1861, placed great economic hopes. While Italy, as a nation, was focusing its colonial aims on North Africa, the city of Venice hoped to become again the queen of trade with the East.

This event is part of the series “The Life of Venice and its People,” celebrating the Tenth-Year Anniversary of The Italian and Mediterranean Colloquium, and is cosponsored by Department of Italian, Columbia University, in collaboration with the Department Art History & Archaeology and the Casa Muraro in Venice, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Division of Humanities, and The European Institute at Columbia University.