By Richard Eichenberg
Reflection
I was a somewhat unique undergraduate when I took a class (“Black Italy”) with Professor PoDeLisle in the fall of 2023: I had just retired from a forty-year career as a professor of international relations. Nonetheless, in that class, I discovered that I had never really engaged in truly interdisciplinary inquiry. We studied imperialism, immigration, and racism using a variety of methodologies and materials that illuminated our inquiry in a very rich way. My class paper and contribution to CANAL further reinforced this interdisciplinary approach; I drew on films as well as works of anthropology, fiction, and personal testimony. Struggling to express my thoughts in Italian paradoxically further reinforced this methodology, because I had to ask: “what am I trying to say and what works in Italian have taught me to say it?” Of course, CANAL is an interdisciplinary journal, so it was an appropriate home for my essay.
Another notable impact of my studies at UML was the opportunity to study under a wonderful Professor with a group of engaged, hard-working, and welcoming undergraduates. Professor PoDelisle’s engagement and enthusiasm were impressive, and I found my student colleagues to be among the very best I’ve encountered in my own teaching. I was lucky to study at UMass Lowell, which is truly a jewel in our state university system.
Read “Perdita e solitudine nella vita delle popolazioni migrant” Canal Issue VIII (2024).
Biographical Statement - Richard Eichenberg
Richard Eichenberg retired from Tufts University in 2022 after almost forty years teaching international relations. His specialties included foreign policy, security policy, and gender politics. His retirement hobbies include cycling, genealogy research, and of course the study of Italian language and culture.