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Our Program Calendar

Public and Academic Programs

Public programs

Centro Primo Levi’s programs explore the diversity of the Italian Jewish experience and take inspiration from Primo Levi’s humanism and his quest to explore the past and understand different aspects of the world we inhabit.

Italian Jewish Studies Seminars

A collaborative initiative of Centro Primo Levi with the NYU departments of Italian, History and Judaic Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò to develop a context for the study of Italian Jewish history, generally absent from curricula of Italian studies and only marginally featured in Jewish Studies programs.[expand] Italian Jews, the oldest minority in Europe, have lived in the peninsula since Roman times, producing a unique cultural milieu, and often acting as liaisons to neighboring societies. [/expand]

Primo Levi Forum

Readings, roundtables and presentation periodically connect scholars and practitioners from the many fields of the humanities and sciences that defined Levi’s intellectual horizon. Year after year, contributions from all over the world demonstrate [expand]the inspirational capacity of Levi’s work and the creative power of his journeys across disciplines. Translated in over 40 languages, Levi’s work transcends cultural boundaries and comes to plays often unexpected roles in different cultures. [/expand]

Memoria

Studies and research on the history of the anti-Jewish persecution in Italy, fascism and the post-war construction of memory. A collaborative effort of the Consulate General of Italy, Centro Primo Levi, the Italian Cultural Institute, NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, [expand]the Italian Academy at Columbia University, CUNY’s John Calandra Italian American Institute and Scuola d’Italia Guglielmo Marconi and the Bronx High School of Science. Selected programs are held under the auspices of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.[/expand]

CPL Editions & Printed Matter

Lorenza Mazzetti Re-covered

January 19, 2024Printed Matter

Lucy Scholes, The Paris Review, 2020. In 1956, in a central London café, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and Lorenza Mazzetti wrote a manifesto for what they termed the “Free Cinema” movement. Among the aims of these...

The Eternal Tendency Toward Fascism

January 19, 2024Printed Matter

Stanislao Pugliese. Levi was strongly attracted to the radical new ideology of Giustizia e Libertà. GL was the only movement that arose directly in response to Mussolini’s regime. It was a heterogeneous group of intellectuals; both a...

Truth of Dare?

January 19, 2024Printed Matter

Farah Abdessamad. The new English translation of Impostures from Basra-born Al-Harīrī (aka the Arab poet known as Abū Muhammad al-Qāsim ibn Alī ibn Muhammad ibn Uthmān al-Harīrī)revives the “eloquent rogue” genre of classical Arabic...

The Heretical Origins of the Sonnet

January 19, 2024Printed Matter

Ed Simon. Kleinhenz writes: “For centuries the sonnet has remained the most popular and the most difficult poetic form in Western literature,” with few canonical poets since the Renaissance completely avoiding them. The endurance of...

Italy and the Jews Beyond the Borders

January 19, 2024Printed Matter

Michele Sarfatti’s new book I confini di una persecuzione (The Borders of a Persecution-Fascism and the Jews outside of Italy 1939-1943,) examines the treatment reserved by the Italian regime to Italian and foreign Jews in Italian...

Night on Earth

January 19, 2024Printed Matter

Rodogno paints a broad picture of Western humanitarian organizations’ activities in the Near East after World War One, in particular those from the United-States, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. The focus of their...

The Last Muslim of Italy

January 19, 2024Printed Matter

David Abulafia During Dante’s lifetime, the only Muslim city on the Italian peninsula ceased to exist. Dante does not mention Lucera Saracenorum (a Latin placename meaning “Lucera of the Saracens”) in his writings, despite his...

Bashing Micól

January 19, 2024Printed Matter

It is never easy to reconcile literary works with their theatrical adaptations. Even more so when the work in question is a delicately complex novel like Giorgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, with its symbolic layers,...

La iente de Zion

January 25, 2022Printed Matter

La iente de Zion is a Jewish liturgical poem composed for the observance of the fast of the 9th day of the month of Av (Tisha B’Av). It appears in two prayer books of the Roman rite compiled in the 14th and 15th centuries. It was...

My Betrayed Garden

January 25, 2022Printed Matter

But what most displeased me, personally, was that my characters were used so freely, with so little reference to my work, in a way that would have been inappropriate even if they were marionettes. Although fine folk, the Finzi-Continis...

Formiggini’s Talking Cards

January 5, 2022Printed Matter

A brilliant publisher, Formiggini started running his business in the first decade of the twentieth century in his hometown of Modena. He then moved to Genoa and finally to Rome in 1916. The wit and refinement of his publications, as...

Piero Dello Strologo (1936-2022)

January 5, 2022Printed Matter

I met Piero Dello Strologo many years ago in Genova. He was younger than I am today and became the initial inspiration for what, years later, would be established as Centro Primo Levi in New York. I arrived at his office in...

Interview with Peter Cole

January 5, 2022Printed Matter

Going elsewhere might just show you who you are and what you might become. That physically, psychologically, imaginatively, you have to work your way into each of the “languages” involved in any broadly translational situation. And...

Under Gentile Eyes

January 5, 2022Printed Matter

As the reader will no doubt recognize, Under Gentile Eyes, the title chosen for this inquiry into some of the sundry ways in which Jews and Judaism have been represented in Christian Europe throughout the centuries, is quite blatantly...

Jewish Citizens

January 5, 2022Printed Matter

The National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah opened its third exhibition entitled Beyond the Ghetto. Inside Out curated by Andreina Contessa, Simonetta Della Seta, Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti, and Sharon Reichel. Image:...

The Time of Love

January 5, 2022Printed Matter

Italian Jews Between Segregation and Emancipation (1849-1871). The Jewish Museum of Rome opens a magnificent exhibition dedicated to the period that goes from the second Roman Republic to the annexation of Rome to unified Italy:...

Primo Levi: An Identikit

January 5, 2022Printed Matter

Over the last seventy years, Primo Levi (1919–87) has been recognized as the foremost literary witness of the extermination of the European Jews. In Primo Levi: An Identikit, a product of twenty years of research, Marco Belpoliti...

The Indecipherable Mess of Human Life

January 5, 2022Printed Matter

Due vite (Two Lives) by Emanuele Trevi is a luminous, beautifully written wisdom book. It was deservedly awarded the 2021 Premio Strega, Italy’s major literary prize, and awaits the foresight of an American publisher for an English...

Research & Learning

Primo Levi

March 9, 2016home

Primo Levi’s life and work through archives and research institutions, a short film and an anthology of essays....

Resources

March 16, 2016home

Libraries, archives and research for Italian Jewish studies Read More...

J-Italy

March 16, 2016home

A literary and historical journey through the Jewish treasures of the Italian regions Read More...

Chazanut

March 17, 2016home

Created in memory of Erna Finci Viterbi z”l, this resource aims at sharing with users across the world the Italian Jewish liturgy and cantorial traditions Coming Soon...

The Shoah in Italy

March 17, 2016home

A brief guide to the study of the persecution of the Jews in Italy based on material provided by the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan....

Americordo

March 17, 2016home

Documenting the lives of Italian Jewish exiles in America, their struggles and achievements, through research, oral history and family albums....

Film

March 17, 2016home

Representing Jews in Italian film and documentary. Italian Jewish history in film....

Italian Jewish Press

March 17, 2016home

Guided portal to the Italian Jewish press of 19th and 20th centuries. Created in collaboration with the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Coming Soon...

From & For the Press

Editors’ picks from our partners and elsewhere

The Primo Levi Archive in Turin

October 12, 2016Advertising, Editor Pick

The International Primo Levi Studies Center offers scholars and students access to Primo Levi’s work and to research on different aspects of his writing. The archive collects the editions of his works, translations, critical...

CDEC Digital Library

October 12, 2016Editor Pick

  CDEC Digital Library a web portal dedicated to the history, culture and traditions of the Jews in Italy from the emancipation era the present as well as to the largest collection, library and research body on the history of the...

Archivio Ebraico Terracini

October 12, 2016Editor Pick

The Archive of the Jewish traditions and customs Benvenuto and Alessandro Terracini collects and preserves objects, documents and books from the Jewish tradition of Piemonte. Established almost forty years ago in Turin by a bequest of...

Jewish Museum of Rome

October 12, 2016Editor Pick

Discover the Jewish Museum of Rome’s mappoth collection. Traditionally used to cover the sacred text between readings of different portions, these beautifully embroidered textiles are testimony to centuries of Jewish life in Rome. ...

Fondazione Fossoli

October 22, 2016Editor Pick

The Fossoli Foundation is dedicated to the preservation of the history of the concentration camp of Fossoli (Carpi, Modena) in its various phases (POW camp, national concentration/transit camp for Jews, DP camp and orphanage). The...

Franco Antonicelli Archive

October 22, 2016Editor Pick

Writer, public intellectual and publisher Franco Antonicelli was among the early opposers of Fascism, an activist of Giustizia e Libertà and later in the Comitato di Liberazione. He was responsible fo the first publication of Primo...

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