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Please join us for a talk by Assistant Professor of Italian Studies Cecily Cai, "What I Learned About Europe in America: Tracing Exile in Modern European Literature from the Other Shore"

How does one learn about Europe in America? In 1984, the South African writer J. M. Coetzee published an article in the New York Times titled “How I Learned AboutAmerica – And Africa – in Texas,” recounting his American encounters from the 1960s. Inspired by these cross-continental reflections on the conflicts of linguistic identity and cultural belonging, I will discuss some of the works featured in my forthcoming monograph The Age of Dissonance: Exile and Late Style in Modern European Literature with a focus on Europe as seen across the shore in America (and vice versa).