Trieste, A Mediterranean City

A conversation with Salvatore Pappalardo (Towson University) and David Do Paço (Sciences Po, Paris & Columbia University). Respondents: Franco Baldasso (Bard College), Konstantina Zanou (Columbia University).

Coordinator: Konstantina Zanou

This event puts together the story of a Muslim boy’s disappearance in late 18^th century Trieste (David Do Paço) with that of the ideas of some 19^th-century Triestine archeologists, antiquarians and historians (Salvatore Pappalardo) in order to explore the emergence of Trieste as a multiethnic imperial port and a carrier of a presumably distinctive Phoenician-Mediterranean heritage.

David Do Paço is the István Deák Visiting Professor in East Central European Studies at Columbia University and a Researcher at Science Po, Paris. He is a historian of the Habsburg Empire in the eighteenth century. His research lies at the intersection of urban history, diaspora studies, and historical anthropology. He is the author of the monographL’Orient à Vienne au dix-huitième siècle (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2015). David’s current project concerns the social and political life of Muslims in 18th century Habsburg cities. He is also the co-director of the Franco-German research project “Trieste: city of Empire(s)”.

Salvatore Pappalardo is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Towson University, where he teaches courses that range from the ancient Mediterranean to modern world literature. His research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century European literature, Austrian and Italian modernism, and Mediterranean Studies. He is the author of the monograph Modernism in Trieste: The Habsburg Mediterranean and the Literary Invention of Europe, 1870–1945 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).

Franco Baldasso is Assistant Professor of Italian and Director of the Italian Program at Bard College. His main research interests are twentieth century literature, art and intellectual history. His courses and publications focus on the complex relations between Fascism and Modernism, the legacy and memory of political violence in Italy, and the idea of the Mediterranean in modern aesthetics. He authored two books: one on Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, Il cerchio di gesso. Primo Levi narratore e testimone (2007), as well as Curzio Malaparte, la letteratura crudele. Kaputt, La pelle e la caduta della civiltà europea (2019). He is currently finalizing a book manuscript titled “Against Redemption: Democracy, Memory and Literature in Post-fascist Italy.”

This event is part of the Italian and Mediterranean Colloquium series, sponsored by the European Institute & the Department of Italian.

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