2011-2012 - The Italian Academy - Columbia University

academically, but also truly felt like a home away from home. Lastly,
I would like to thank my brilliant group of fellow Fellows for the
thought-provoking discussions at the Wednesday Fellows’ seminar,
and for the genuine communal spirit which made this semester so
much more.
Leon Jacobowitz Efron returns to his position as Visiting Professor of History
at Achva College of Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
Francesco Faeta
I spent my semester as a Fellow at the Italian Academy working
mainly on the development, from the theoretical and methodological
point of view, of my research project entitled “Representing the
Past: A Holy Drama in Northern Italy between Anthropology and
History of Art.”
In particular, I devoted myself to the preparatory process of
my fieldwork, which took a preliminary step in the first half of
2012, to be developed in May 2012. The seminar discussion of my
work, conducted under the direction of David Freedberg, with the
critical contribution of the other Fellows and of some colleagues
and guests—such as Jane and Peter Schneider (CUNY), Francesco
Pellizzi (Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard),
and Ittai Weinryb (Bard Graduate Center)—allowed me to
check my themes and my approaches, enriching my reflections with
important stimuli. The tools offered by the Academy have proved
very valuable, and my residence at Columbia University has been
decisive for the final interpretation of my work. I have also had the
possibility to continue my writing of a work dedicated to the Italian
national image, built through the photographic representation of
margins and peripheries (in this case, Sardinia) in the second half
of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century; this in
the critical perspective of an ethnography of cultural productions
and social contexts. I got a big boost in that regard in many meetings
with colleagues such as David Freedberg and Barbara Faedda
(at the Italian Academy), Pamela Smith (Columbia), Jane and Peter
Schneider, Nelson Moe (Barnard College, Columbia), David For-
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