Professor Pier Raimondo Baldini

I was born and grew up in Florence, Italy, and came to the U.S. for the first time as a  Fulbright  Exchange student. After living in the States for three years, while studying and teaching Italian  first at Gonzaga University and then at San Francisco State University, I completed my B.A. and went to Vancouver, B.C. There I completed my M.A. degree at UBC. The next two years found me in my hometown of Florence as assistant  resident director for the California State Program. While there I was offered a job teaching Italian at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Never having been in Africa before, and being restless anyway, I thought it would be an interesting experience.  So, I taught at Wits for the following  three years before returning to the U.S. to study at UCLA where I completed my PhD in 1976. Since then I have taught at Indiana University and Arizona State University. At ASU I helped developing the Italian program and started the Florence Summer Program in 1981. For five years I was Chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures of which Italian is one section.
My academic interests vary from 19th and 20th century literature to pedagogy. In the first area I have written articles in journals such as Nuova Antologia, Forum Italicum, Filologia e Critica, Esperienze Letterarie, Otto-Novecento and others and I have been co-editor of several volumes of selected essays. In the teaching area I have co-authored a first year textbook, published by Wiley & Sons, entitled Buon giorno a tutti!
    I have been involved for many years in both the American Association of Teachers of Italian and the American Association for Italian Studies and presently I am the Treasurer of the AATI and the editor of Italian Culture, the official journal of the AAIS.
    My hobbies include sailing, both competitive and cruising, and racketball (in which I try to play a half decent game). As a good Italian, of course I like music and especially opera.