Volume 27 · Number 4 · Summer 2010
Aggies Abroad Essay
Experiencing “la dolce vita” in Italy
by Steven Baker ’66
My junior year in Italy in the mid-60s now seems like a Fellini movie. The scars of WWII were still visible — a faded “Viva Mussolini” could still be seen painted on a wall not far from where I lived. Socially, Italy was still a conservative country: College-age women from good Italian families did not go out with men one-on-one; dating meant going out in small groups, often including the woman’s older brother. But, the economic miracle was underway, especially in the industrial North, society was changing rapidly, and the glamour of “la dolce vita” was irresistible.
At first, Padua seemed an odd choice as a place to spend the academic year. A provincial town in the Po Valley, bourgeois and heavily Catholic, it lacked the fabled attractions of Florence or Rome. However, it soon became clear that Padua was well chosen as the home of one of Italy’s oldest, most distinguished universities. Furthermore, while Florence and Rome had large colonies of American students, often living in relative isolation from Italians and taught by American professors, I was part of a small group of students from all UC campuses, living with Italian roommates in university dormitories, attending university classes alongside Italian students, drinking with them in the bars, and meeting their families in some of the city’s more affluent homes. One of the monuments of the early Renaissance — Giotto’s fresco cycle in the Scrovegni Chapel — was steps from my dorm, fantastic for me as a student of art history; incomparable Venice was a 40 minute bus-ride, and travel throughout Italy (and to Russia, and the Middle East) was cheap and easy due to the short Italian academic year. Life was sweet indeed.
Not that being in Italy was a complete escape from reality. Opposition to the war in Vietnam was growing, and anti-American demonstrations were frequent. I rose one morning to find that the front of my dorm had been defaced with the graffito: “American Assassins Go Home.” When I came back at the end of the day, I was astonished to find that the university had painted-over the entire front of the dorm, a sensitive and graceful gesture. I also learned something about the endless variety of prejudice in the world. I befriended two fellow students who were communist activists. I noticed that the one from a wealthy Northern family would often join me for dinner and discussion in the student cafeteria, but he never ate with the other communist who happened to be from Sicily’s capital, Palermo. When I asked him why, he laughingly responded that he would rather eat with an American capitalist pig than with a Southern Italian.
Life changing — yes. That year of study in Padua led to graduate school in England, another year of dissertation research in Italy (where I met the love of my life), an academic career including a teaching stint in Japan, and several years as an academic administrator before transitioning into full-time painting. Forty years later, I still speak a few phrases of Italian every day, and eat pasta three times a week. Could I have got here without the benefit of study abroad? Perhaps, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun!
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