UConn Celebrates Primo Levi | Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life

Posted by CindyMindell on February 27, 2013 in CT News,

STORRS – A quarter-century after his passing, Italian-Jewish philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi is the subject of a year-long academic series, a collaboration between the University of Connecticut’s Department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages and its Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life.

The program is organized by Dr. Philip Balma, who straddles the two academic foci, as both assistant professor of Italian Literary and Cultural Studies, and affiliated faculty member of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Balma credits a high-school teacher for inspiring his admiration for the Italian-Jewish philosopher. “I must acknowledge, first and foremost, the efforts of the late Carla Serram,” he says. “She was my literature professor in the Italian public school system in the 1980s in Florence, Italy, and she was the person who introduced me to Primo Levi’s first autobiographical book, If This Is a Man, also known in English translation as Survival in Auschwitz. Prof. Serra planted a seed that, many years later, has grown into a much larger initiative on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, on the flagship campus of UConn in Storrs.” Read full story