Tuesday, March 19

Month: August 2020

Italy’s Oil Colony: Basilicata
Stracciatella: A Sprinkling of This & That

Italy’s Oil Colony: Basilicata

An interview with Giorgio Santoriello, author of Colonia Basilicata A regional map of Italy with Basilicata in Red. The region of Basilicata is historically one of the poorest and most rural regions of Italy. With a total population of only half-a-million people, Basilicata is known to outsiders for its vast landscapes, its picturesque villages, and its many heritage sites: The Sassi of Matera, the abandoned city of Craco, the beauty of Castelmezzano, and the Roman city of Grumentum. But behind the postcard images is the toxic reality of the oil industry in the region, which has an environmental track record that borders on the criminal. The areas most impacted by the oil extraction have seen sharp rises in the rates of cancers, yet Eni, the petroleum giant, exerts undue influen...
Living Remnants: Arpitan in Southern Italy
Stracciatella: A Sprinkling of This & That

Living Remnants: Arpitan in Southern Italy

A view of Faeto's center (Photo: Stephen J. Cerulli) by Stephen J. Cerulli August 1, 2020 (This is a modified and updated version on an article first published in: 1 University Place: Volume 1 / Issue 2 / Spring 2015) Nestled in the rolling hills of the Daunian Mountains, in northern Apulia, lies the village of Faeto. The Faítare, the village’s residents, affectionately call it “Faít”. Though this may seem like a cute moniker, or a southern Italian dialect place-name, neither is the case. In fact, the name is not Italian at all, it is a dialect of Arpitan, a romance language spoken in the Swiss, Italian, and French Alps (The neighboring village of Celle San Vito also speaks a dialect of Arpitan). So what exactly is Arpitan?[1] And why is an Alpine language spoken in southern Ital...