How to Stay Connected to a Country You Love • A Talk with Cheryl Chaffin

How to Stay Connected to a Country You Love

A Talk with Cheryl Chaffin

How do you find and maintain a connection to a place, a country, a culture over the course of a lifetime? In this talk, Cheryl explores an early connection to Italy through study abroad in college and returning to Italy in middle life to research the work of Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish writer. This research returned her first to Italian language in order to read the writer’s works in the original and over the past decade has spun out to encompass other writers of a specific city and time in Italy’s history. Cheryl will share personal moments in the archives, the manuscripts she has read, the wisdom Italian writers offer us in their work, the neighborhoods and towns where writers have lived, and encounters with people who have helped and accompanied her along the way, deepening her relationship with Italy.

Author Biography:

Cheryl Chaffin is professor of Composition and Literature at Cabrillo College where she has been faculty in the English Department for twenty-five years. She has a Masters in Writing and a doctorate in Humanities. She is a researcher in memory, trauma studies, and Italian writers of the twentieth century. She is the author of After Poland: A Memoir Because of Primo Levi (2018) and Encountering Primo Levi: Reading and Teaching Trauma Narratives, published with Palgrave-MacMillan in 2026. She directs Cabrillo’s Honors Transfer Program. Whenever and as much as possible, she studies languages, writes, and translates.

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Parking is $4 in the closest parking lot "L" near the Music and Theater buildings / pay at the kiosk machine and place the receipt in your windshield. (there is no street parking along Soquel Drive)