Philadelphia the Global City

About the course

“ITAL B240 Philadelphia the Global City: The Italian Legacy across Time” is a Tri-Co Philly course taught in Fall 2025. It investigates the history and evolution of Philadelphia as a globalized and multi-ethnic city, using as a case study for this analysis the impact and legacy of transnational Italian culture across the centuries. By adopting a cross-cultural, trans-historical, and interdisciplinary approach, “Philadelphia the Global City” explores the influence that—along with and in intersection with many other cultural inputs—Italian arts and cultures have exerted on the city, making it become the cosmopolitan and transnational urban environment that it is today.

Throughout the centuries and way before Italy even started existing as a state, Philadelphians traveled to the peninsula and brought back objects to display in emerging cultural institutions or studied the country’s art and architecture styles to shape the evolving aspect of the city. Simultaneously, incoming immigration formed new neighborhoods—such as South Philly, home to the Italian Market—and Italian figures came to prominence and became part of the social fabric of the city. Nowadays, many non-profit organizations work to preserve the traces that Italian migrants left within Philadelphia’s multi-ethnic urban environment as well as to extend the city’s global profile and celebrate its heritage and diversity.

Through specific field trips, on-site experiential activities, and forms of civic engagement the course highlights both the enduring fascination of Philadelphians with Italy (or with the idea thereof) across the centuries and the role that the Italian Diaspora played in the development of the city. The course ultimately challenges geographical, chronological, and cultural boundaries by showing how places, arts, identities that today are perceived as ‘American’ have in most cases an intersectional, multi-ethnic, and cross-cultural history to tell.

Symposium

On Monday, December 8, 2025, Assistant Professor of Transnational Italian Studies Luca Zipoli and the students in ITAL B240 presented “Urban Palimpsests: A Student Symposium on the Italian Legacy in Global Philadelphia,” featuring 13 student presentations and opening and closing remarks by the Consul General of Italy Nico Frandi. The event was organized by the Department of Transnational Italian Studies and co-sponsored by the Consulate General of Italy in Philadelphia, the Tri-Co Philly program, and Library and Information Technology Services (LITS) at Bryn Mawr College. Further information on the symposium and testimonials on this project can be found on the Bryn Mawr College website in the Story titled “Transnational Italian Studies and LITS hold symposium and launch website for Tri-Co Philly course.”