By Gianna Banducci

No matter where you are in the world, to discover another culture it is essential to become immersed and integrated into society.

Considering that I attend school with one hundred Americans and that the English language seems to be spoken everywhere, this task has been somewhat difficult for me during my nine months abroad in Florence.

Since this was the situation that I was encountering everday during my first months in Italy, I decided to venture out on my own to find my link to Italian society.

When I met Professor Alessandro Trojani from the University of Florence, I was more than eager to participate in any type of work that would allow me more contact with the Italian culture.

He presented to my class at school and explained that he needed English speaking students to assist him in the research he is conducting through the University of Florence and California State University.

The project is entitled “Italians in the Gold Rush and Beyond” and it focuses on the historic immigration of Italians to America during the early twentieth century to participate in the California Gold Rush.

It is a period in Italian and American history that is often not recognized, but through much travel and research, Professor Trojani and his team of Italian university students have pieced together an unacknowledged part of history.

In Florence most of the research they do involves charting regions on the west coast of the United States where Italian immigrants settled and creating a record of their movement.

Once they establish the location of these areas, Professor Trojani and his assistants travel to America to visit old towns or cemetaries and interview Italian American descendants of immigrants.


After they return with all of the information and data they have acquired, I am able to contribute my part to the project. With these interviews, I create a written transcript of all the dialogue between the Italian American being interviewed and the interviewer.

After finishing, I summarize all the information provided and highlight the main points of the interview. Recently, I presented some of my findings to Professor Trojani and some of his assistants.

Now I am looking forward to giving this presentation again, but this time to a group comprised of faculty from the University of Florence and the California State University International Program in Florence and members of the American consulate.

Without a doubt this presentation will be one of the most challenging moments during my time in Florence, but it will also be the ideal culmination to the rewarding work that I have completed with Professor Trojani at the University of Florence.

Web Sources:

Italians in the Gold Rush and Beyond - IGRB (Official Website)
University of Florence - (Official Website)
California State University - (Official Website)

For further info about this experience contact: Simone Gallorini

Special thanks to Professor Alessandro Trojani

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