Pier R. Baldini has more than 30 years of experience in a study abroad environment and is a professor of Italian Literature at Arizona State University. His specialty is nineteenth and twentieth century Italian literature.  

 

He was born and grew up in Florence, Italy, and came to the U.S. for the first time as a Fulbright Exchange student. After living in the States for three years, while studying and teaching Italian first at Gonzaga University and then at San Francisco State University, he completed a B.A. and went to Vancouver, B.C. There he completed his M.A. degree at University of British Columbia. The next two years found him in his hometown of Florence, Italy as assistant resident director for the California State Program. While there he was offered a job teaching Italian at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Never having been in Africa before, and being restless anyway, he thought it would be an interesting experience.  So, he taught at Wits for the following three years before returning to the U.S. to study at UCLA where he completed his Ph.D. in 1976.

Since then he has taught at Indiana University and Arizona State University. At ASU he helped develop the Italian program and started the Florence Summer Program in 1981, the longest running study abroad program at ASU. For five years he was Chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures of which Italian is one section.

He has written articles in journals such as Nuova Antologia, Forum Italicum, Filologia e Critica, Esperienze Letterarie, Otto-Novecento and others and he has been co-editor of several volumes of selected essays. In teaching he has co-authored a first year textbook, published by Wiley & Sons, entitled Buon giorno a tutti! He has been involved for many years in both the American Association of Teachers of Italian, and the American Association for Italian Studies. He has served as the Treasurer of the AATI, and as editor of Italian Culture, the official journal of the AAIS.

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As any good Italian, of course he likes music and especially opera.