Welcome to Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò!

In this website you will find plenty of useful information on Casa and its role within New York University and in the city of New York. I am sure that you will read these pages with interest and that you will be excited about the activities that Casa proposes continuously in all cultural fields. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Casa and to invite you to actively participate in our events.

In these past ten years Casa has become a special place which, while remaining close to the tradition of other similar institutions, has also created a unique and significant role for itself in the American cultural scene.

As an integral part of a prestigious university, Casa has access to excellent human, social, and cultural resources, that allow it to function as an entity within American culture whose primary goal is not to "promote" Italian culture abroad, but to encourage interaction and integration between the Italian/European and the American cultural tradition.

Casa is a place for dialogue and cultural growth for people of all backgrounds that wish to share their skills and ideas. My greatest satisfactions as director have come not only from the enthusiastic participation of thousands of people in our activities, but especially from those projects that took shape right here: collaborative artistic endeavors, theater performances, academic research.

With our presence and our work we have rendered New York more Italian and we have contributed a more realistic and diverse image of Italian culture from the highest intellectual expressions to the popular traditions; from the 13th Century poets to the new generation of authors; from the debate on Italian-American identity to the role of Italian politics within the European context.

The cultural growth of the Casa depends in large part on the people that participate in our activities with intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm. I hope that these few lines will have also captivated your attention and interest in our mission. I look forward to greeting you personally here at the Casa.

Stefano Albertini

Stefano Albertini a native of Bozzolo in the Northern Italian province of Mantua studied at the Università di Parma, where he majored in Political History. After obtaining his M.A. in Italian Literature from the University of Virginia he was admitted to Stanford University where he earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on the rethoric of violence in Niccolò Machiavelli’s writings.
He has published extensively on topics ranging from Dante to Renaissance Literature, to Church/State relations during fascism.
Since 1994, he has been teaching literature and cinema in the Department of Italian Studies at New York University. From 1995 to February 1998 he was Associate Director of Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò and since then he has served as Director.