Roaming International Ambassadors: The Impact of Faculty and Student Exchange in a Globalized World

The university has the appointed task of searching for, finding and then teaching an adequate culture. Not only does the universitas magistrorum et scholarium, i.e. the whole body of teachers and students, pursue the higher branches of knowledge and research, but it is -- par excellence -- the site for locating the confrontations of the ever-changing plurality of points of view in contemporary multicultural society. Moreover, the university must take a central position between mass media on the one side and society on the other, providing above all the research and analytical tools for the data circulated by the information world. This requires academics to take responsibility in order to pursue, practice, and encourage new, revised conceptions of comparatism, where the role of mediation and “ambassadorship” between different cultures, countries and institutions becomes the necessary step to get to know the culture of the other directly, and to compare different ways of living. That is why the international exchange of faculty and students has become a crucial issue for most academic institutions of ours, more importantly so while promoting more tolerance, and more imagination as well in promoting it. This essay opens an investigation on the functions of “cultural mediation” as played by American Studies, Italian-American Studies, and Italian Cultural Studies -- as well as by Universities, Italian Istituti di Cultura abroad and Embassies. As seen from various angles, under discussion are such roles as interpreters/translators of American culture -- specifically in Italy, Europe, and North America.