Travel Writing

All Things Italy April 2023 What Palermo Promises

By Etta Madden | April 8, 2023
Dear Friends:  Last month I promised more insights from my time in Sicily—specifically, Palermo and its surroundings. Then, last week I shared on social media...

Coincidence or Signs? Waldensians in the News

By Etta Madden | December 19, 2020
Twice in less than 24 hours—actually, within about 12 hours—I received notice from two friends* of two recent but very different news stories about the...

Food Memories: Utopian Visions?

By Etta Madden | July 11, 2020
I missed June's blog. I'm making up for it by referring here to a short blog that appeared elsewhere last month. I wrote "Koulourakia Cravings"...

Cancelled!

By Etta Madden | May 25, 2020
As Italy crawls back to life, many of us mourn the loss of trips planned and cancelled. This week-after-semester's-end at the university often finds me...

Traveling to Trappist Monasteries: An Interview with Paul Green

By Etta Madden | January 27, 2019
Tina Moore, at one of many campfires she and Paul Green shared during their journey What if your partner or spouse...

More than a Haunted Cemetery: Public Humanities Past & Present

By Etta Madden | October 29, 2018
Mausoleum Row, Mount Mora Cemetery, St. Joseph, Missouri A tour at Mount Mora Cemetery in St. Joseph last week gave me...

Constance Fenimore Woolson and Zoar

By Etta Madden | October 12, 2017
Constance Fenimore Woolson Linking “utopian” communal groups and American women writers in Italy, I spoke last weekend on Constance Fenimore Woolson...

American Women Abroad

By Etta Madden | September 29, 2016
I often teach works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Maria Sedgwick and Margaret Fuller, three among several 19th-century American writers whose lives were changed by...