To make it to class each week, professor flies from Milan to Princeton

Visiting University professor and Italian journalist Gianni Riotta is living two lives, separated by the Atlantic Ocean and an eight-hour flight. Each week he travels from his office in Milan to the University, temporarily leaving his post as vice director of the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera to teach a course on 20th century Italian literature called "Writing Italian Style."

"I'm a smuggler," said Riotta, who considers himself a link between America and Europe. He explained the need to maintain an exchange of ideas after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks broke lines of communication between Western nations.

"I knew of his dedication to journalism and social work," said Gaetana Marrone-Puglia, a professor in the French and Italian department who was inspired to invite Riotta to teach when she saw him speaking at a panel on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's "The Leopard." His range of knowledge on both literature and journalism left a strong impression, she said.

Riotta was appointed to the newspaper post in spring 2005, after he had already accepted the position of visiting professor at Princeton. He decided to commute between the jobs.

Riotta has a habit of crossing boundaries in his own work. He is a professor of journalism and creative writing at the University of Bologna. Between writing columns for the Corriere, he has written seven novels, two of which have been translated into English: "The Prince of Clouds" and the upcoming "The Lights of Alborada."

In a short story from an earlier work, he writes about the experiences of a young Jewish-American woman. Riotta said that through writing, he can explore what it is to live in another person's body.

This is the same concept that Riotta brings to his teaching. He said that he wanted to break Italian free from its mold as a "language of marble."

"Italian is not Latin," he said. "Latin is a dead language."

He has endeavored to show how, through globalization, Italy and its language have diversified. The influx of immigrants into the nation — Spanish, African, and Iraqi — has led to new uses of Italian both in daily language and in the literary world.

Exposure to American TV, for example, has led many Italians to adapt English rhythms in their speech. The development of Italian rap is also transforming the language, making it faster and more fragmented.

Riotta tells the story of how children, wanting to curse without being detected, created a new curse word from the first few syllables of an Italian phrase.

This intermixing of cultures, Riotta hopes, will open up the Italian language and culture to outsiders, including his students.

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"When you look at an Italian book, I don't want you to see it as Italian, but [as] your book," he said, explaining that its appreciation should not be constricted by culture. "Who cares? Enjoy the book, hate the book."

In the Internet, Riotta saw another opportunity for dialogue. He and fellow Italian writer Umberto Eco created the first online Italian newspaper, Golem. The development of the Internet, however, has also lead to the spread of biased, unsubstantiated information.

Without the journalistic discipline of fact-driven articles, he said he fears that only deficient reporting will remain to inform the public.

"I am not interested in the medium," he said of printed news, which continues on a downward descent in popularity. "I am interested in the wisdom."