Italian Studies

Brief historical introduction

Italian studies at the University of Toronto can be traced back to Giacomo (James) Forneri, a native of Piedmont, who introduced modern language studies here in the mid-19th century. By 1954 Emilio Goggio, professor at the Department of Spanish and Italian Studies, could write: “it may be said without hesitation that our collection of Italian and Spanish books is the best in Canada and one of the largest and most complete on the North American continent”.