In his newly released documentary film, Umbria Jazz Feast, UC Davis Professor of Music Pierpaolo Polzonetti investigates the perceptions and identities of jazz as it intersects with the cuisine, art, and culture of locals and visitors in Perugia, a medieval town in central Italy. A musicologist specializing in music and food, Polzonetti focused on how the festival enabled a synesthetic experience; that is, one in which different senses are simultaneously engaged. 

"Umbria Jazz Feast" is a documentary film that investigates multi-sensorial intersections during the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy. It presents a new look at this festival by addressing the question: how is jazz perceived as part of a new global identity intersecting with local and global cuisine, art and culture? There will be a free screening of the film on May 6 in Davis.

Seed Grant projects foster long-term international research collaborations, create innovations in internationalizing the curriculum in support of the Global Education for All initiative and grow or build global partnerships.

A team of UC Davis Humanities scholars planning a 2024-2025 seminar, Thinking Food @ the Intersections, was recently awarded $225,000 for the project. The seminar will have dual goals of understanding the complexities of food justice through a humanities framework as well as finding new potential solutions. 

In this book, opera scholar Pierpaolo Polzonetti explores how convivial culture shaped the birth of opera and opera-going rituals until the mid-nineteenth century, when eating and drinking at the opera house were still common. Through analyses of convivial scenes in operas, the book also shows how the consumption of food and drink, and sharing or the refusal to do so, define characters’ identity and relationships.