A New Professor's Journey: Creating My Platform, with Danielle Callegari

The Sydcast

Episode Summary:

Italy. Food. Artisans. Culture. That is the life Professor Danielle Callegari is immersed in, and when you hear about it you’ll probably say, why didn’t I think of it! Except then you’ll need to spend years writing a book on Dante, then start the next book, cloistered in Italian libraries with no air conditioning during Roman summer. Danielle’s story is a story of the professor building a career, a brand, and a platform, an inside look at what it really takes to make it in academia.

Sydney Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Danielle Callegari

Danielle Callegari is Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Dartmouth College and Councilor of the Dante Society of America. Her teaching and research focuses on Italian literature and food and beverage studies. Her first book, Dante’s Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy, is forthcoming with Amsterdam University Press in spring 2022. She is also the co-host of Gola (patreon.com/golapod), a podcast on Italian food and beverage culture, with Katie Parla.

Insights from this Episode

• How Danielle’s interest on Italian culture began
• How Danielle navigates through the investigation world
• Danielle’s concerns on having a PhD in Humanities
• The story behind the Dante Society of America
• The purpose of Danielle’s book “Dante’s Gluttons: Food and Society”
• Danielle’s ideas for her next book
• The importance of creating a brand as an academic and professor
• Secrets about Danielle’s experience in Italy during Covid-19
• The success of the Gola Podcast
• Danielle’s networking strategies

Quotes from the Show:

• “Many people probably don’t understand that if you’re not publishing as a professor you’re not standing up in front of the class as a teacher very long, and whether that’s books or articles or mix of the two”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [11:35]
• “Everyone must eat, it’s just perfectly universal, there is not time or place where humans haven’t had a relationship with food, and as a result of that, [food] becomes the ultimate point of reference” - Danielle Callegari in “The Sydcast” [31:44]
• “[About Danielle’s experience on libraries] I’ve found things I didn’t know existed and that no one knew existed that fit into my research in a very special way and that’s a kind of Indiana Jones moment”- Danielle Callegari in “The Sydcast” [46:54]
• “[About her teaching method] Talking about things like social order, soft power, economic viability, so it's the place where we start and we outline all the ways in which food culture becomes something that communicates much more than what is apparently on the surface”- Danielle Callegari in “The Sydcast” [56:08]
• “To me universities that continue to offer standard learning just in the classroom without a strong experiential component are living on borrowed time”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [01:01:55]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Danielle Callegari

Instagram: Danielle Callegari

Podcast: Gola Podcast

Society: Dante Society of America

Dartmouth College: Danielle Callegari | Faculty Directory

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.