Quotidian Vignettes

Hi there! I’m Elizabeth Djinis, an American writer and journalist based in Rome. This newsletter, Quotidian Vignettes, is a repository for the daily observations that rattle around my brain, from my informal anthropological study of Italian life to the literary sources that never cease to inspire me (I will be quoting Henry James.)

My story in brief: I moved to the Italian capital almost three years ago not for love, adventure or the sheer Instagrammable appeal of a good plate of cacio e pepe. No, I came here out of some kind of inborn desire to quite literally live out my academic roots—Classical Languages and Medieval and Renaissance Studies. And what better place to do that, what other place, really, than Italy?

But as an ardent observer of the everyday, the quotidian, if you will, I’ve wanted for a while to find a home for the random thoughts I maniacally jab into my Notes app while riding (or waiting for) the bus. This newsletter is that place. As both a journalist and a writer, I’m broadly interested in culture, history, climate, politics and language, but I’m more accurately interested in whatever moves me—and, really, if I’ve learned anything as a journalist, it’s that anything has the power to move if conveyed correctly.

To address the inevitable, I am, in fact, an American living in Italy, but I do not envision this newsletter as discussing food or travel recommendations at length. I leave those to other writers who are far more qualified than me, some of whom are recommended on my Substack. Instead, I view this newsletter as a biweekly portrait from Rome and a snapshot, with a heaping side of analysis, of the phenomena that happen to touch me most.