DAY TWO - FRIDAY, JUNE 7

Description:

This series of panels explores the multifaceted representations of disability across medieval Italian culture. Drawing on psychology and psychoanalysis (Song), Donna Haraway, Havi Carel, and the notion of prosthesis (Kalus), and crip theory (Campanello), this panel offers a multidisciplinary reading of Dante’s works. While Song addresses the notion of ‘grounding techniques’ in relation to Virgil’s role in the Commedia, Kalus examines the involvement of non-human materialities in the purification of the human will in Purgatorio. Campanello, meanwhile, discusses her translation praxis as a feminist, crip extension of the Dante translation tradition.

Chair: Becky Reilly (University of Cambridge)

Ruoci Song (University of Cambridge)
Dante's dissociative episode and Virgil's grounding technique: A case study of Inferno XXX

Frey Kalus (University of Cambridge/Freie Universität Berlin)
Purgatorial hybridity

Kimberly Campanello (University of Leeds)
‘They said grave words about my future life’: Translating Dante’s Commedia in ‘Crip Time’

Description:

This panel examines Italian American women’s reflections on their place in the American racial imaginary in the second half of the twentieth century, especially in New York City. Looking at the writings of Diane di Prima (1934–2020), Marianna De Marco Torgovnick (1949–), and Maria Laurino (1959–), the panel explores these authors’ articulations of the Italian American community’s “whitening” in the postwar United States. The papers take an intersectional lens: by focusing on gender and class in dialogue with racialization in Italian America, we examine the co-construction of these concepts.

Organizer: Isabella Livorni (New York University)

Chair: Claudia Sbuttoni (University of New Hampshire)

Isabella Livorni (New York University)
‘do you / admit complicity’: Postwar Italian American ethnic and racial identity in Diane di Prima’s work

Elisa Russian (University of Zurich)
Crossings: Marianna De Marco Torgovnick and the American racial imaginary

Claudia Sbuttoni (University of New Hampshire)
'Where do you go when the record is over?’: Constructions of ‘whiteness’ in Maria Laurino’s work 

Description:

Following the recent publication of the co-edited issue of Rivista di studi italiani entirely devoted to poetry and the environment, this panel aims to extend the conversation to the luoghi della poesia, namely the spaces, places, territories, habitats, and landscapes of poetry–geographical, typographical, imaginary, and virtual. Poetry’s visceral rootedness in the world–or, equally significant, its stubborn vagrancy and its being out of joint with time and place–is too often overlooked. This panel features contributions about poetry and its intersections with/or across the following areas: Environment, geography, academia, education, the publishing world, translation, the typed or handwritten page, digital platforms and experimentation, technology, film, photography, theater, music, sound, noise, reproduction, place, space, wilderness, and imaginary landscapes.

Organizer: Serena Ferrando (Arizona State University)

Chair: Julia Pelosi-Thorpe (University of Pennsylvania)

Mauro Distefano (Independent Scholar)
Spazi bucolici e stranianti nella poesia di Piera Oppezzo

Julia Pelosi-Thorpe (University of Pennsylvania)
The Australian environment in the poems of Enoe Raffaelli Di Stefano

Elisa Donda (Università di Ferrara)
Il Carso come luogo esistenziale negli scrittori del primo Novecento

Michele Segretario (University of California, Berkeley)
Vota Nardo! - Leonardo Vitellaro’s vernacular poetry as a tactic of collective resistance

Description:

Il panel nasce dall’omonimo progetto PRIN, di cui mira a presentare l’impostazione metodologica generale e alcune linee di ricerca specifiche. Atlante del giallo affronta la storia del genere in Italia dal punto di vista intermediale, analizzandone i modi di produzione, le forme e le tematiche nella letteratura, nel cinema, nella televisione e nel fumetto. I quattro interventi di questo panel si concentrano sul giallo televisivo: da un lato, mettono in evidenza le trasformazioni del genere dal periodo del monopolio RAI fino all’epoca della piattaforme streaming; dall’altro analizzano la sua crescente capacità di rappresentare la società italiana nelle sue contraddizioni.

Organizer: Federico Pagello (Università di Chieti Pescara)

Chair: Matteo Pollone (Università del Piemonte Orientale)

Federico Pagello (Università di Chieti Pescara)
Storicizzare il giallo televisivo: serialità, intermedialità, rappresentazione

Sara Casoli (Università di Firenze)
Lo sceneggiato giallo tra letteratura e cinema: Il caso Durbridge

Arianna Vergari (Link Campus University)
Per una mappatura della detection femminile nella fiction Rai

Gianluigi Rossini (Link Campus University)
Crimine a pagamento: il crime e le piattaforme in Italia

Description:

Il termine Antropocene si è ormai ampiamente diffuso anche nelle scienze umane ed è divenuto un framework teorico e uno strumento narrativo attraverso il quale è possibile interrogarsi sulle più urgenti questioni della contemporaneità. L’analisi culturale della “crisi” ambientale si combina quindi con le questioni del femminismo, del razzismo strutturale, delle relazioni interspecie e del postumano. Questo panel si propone di riflettere sulle rappresentazioni letterarie della “crisi” ambientale e sulla capacità della letteratura di produrre contro-rappresentazioni del rapporto con il pianeta e con gli altri soggetti non umani che lo abitano.

Organizer: Giulia Fabbri (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)

Chair: Caterina Romeo (Università La Sapienza, Roma)

Chiara Xausa (Università di Bologna)
Speculative fiction, antispecismo, e femminismo nero: rappresentazioni afrofuturiste del non umano

Rachele Dionisi (Università La Sapienza, Roma)
Contro-narrazioni dell’Antropocene. Prospettive post-occidentali e post-antropocentriche nella fantascienza femminista africanfuturista

Annamaria Elia (Università La Sapienza, Roma)
Fabulazioni contro la crisi: i racconti di Francesca Matteoni

Giulia Fabbri (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
(Im)possibili convivenze multispecie nei romanzi di Laura Pugno

Description:

This panel includes papers looking at translation and identity from several angles with the aim to discuss the important role that the act of interlingual or inter-semiotic translation, the work of translators and the trope of translation had in facilitating intercultural dialogue within texts of authors whose identity is poised between two or more cultural and linguistic spaces. Ultimately, this panel aims to explore how new translational identities are created and represented in the 20th and 21st century Italian literature, including eco-translation as co-creation of identity and meaning through a dialogue between human and nonhuman languages.

Organizer: Enrica Maria Ferrara (Trinity College Dublin)

Chair: Michele Monserrati (Smith College)

Stiliana Milkova Rousseva, (Oberlin College)
Posing and passing in translation: from Amara Lakhous to Elena Ferrante and Jhumpa Lahiri

Saskia Ziolkowski (Duke University)
Translating Yiddish worlds into Italian

Enrica Maria Ferrara (Trinity College Dublin)
Eco-translating Italian identity: a more-than-human dialogue 

Organized by the Women's Studies Caucus

Description:

Pathbreakers push the boundaries of what is known or accepted, leaving a lasting impact on their respective fields and inspiring future generations. This panel aims to shine a spotlight on the remarkable contributions of Italian women in any time period to the fields of medicine, science, politics, education, arts, and literature. It emphasizes their extraordinary journeys, exploring the challenges they faced, the barriers they shattered, and the enduring impact they left on Italian society and beyond.

Organizers: Juliet Guzzetta (Michigan State University), Claudia Karagoz (Saint Louis University), & Anna Marra (Vanderbilt University)

Chair: Selby Wynn Schwartz (Independent Scholar)

Filomena Campus (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama)
The feminist practices of Italian theatre-maker Franca Rame

Juliet Guzzetta (Michigan State University)
Staging women’s struggles: Notes on Franca Rame and a few of her characters

Description:

La lezione di letteratura non può prescindere dal contenuto e dalla lingua del testo letterario, così come non può far a meno di tenere in considerazione il contesto-classe. La definizione di nuove pratiche didattico-divulgative per l’insegnamento della letteratura tenta di rispondere all’esigenza di avere a disposizione contenuti fruibili dai nativi digitali che siano anche funzionali all’obiettivo didattico. Il panel intende discutere gli approcci innovativi in seno alla didattica della letteratura, proponendo casi di studio specifici o esperienze in classe.

Chair: Marco Marino (Sant’Anna Institute)

Giuseppe Falvo (University of Maryland)
Adapting teaching of Renaissance literary texts to contemporary post-truth politics in America

Ida Brancaccio (Sant'Anna Institute)
Letteratura filosofica e didattica della differenza: gli 'Pseudoepigrafi' pitagorici

Ugo Perolino (Università degli Studi "G. d'Annunzio" di Chieti – Pescara)
Televisione, narrazioni seriali e didattica della letteratura. Alcune osservazioni su "Esterno notte" di Marco Bellocchio

Description:

This series of panels explores the multifaceted representations of disability across medieval Italian culture. Rayson and Kiltinavičiūtė focus on Dante’s ‘femmina balba’, analysing what this character can tell us about the sins of the mouth and stuttering as a mode of writing in the poem (Rayson), as well as Dante’s perception of gendered disability (Kiltinavičiūtė). Finally, Reilly examines shifting attitudes toward leprosy through the lives of Angela of Foligno and Catherine of Siena.

Organizer: Fiona Knight (University of Cambridge)

Chair: Frey Kalus (University of Cambridge/Freie Universität Berlin)

George Rayson (University of Cambridge)
Femmina balba or balbuziendo? Dante’s poetics of stuttering

Aisté Kiltinavičüté (University College Cork)
On tales and tails: A reading of Dante’s ‘dolce sirena’

Becky Reilly (University of Cambridge)
The ambivalence of leprosy in the lives of Angela of Foligno and Catherine of Siena

Description:

While the fields of Italian American, Italian Canadian and Italian Australian writing are well established, the same is not true of the writing by Italian immigrants and their descendants in the UK. This panel, featuring established and emerging scholars and focusing on political, interpersonal and linguistic aspects, seeks to deepen knowledge about this branch of Italian migrant writing, from Risorgimento exiles to memoirs of first- and second-generation immigrants and recent works by authors like Claudia Durastanti and Simonetta Agnello Hornby. Topics to be explored include identity formation, relationship to Italy, the representation of language use, and gender. 

Organizers: Selena Daly (University College London) and Manuela D'Amore (Università di Catania)

Chair: Raffaella Antinucci (Università Parthenope)

Selena Daly (University College London) and Manuela D'Amore (Università di Catania)
Are we there yet?: Towards a canon of ‘Italian-British literature’ 

Andrea Del Cornò (The London Library and Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)
Exile press and Risorgimento: Italian-language periodicals in Victorian England (1840-1860)

Giuseppe Vitale (Università Parthenope, Naples)
Picinisco (Lazio) and its Discourses in Italian British Migrant Narratives

Selene Genovesi (University of Kent)
Belonging and displacement of ‘enemy aliens’ in Caterina Soffici’s ‘Nessuno può fermarmi’ (2017)

Description:

How do Italian novelists, poets, filmmakers, musicians, and visual artists find ways to frame, employ in place and time, or even perform or sing, what Amitav Ghosh called “the unthinkable”? How do these texts treat everyday life, in the shadow of catastrophe? Which dimensions of global warming are communicated through various media? How is climate change shaping new modes of storytelling, authorship, and aesthetics in Italy? What is distinctively Italian about these narratives? This panel aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue by exploring works that grapple with these questions.

Organizer: Laura Di Bianco (Johns Hopkins University)

Chair: Daniela Fargione (University of Turin)

Daniela Fargione (University of Turin)
Italy's natural capital and its multispiecies complexities: Biophilic visual narrations of climate change  

Alberto Baracco (University of Basilicata)
Contemporary Italian cinema between comedy and post-cli-fi: Te l'avevo detto (2023) by Ginevra Elkann

Enrico Cesaretti (University of Virginia)
Giorgio Scerbanenco's L'anaconda. Searching for human justice in a plant-ruled world

Alessandra Vannucci (University of Turin)
Corpi idrici. Relato di un processo di co-creazione sulle città fluviali

Chair: Scott Lerner (Franklin & Marshall College)

Marina Caffiero (Università La Sapienza, Roma); Cosetta Gaudenzi (University of Memphis); Scott Lerner (Franklin and Marshall College); Nicoletta Marini-Maio (Dickinson College); Ignazio Veca (Università degli Studi di Pavia)

Description:

This panel invites participants to explore the life and works of Afrodescendant women who contribute to the enrichment of Italian culture as writers, filmmakers, actresses, activists, and influencers in Italy and beyond. Racial and gender biases often become privileged subjects of their activities, and offer a critical site to reflect on the need of further social and political change. Their collective experience is seen in light of a transnational spatial and temporal continuity between people of African descent in Italy and in the diasporic communities around the world. A transnational and intersectional approach and/or study cases are particularly welcome.

Organizer: Anna Paparcone (Bucknell University)

Chair: Eleanor Paynter (Brown University)

Farah Polato (Università degli Studi di Padova)
Rimodulazioni di paesaggi e memorie: il contributo delle cineaste e dei cineasti afrodiscendenti

Alessandra Balzani (California State University Long Beach)
Il ruolo della letteratura postcoloniale nel canone italiano contemporaneo: Il caso di Igiaba Scego

Giovanna Faleschini-Lerner (Frankiln and Marshall College)
Piantare radici in una terra nuova: un approccio ecocritico a Ibi di Andrea Segre

Anna Paparcone (Bucknell University)
Le donne nel cinema afrodiscendente italiano: i ruoli delle attrici tra passato e presente

Description:

This panel explores the political dynamics of importing foreign culture in Italy between the 1920s and the 1950s. The three case studies are ordered chronologically, from the arrival of American comics under fascism to the dissemination of social sciences with the return of democracy and the spread of capitalist values during the Cold War. We are concerned with topics like censorship, the influence of the United States, political culture, micro-histories of publishing houses and their staff, funding and the agency of Italian editors.

Chair: Jim Carter (Boston University)

Guido Bonsaver (Oxford University)
‘Americanization’ from below: The revolution of KFS Comics in fascist Italy

Irene Piazzoni and Fabio Guidali (University of Milan)
Le Nuove Edizioni Ivrea: People, publishing projects and international connections (1942-1946)

Jim Carter (Boston University)
The Edizioni di Comunità in the Cold War

Description:

Il tema della follia al femminile può declinarsi in molti modi e avere molte sfumature, che vanno dall’eccentricità tollerata in determinati contesti, ma giudicata sempre con severità dai più, all’isteria, versione moderna dei “furori uterini” di buona memoria, fino ad arrivare alle forme patologiche più gravi, vere o supposte tali, come quelle che hanno portato a rinchiudere in sinistre strutture delle donne di genio. Le donne che deviavano dal cammino considerato come “naturale” per il loro sesso erano comunque sospette di disturbi mentali e di “anormalità ”, tanto da aver bisogno di un trattamento che le riconducesse sulla retta via o, se refrattarie, di un allontanamento dalla società (manicomio, convento o carcere).
Il panel analizza le figure delle donne “fuori dagli schemi” in Italia, dal punto di vista letterario (includendo il fumetto), artistico, medico, cinematografico, giornalistico, saggistico, dall’epoca medievale al XXI secolo.

Organizers: Laura Nieddu (Université Lyon) & Antonella Mauri (Université de Lille) 

Chair: Laura Nieddu (Université Lyon)

Gianvito Distefano (Università di Cagliari)
'I più ridicolosi soggetti': le 'femine pazze' di Tomaso Garzoni e i privilegi del lettore-visitatore

Sienna Hopkins (California State University)
Donne selvatiche e impazzite: Examples of women going out of their minds in Italian Renaissance biographies

Elisabetta Orlandi (Independent Scholar)
Veronesi tuti mati?

Description:

La lezione di letteratura non può prescindere dal contenuto e dalla lingua del testo letterario, così come non può far a meno di tenere in considerazione il contesto-classe. La definizione di nuove pratiche didattico-divulgative per l’insegnamento della letteratura tenta di rispondere all’esigenza di avere a disposizione contenuti fruibili dai nativi digitali che siano anche funzionali all’obiettivo didattico. Il panel intende discutere gli approcci innovativi in seno alla didattica della letteratura, proponendo casi di studio specifici o esperienze in classe.

Organizer: Marco Marino (Sant'Anna Institute)

Chair: Moira Di Mauro-Jackson (Texas State University)

Laura Lenci (Boston University in Padua)
Experiencing literature: how the class becomes a reading, writing and discussion workshop

Moira Di Mauro-Jackson (Texas State University)
Migration, trauma, and belonging: Understanding Black Italy though film and novels

Rosina D'Angelo (Ramapo College)
The integration and awareness of literature as an application of language

Description:

This series of panels explores the multifaceted representations of disability across medieval Italian culture. Examining the figure of Sapìa Salvani, Bloomer argues that Dante’s sympathetic outlook on disability can be explained through the notion of ‘blameless defect’ that exonerates those who have impediments limiting their knowledge. Webb investigates what happens to medieval gendered model of vision when sight breaks down, as when Petrarch describes himself as blind in the Rime sparse.

Chairs and Organizers: George Rayson (University of Cambridge) & Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė (University College Cork)

Catherine S. Bloomer (Brandeis University)
Disability in the Commedia: Sapìa Salvani and the blindness of envy

Ann Webb (Yale University)  
’Amor cieco et inerme’: Towards a gendered model of sight and blindness in the 'Rime sparse’

Description:

From a historical perspective, much has been written, especially in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, about the social conditions of the Italian diasporic communities in Latin America. What is sometimes forgotten is that the presence of these Italian subjects outside the Italian nation-state also stimulated the circulation of cultural productions to and from Latin America and Italy, the mediation of these spaces within each other's national imaginaries, and, last but not least, a profusion of translations. In what ways Italy and Latin America have imagined each other? What can we learn from thinking about the relationship between these two spaces beyond the history of mass migration?

Chair: Giulia Riccò (University of Michigan)

Maria Cecilia Casini (Universidade de São Paulo)
O meu Dante: fra l'affetto a la fortuna critica di Dante in Brasile

Patricia Peterle (Universidade Federal de Santa Caterina)
Transiti e spaesamenti: Eugenio Montale in Brasile

Alessandra Vanucci (Università di Torino)
La quinta colonna. Avventure dei registi italiani in Brasile

Nicola Fatighenti (Università per Stranieri di Siena)
La stampa italiana in Argentina: Presenze letterarie nei fogli etnici dal 1856 ai primi anni del Novecento 

Description:

How do Italian novelists, poets, filmmakers, musicians, and visual artists find ways to frame, employ in place and time, or even perform or sing, what Amitav Ghosh called “the unthinkable”? How do these texts treat everyday life, in the shadow of catastrophe? Which dimensions of global warming are communicated through various media? How is climate change shaping new modes of storytelling, authorship, and aesthetics in Italy? What is distinctively Italian about these narratives? This panel aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue by exploring works that grapple with these questions.

Organizer: Laura Di Bianco (Johns Hopkins University)

Chair: Marta Cerreti (Johns Hopkins University)

Giulia Bernuzzi (University College Cork)
Reimagining the Anthropocene: Literary responses to climate change and urban reshaping

Teresiana Matarrese (California Polytechnic University)
Beyond the unthinkable: Taranto creative rebellion

Magdalena Maria Kubas (University of Turin)
Italian poetic narratives at the time of climate change

Description:

Nell’adattamento cinematografico di Nostalgia, gli sceneggiatori Mario Martone e Ippolita Di Maio, caratterizzano il rientro di Felice alla Sanità con un incontro del prete Don Luigi, attivamente impegnato ad evitare che la nuova generazione degli abitanti del quartiere eviti il destino di povertà e delinquenza delle generazioni precedenti. Il personaggio di Don Luigi (Francesco Di Leva) è liberamente ispirato a quello di Don Antonio Loffredo, che attraverso l’approccio alle arti e istruzione ha cominciato a riscattare un intero quartiere. In questo panel discuteremo come in Campania, la media literacy e istruzione ai diversi lavori dell'industria cinematografica, siano alla base della politica culturale promossa da artisti e istituzioni per equiparare ingiustizie economiche e sociali.

Chair: Giovanna De Luca (College of Charleston)

Roberto D'Avascio (Istituto Orientale Napoli)
La passione del cinema: l’esperienza di Arci Movie a Ponticelli

Giovanna De Luca (College of Charleston)
Nostalgia di Mario Martone: rinascita e morte nel Rione Sanità

Massimiliano Gaudiosi (Università Federico II)
Gran Tour Reloaded: il viaggio napoletano di Posso entrare?’

Description:

In this panel we share further findings from our ethnographic work with over 100 young Italian women, about their media consumption, and how and to what extent they use it to shape their identities.

Chair: Danielle Hipkins (University of Exeter)

Maria Elena Alampi (University of Exeter)
Mapping Italian girlhood: Media consumption patterns across the Italian landscape

Leonardo Campagna (Università La Sapienza, Roma)
Girls’ bodies and the social media gaze

Romana Andò and Camilla Pasqua (Università La Sapienza, Roma)
Mother and daughters and contemporary screen media

Danielle Hipkins (University of Exeter)
Race, girlhood and screen identities 

Description:

The panel examines diverse aspects of the working practices within the Italian film and TV industries in different moments. The papers focus on the problems of locating archival evidence of women's work below the line, the role of the casting director (itself a highly feminized profession), and the importance of trade unions in the post-war relations between the Italian and US film industries. The panel is part of recent research trends which seek to make visible the historically contingent and often obfuscated practices of labor relations with the Italian screen industries.

Chair: Catherine O'Rawe (University of Bristol)

Catherine O'Rawe (University of Bristol)
Reflections on a "Missing" archive: Women in Italian film studios 1930-60

Dana Renga (The Ohio State University)
Mare fuori’s “Professional” casting and Marita D’Elia’s casting arc

Paolo Noto (Università di Bologna)
Trade unions and film relations between Italy and the USA in the post-war period 

Description:

Il tema della follia al femminile può declinarsi in molti modi e avere molte sfumature, che vanno dall’eccentricità tollerata in determinati contesti, ma giudicata sempre con severità dai più, all’isteria, versione moderna dei “furori uterini” di buona memoria, fino ad arrivare alle forme patologiche più gravi, vere o supposte tali, come quelle che hanno portato a rinchiudere in sinistre strutture delle donne di genio. Le donne che deviavano dal cammino considerato come “naturale” per il loro sesso erano comunque sospette di disturbi mentali e di “anormalità ”, tanto da aver bisogno di un trattamento che le riconducesse sulla retta via o, se refrattarie, di un allontanamento dalla società (manicomio, convento o carcere).
Il panel analizza le figure delle donne “fuori dagli schemi” in Italia, dal punto di vista letterario (includendo il fumetto), artistico, medico, cinematografico, giornalistico, saggistico, dall’epoca medievale al XXI secolo.

Chair: Antonella Mauri (Université de Lille)

Diletta Pasetti (Rutgers University)
The other truth: Opacity as a practice for decolonizing reality in Alda Merini’s memoir

Nicoletta Lepri (Centro di Studi sul Classicismo, Prato)
Art brut e psicopatologia femminile

Laura Lenci (Boston University in Padova)
Il lato oscuro della femminilità: follie e furori nella narrativa del terzo millennio

Description:

This panel revisits the golden age of black and white television in Italy through three significant perspectives. Rachel Haworth analyses Milleluci as metatelevision, an object of nostalgia featuring two of the most representative figures in Italian showbusiness, Mina and Raffaella Carrà. Matteo Marinello considers the variety show as a field of cultural production through the evolution of comedy in the work of Alighiero Noschese, Sandra Mondaini and Raimondo Vianello, and Renzo Arbore. Giancarlo Lombardi turns to the ‘sceneggiato televisivo’, focusing instead on the successful crossnational adaptations of gialli authored by John Dickson Carr.

Chair: Giancarlo Lombardi (College of Staten Island/CUNY & The Graduate Center/CUNY)

Rachel Haworth (Independent Scholar)
Milleluci as television about television in 1974 and 2024

Matteo Marinello (Università di Bologna)
The laugh of the nation: Italian television comedy in the 1970s

Giancarlo Lombardi (College of Staten Island/CUNY & The Graduate Center/CUNY)
Paura in bianco e nero. Gli adattamenti televisivi dei romanzi gialli di John Dickson Carr

Description:

Much historical research is made up of reading between the lines, seeking sources beyond the obvious, and engaging in creative problem-solving. This panel presents papers which demonstrate courageous archival sleuthing and examples of investigative flexibility in a diverse and rich array of subject areas and time periods pertaining to Italian Studies. It includes stories that illustrate the vicissitudes of archival research and the determination of the researcher. In summary, it provides some answers to the question of what we do when we don’t find what we’re looking for and where that path can lead instead.

Chair: Pierette Kulpa (Kutztown University of Pennsylvania)

Jessica Gritti (Politecnico di Milano)
Desperately seeking Filarete

Pierette Kulpa (Kutztown University of Pennsylvania)
Lucantonio Giunti’s missing manuscript of the 'Memorie di Urbino'

Alexander McCargar (University of Vienna)
Elephants, camels and the tigris at night: Reconstructing Giuseppe Galli Bibiena’s designs for Solimano

Mathilde Lyons (University of St. Andrews)
Writing the history of the Black presence in fascist Italy: Limitations and new approaches

Description:

From a historical perspective, much has been written, especially in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, about the social conditions of the Italian diasporic communities in Latin America. What is sometimes forgotten is that the presence of these Italian subjects outside the Italian nation-state also stimulated the circulation of cultural productions to and from Latin America and Italy, the mediation of these spaces within each other's national imaginaries, and, last but not least, a profusion of translations. In what ways Italy and Latin America have imagined each other? What can we learn from thinking about the relationship between these two spaces beyond the history of mass migration?

Organizer: Giulia Riccò (University of Michigan)

Chair: Alessandra Vannucci (Università di Torino)

Andrea Santurbano (Universidade Federal de Santa Caterina)
Risemantizzare immagini e paesaggi, un dialogo tra Italia e Brasile  

Giulia Riccò (University of Michigan)
Tutto è italiano: Il Brasile di Gina Lombroso Ferrero

Zach Aguilar (Yale University)
'Selvaggio bianco': Gauchos, Garibaldi, and settler colonialism

Description:

How do Italian novelists, poets, filmmakers, musicians, and visual artists find ways to frame, employ in place and time, or even perform or sing, what Amitav Ghosh called “the unthinkable”? How do these texts treat everyday life, in the shadow of catastrophe? Which dimensions of global warming are communicated through various media? How is climate change shaping new modes of storytelling, authorship, and aesthetics in Italy? What is distinctively Italian about these narratives? This panel aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue by exploring works that grapple with these questions.

Organizer: Laura Di Bianco (Johns Hopkins University)

Chair: Serenella Iovino (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Laura Di Bianco (Johns Hopkins University)
Mourning olive trees: Italian films, Land art, and Xylella fastidiosa

Danila Cannamela (Colby College)
'Un giorno da ricordare': Restoring collective memory as a way to face climate change

Holden Turner (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
Enclosure in Venice: Narratives after MOSE

Chairs: Dana Renga (Ohio State University) & Stephanie Malia Hom (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Giacomo Di Girolamo (Tp24 and Radio Rmc 101); David Horn (The Ohio State University); Alessandra Montalbano (University of Alabama); Ellen Nerenberg (Wesleyan University); Eleanor Paynter (Brown University); Angelica Pesarini (University of Toronto); Robert Rushing (University of California, Los Angeles)

Chair: Danielle Hipkins (University of Exeter)

Cecilia Brioni (University of Aberdeen); Jessica Harris (St. John's University); Bernadette Luciano (University of Auckland); Aine O'Healy (Loyola Marymount University); Alessia Risi (University of Exeter); Anna Saracino (University of Bari)

Description:

The proposed panel is the fall out of a long investigation carried out by a group of professors from Università Roma Tre who, as part of a research project of national interest (PRIN), reflected on the modes of production of Italian cinema since the post-war period until the end of the seventies, with a special focus on independent and alternative cinema. Conferences, books and documentaries have been held and published, the results of which will be reported at the AAIS Conference. Professor Peter Sarram of John Cabot University in Rome, also joined the Roman unit, adding an original twist to the initial project.

Chair: Chirstian Uva (Università Roma Tre)

Elio Ugenti (Università Roma Tre) and Malvina Giordana (Max Planck Institut of Art History)
Scenari produttivi del cinema in Italia tra gli anni Cinquanta e gli anni Settanta

Peter Sarram (John Cabot University)
Sounds in search of images: Locating library musics in Italian cinema

Vito Zagarrio (Independent Scholar)
L’eccezione alla regola. Modi di produzione alternativi del cinema italiano dal dopoguerra ai primi anni Ottanta

Leonardo De Franceschi (Università Roma Tre)
Spaghetti Runaways. Incursioni produttive del cinema italiano in Africa

Description:

Il tema della follia al femminile può declinarsi in molti modi e avere molte sfumature, che vanno dall’eccentricità tollerata in determinati contesti, ma giudicata sempre con severità dai più, all’isteria, versione moderna dei “furori uterini” di buona memoria, fino ad arrivare alle forme patologiche più gravi, vere o supposte tali, come quelle che hanno portato a rinchiudere in sinistre strutture delle donne di genio. Le donne che deviavano dal cammino considerato come “naturale” per il loro sesso erano comunque sospette di disturbi mentali e di “anormalità ”, tanto da aver bisogno di un trattamento che le riconducesse sulla retta via o, se refrattarie, di un allontanamento dalla società (manicomio, convento o carcere).
Il panel analizza le figure delle donne “fuori dagli schemi” in Italia, dal punto di vista letterario (includendo il fumetto), artistico, medico, cinematografico, giornalistico, saggistico, dall’epoca medievale al XXI secolo.

Chair: Laura Lenci (Boton University in Padova)

Antonella Mauri (Université de Lille)
Tota mulier in utero

Irene Lottini (University of Iowa)
Follia e resistenza: Ida Dalser secondo Marco Bellocchio

Laura Nieddu (Université Lyon 2)
Pazze di gioia, di noia o per maldicenza: focus su alcune figure femminili messe in scena da Paolo Virzì

Chair: Grazia Menechella (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Gabriella Ghermandi (writer and performer)
Italian-Ethiopian mix kitchen

Grazia Menechella (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Italian-Canadian mix kitchen

Giovanna Bellesia (Smith College)
Transnational kitchen