Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with Danilo Petrassi (PhD Student, University of Macerata). Presentation of original work, “Le allucinazioni di Pinocchio: Storia di un’intelligenza artificiale.” The colloquium will be held in-person at 190 Hope Street Room 102 as well as on Zoom.

Danilo Petrassi is a PhD candidate enrolled in the National PhD Program in “Teaching & Learning Sciences: Inclusion, Technologies, Educational Research and Evaluation” at the University of Macerata. He is currently working on a doctoral dissertation that explores the intersection between the teaching of literature and the languages and tools of contemporary digital communication. In 2025, he published his first book, Shrekology: The Anti-Fairy Tale (with Mimesis Publishers), an interdisciplinary essay that weaves together pop culture, social critique, and theoretical reflection.

To access the zoom link, please contact Italian_Studies@brown.edu

Please join the Italian Studies Department for a Colloquium with Elisabetta Menetti (Associate Professor of Italian, University of Modena and Reggio).

Presentation of the volume:

Elisabetta Menetti, Boccaccio: Guida al Decameron, Roma: Carocci, 2025.

How can one condense everything that has been written about a classic like the
Decameron into a guide useful to those approaching it for the first time, or re-reading it “as if it were the first time,” (to quote Italo Calvino)? Elisabetta Menetti, an authoritative specialist in Boccaccio and the Italian novella tradition, shares her
reflections on how she has approached this task, and how it relates to her many years of teaching the classics of Italian storytelling.

Please note: this Colloquium will be held in Italian.

To receive the Zoom link, please email Italian_studies@brown.edu

Please join the Department of Italian Studies for a colloquium with Leopoldina Fortunati on October 10th at 1pm in Pembroke Hall Room 202. 

Leopoldina Fortunati’s The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, prostitutes, workers and capital

Presentation Abstract

Emerging from the political imbroglio of 1970s Italy, and drawing on social upheavals that radically contested the distribution of life and labor globally, Leopoldina Fortunati’s classic work The Arcana of Reproduction remains an essential contribution to today’s discussions of social reproduction and Italian feminist history. On the occasion of the release of the first unabridged English translation (Verso 2025), Fortunati reflects on the original context and theoretical intervention of the work as well as its contemporary relevance.

Leopoldina Fortunati is a radical feminist activist and theorist whose work has spanned a broad range of disciplines from political science and technology studies to histories of sexuality and fashion. She was active in the 1968 student movement and subsequently joined Potere Operaio, a prominent group of the Italian extra-parliamentary left. In the early 1970s, she was one of the founding members of Lotta Femminista, a feminist collective that formed part of the international Wages for Housework movement. She is the author of The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital, originally published in Italian in 1981 and re-released in an expanded English edition by Verso in 2025.

Respondents: Sara Colantuono (PhD 2024) and Arlen Austin (PhD 2024)

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri was joined by Brown University professor Karan Mahajan for a conversation.

About the Speakers

Jhumpa Lahiri is an award-winning and best-selling multi-genre writer in English and Italian. Her debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), won the Pulitzer Prize. Her first novel, The Namesake (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was adapted into a major film by director Mira Nair. Her other work includes the story collection Unaccustomed Earth (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), which won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award; the novel The Lowland (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), which won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award; the novel Whereabouts (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021); and the nonfiction book Translating Myself and Others (Princeton University Press, 2022).

She is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the National Humanities Medal, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the O. Henry Prize, the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 2024, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is currently the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College, Columbia University. Previously she directed Princeton University’s Program in Creative Writing. She is a graduate of Barnard College and has a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Boston University.

Karan Mahajan is Associate Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. He is the author of Family Planning (Harper Perennial, 2008), a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and The Association of Small Bombs (Penguin, 2016), which was shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award, won the 2017 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s “10 Best Books of 2016.” In 2017, he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. His reporting and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The New Yorker Online, and other venues. From 2018 to 2019, he was a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Undergraduate Seminar

Brown University undergraduate students were also invited to a special seminar with Jhumpa Lahiri Monday, October 6 at 3 pm.

This event was a part of the Greg and Julie Flynn Cogut Institute Speaker Series, which brings high-profile speakers in the humanities to the Brown University campus. Each visit includes a public lecture and a separate seminar-style meeting with undergraduate students.

Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with PhD student, Andrea Zoller, on September 26th at 1pm at 190 Hope Street Room 102 titled, “‘Long-Distance Regionalism:’ The Invention of a Trentino-Italian Identity in Southern Brazil. Early Impressions from a Field Journey.”

Colloquium Description:

This colloquium will offer an overview of my recent research trip to the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and São Paulo, where I visited communities with heritage ties to my home region (Trentino-Südtirol). I will share insights and experiences from this preliminary research visit, which will serve as the foundation for my IRB-approved project and potentially my upcoming PhD dissertation.

My presentation will focus on how people of Trentino descent construct, continuously reshape, and perform their “migrant identity” as modern Brazilians, negotiating multiple ideologies while engaging with both immaterial and material repertoires (language, food, clothing, religion, citizenship, etc.).

This will be an opportunity for me to present my ethnographic/anthropological research-in-progress and to receive feedback from colleagues and faculty across disciplines. I’m sure we will have a stimulating discussion!

Free, open to the public. For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact globalbrown@brown.edu

Light Lunch fare will be provided for attendees and will be available starting at 11:45am.

This lecture explores the development of alchemical theory and practice across distinct but interconnected regions—Graeco-Roman Egypt, Byzantium, and the Near East—from antiquity to the early Islamic period. By combining close textual analysis with experimental reconstructions of ancient alchemical procedures, it aims to illuminate the material practices behind the texts. Drawing on a series of laboratory experiments informed by historical and philological research, the lecture will reconstruct how ancient alchemists worked and offer fresh interpretations of the texts and literary forms through which their knowledge was transmitted. In doing so, it presents a comprehensive, longue durée perspective on the evolution of alchemy, revealing it as a dynamic and diverse art shaped by multiple technical and intellectual traditions.

About the Speaker

Matteo Martelli is professor in History of Science at the University of Bologna, where he teaches history of ancient science and technology along with history of ancient medicine. His research focuses on Graeco-Roman and Byzantine science – with particular attention to alchemy and medicine (pharmacology) – and its reception in the Syro-Arabic tradition. His publications include The Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus (2014) and Collecting Recipes. Byzantine and Jewish Pharmacology in Dialogue (2017; edited with L. Lehmhaus). In the framework of the AlchemEast project is currently working on a critical edition and translation of the alchemical books by Zosimus of Panopolis as they are preserved in the Syriac tradition.

About the Brown-University of Bologna Lecture Series

Founded in 2017 to commemorate Brown’s long-standing partnership with the University of Bologna, which now marks 45 years, the Brown-Bologna Lecture Series celebrates the enduring collaboration between our institutions in advancing innovative research, impactful teaching and learning, and immersive cultural exchange.

Please join the Italian Studies Department for a colloquium with Cosette Bruhns Alonso on September 12th from 12-1:30pm. The lecture will be held in person at 190 Hope Street Room 102 as well as on Zoom. The zoom link will be provided upon request. Please contact Italian_Studies@brown.edu with questions or to receive access to the zoom link. 

The lecture is titled, “Illustrating ‘An Obnoxious Text’: Clara Tice’s Avant-Garde Art for the Decameron” and the paper abstract is the following: 

Please join the department of Italian Studies for a colloquium with PhD candidate, Andrea Zoller, on April 11th from 12-1:30pm. The colloquium will be held at 190 Hope Street Room 102 as well as on Zoom. 

Il Cinema Ritrovato at Brown and Film-Thinking presented The Round-Up, a 1966 film directed by Miklós Jancsó, followed by a conversation. The post-screening conversation included Timothy Bewes (English | Brown), Stuart Burrows (English | Brown), Benedek Kruchió (Classics | Yale), and Ágnes Matuska (English | University of Szeged).

About the Film

The Round-Up (Szegénylegények)

Hungary, 1966 (90 mins)

Directed by Miklós Jancsó

Cast: János Görbe, Zoltán Latinovits, Tibor Molnár, Béla Barsi, József Madaras, and János Koltai | Screenplay: Gyula Hernádi | Cinematography: Tamás Somló | Editing: Zoltán Farkas | Assistant director: Zsolt Kezdi-Kovács | Costume designer: Zsuzsa Vicze | Language: Hungarian with English Subtitles

A profound influence on filmmakers from Sergio Leone to Béla Tarr, The Round-Up is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of world cinema. Set in a detention camp in Hungary 1869, at a time of guerrilla campaigns against the ruling Austrians, filmmaker Miklós Jancsó deliberately avoids conventional heroics to focus on the persecution and dehumanization manifest in a time of conflict. Filmed in Hungary’s desolate and burning landscape, Jancsó uses his formidable technique to create a remarkable and terrifying picture of war and the abuse of power that still speaks to audiences today.

Film-Thinking is a series of conversations hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, asking how cinema can help us to think the many challenges facing our moment. According to the novelist Jonathan Coe, “A movie is something we should only see when somebody else shows it to us.” In the spirit of Coe’s remark, each Film-Thinking event comprises a curated screening of a film and a post-screening conversation. A pre-circulated Film Note offers a point of departure for the screening and the discussion. The aim of Film-Thinking is to enlarge our sense of the politics of cinema and collectively expand our understanding of film’s capacity for thought.

This event was made possible, in part, by the Brown Arts Institute and was cosponsored by the Department of Italian Studies. It was a part of the Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour film festival at Brown March 12–15, 2025.

Francesco Borghesi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia/ University of Sydney, Brown Ph.D., 2004), “Europe and the Discovery of China: the Jesuit Mission of Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607).”

Abstract: The early days of the Jesuit mission to China could have been known in early modern Europe through three major sources composed by three members of its order: Michele Ruggieri’s Relatione, composed in vulgar in the in the 1590s and remained unpublished, Matteo Ricci’s Commentari, completed in Italian around 1609, and the translation in Latin of the latter by Nicholas Trigault dated 1615. While Ruggieri is often portrayed as a mere precursor to the more famous Matteo Ricci, his Relatione offers a firsthand perspective on the Jesuits’ early attempts to gain entry into and to establish a lasting presence in China. This paper will address Ruggieri’s experience and examine how it facilitated an unprecedented access to China, paving the way for a most influential exchange between European and Chinese culture.

Irene Fiducia (Doctoral student in Italian Studies): “Hamlets of the Ventennio: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Alberto Moravia’s Gli Indifferenti and Carlo Emilio Gadda’s La Cognizione del Dolore.”

ABSTRACT: The present paper argues that the model of Shakespeare’s Hamlet permeates two major Italian novels published during the Fascist era: Gli Indifferenti (1929), by Alberto Moravia, and La Cognizione del Dolore (1938-1941), by Carlo Emilio Gadda. To give an account of the modes and implications of this reincarnation of Hamlet in the characters of Michele and Gonzalo, we attempt a psychoanalytic reading of the novels by analyzing few selected passages in light of Freud’s theorization of the Oedipus complex. Furthermore, we advance the hypothesis that the haunting reappearance of the Danish prince in two separate works written during the Fascist Ventennio is not a mere coincidence, but rather reflects an unconscious urge to transpose the traumatic experience of Mussolini’s coup d’état into a private, more acceptable, sphere. As usurpers invade the household to establish an illegitimate rule, a new generation of Hamlets grapples with the paralyzing anxiety of living under the Fascist regime.

Please join us for a colloquium with Alani Hicks-Bartlett (Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, French and Francophone Studies, and Hispanic Studies and affiliate with the department of Italian Studies at Brown University) on December 6th at 12pm in 190 Hope Street Room 102 as well as on Zoom. The title of this lecture is “On Matter, Form, and Failure: Petrarchan Negotiations of Agency and Loss.”

Join President Christina H. Paxson for the 2024 Presidential Faculty Award Lecture, “The New Chameleon: Simulation as a Paradigm for Digital Humanism,” featuring Massimo Riva, professor of Italian studies, coordinator of the Virtual Humanities Lab and affiliated professor of modern culture and media.

A reception will follow in the lobby.

About the Lecture

In his talk, Riva will retrace his journey as a digital humanist over the three and a half decades he has spent teaching at Brown. He will reflect on his collaborative projects, focus on “simulation” as a paradigmatic mode of knowledge in contemporary techno-humanism and discuss how the long history of simulation within the humanistic tradition may offer useful insights as we face the challenges posed by artificial intelligence in our time. A reception will follow in the lobby.

About the Presidential Faculty Award Lecture

The Presidential Faculty Award was established by President Christina H. Paxson in Spring 2013 to recognize members of Brown’s distinguished faculty who are conducting especially important and innovative scholarship.

Event Accessibility

This event will feature live closed captioning, and is wheelchair accessible. If you have a question or need to request an accommodation, please email eventstrategy@brown.edu.

Registration

Registration is required and space is limited. Please click the link below to register.

Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with Fabrizio Fenghi from Slavic Studies on November 15th at 12pm. 

On the morning of November 4, 1966, Florence, one of the world’s most historic cities and the repository of some of its greatest art, was struck by a monumental disaster. A low-pressure system had been stalled over Italy for six weeks and on the previous day it had begun to rain again. Nineteen inches fell in twenty-four hours, more than half of the annual total. By two o’clock in the morning twenty thousand cubic feet of water per second was moving toward Florence. Cellars, vaults, and strong-rooms in the famous museums of the city were filling with mud as the water moved at forty miles per hour at a height of twenty-four feet. Dozens of lives were lost, great works of art destroyed, and a million antiquarian books in the low-lying Biblioteca Nazionale were submerged.

On the morning of August 31, 1954, an ugly storm with the pretty name of Carol brought the summer in Rhode Island to an abrupt halt. The hurricane arrived at breakneck speed and departed just as quickly, leaving 19 dead, many injured and the entire state devastated. Property damage was over $200 million, nearly 4000 homes either disappeared or lay in tatters, and more than 2000 boats were destroyed or seriously damaged. The storm surge, driven by 90 mph winds with gusts of up to 105 mph, gushed into the heart of Providence, and downtown was under 12 feet of water for the remainder of that terrible day.

Two cities on opposite sides of the Atlantic as well as the cultural spectrum. Two cities struck by natural disasters which left each of them underwater in the last century. Two cities marking the signing of a 25-year-old Friendship Pact.

From November 9-17, Splendor of Florence will present Sott’ Acqua: A Tale of Two Cities which will commemorate and celebrate both cities with a series of programs and events in Providence that will use the arts to engage the public in meaningful dialogue about climate change and its impact on our communities.

As part of this important commemoration and in partnership with the Department of Italian Studies and the Office of Global Engagement, Brown University is hosting a two-part event - a film screening on November 13 and roundtable panel discussion on November 14, 2024.

November 14 - Panel Discussion: Under Water, A Tale of Two Cities. Climate Science and Climate Action in the Aftermath of Two Natural Disasters

This panel will focus on climate change, through a conversation among scholars and community representatives from both Florence and Providence, linking global and local, scientific and humanistic perspectives about issues of flood vulnerability, infrastructure preservation, protection of the artistic and cultural patrimony, climate action, education, justice and community resilience.

Moderated byCornelia Dean (class of ’69), a science writer and former Science Editor of The New York Times, author of “Making Sense of Science” (Harvard University Press).

Panelists

April Brown, Organizational Steward, Racial and Environmental Justice Committee

Enrica Caporali, Professor of Hydrology and Hydraulic Structures, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (DICEA), Coordinator of the Master’s degree in Geoengineering, the University of Florence; Chair Associate, UNESCO Prevention and Sustainable Management of Geo-Hydrological Hazards initiative

Manuel Cordero, Founder and Principal at CIVIC, a licensed architect in Rhode Island

Emanuele Di Lorenzo, Professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University; Chairman and Co-founder of Ocean Visions; Special Advisor to the President on ocean and climate solutions at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Macarena Gomez-Barris, Timothy C. Forbes and Anne S. Harrison University Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Chair of Modern Culture and Media, Director of the Center for Environmental Humanities at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown University

Kyle McElroy, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Marine Affairs, University of Rhode Island.

On the morning of November 4, 1966, Florence, one of the world’s most historic cities and the repository of some of its greatest art, was struck by a monumental disaster. A low-pressure system had been stalled over Italy for six weeks and on the previous day it had begun to rain again. Nineteen inches fell in twenty-four hours, more than half of the annual total. By two o’clock in the morning twenty thousand cubic feet of water per second was moving toward Florence. Cellars, vaults, and strong-rooms in the famous museums of the city were filling with mud as the water moved at forty miles per hour at a height of twenty-four feet. Dozens of lives were lost, great works of art destroyed, and a million antiquarian books in the low-lying Biblioteca Nazionale were submerged.

On the morning of August 31, 1954, an ugly storm with the pretty name of Carol brought the summer in Rhode Island to an abrupt halt. The hurricane arrived at breakneck speed and departed just as quickly, leaving 19 dead, many injured and the entire state devastated. Property damage was over $200 million, nearly 4000 homes either disappeared or lay in tatters, and more than 2000 boats were destroyed or seriously damaged. The storm surge, driven by 90 mph winds with gusts of up to 105 mph, gushed into the heart of Providence, and downtown was under 12 feet of water for the remainder of that terrible day.

Two cities on opposite sides of the Atlantic as well as the cultural spectrum. Two cities struck by natural disasters which left each of them underwater in the last century. Two cities marking the signing of a 25-year-old Friendship Pact.

From November 9-17, Splendor of Florence will present Sott’ Acqua: A Tale of Two Cities which will commemorate and celebrate both cities with a series of programs and events in Providence that will use the arts to engage the public in meaningful dialogue about climate change and its impact on our communities.

As part of this important commemoration and in partnership with the Department of Italian Studies and the Office of Global Engagement, Brown University is hosting a two-part event - a film screening on November 13 and roundtable panel discussion on November 14

November 13 - Film Screenings of rare footage from the 1966 Arno Flood and 1954 Hurricane Carol

• Opening Remarks by Arnaldo Minuti, Consul General, Consulate General of Italy, Boston
• Screening of Per Firenze (Florence: Days of Destruction, 1966, 51’) directed by Franco Zeffirelli, courtesy of RAI Teche and the Zeffirelli Foundation in Florence, Italy. Introduction by Pippo Zeffirelli. 
• Screening of Natural Disasters in Rhode Island, Hurricane Carol, (1954, 27’) 

The Screenings will be followed by a moderated Q&A facilitated by Massimo Riva, Professor and Interim Chair of Italian Studies, Director of Graduate Studies, Coordinator of the Virtual Humanities Lab, and Affiliated Professor of Modern Culture and Media. 

Please join the Italian Studies Department for a colloquium with Marco Aresu, Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at University of Pennsylvania.

The Author as Scribe in Medieval Italy

This presentation will explore the relationships between textual content, form, and material support — between visual-verbal messages and their physical manifestations — in medieval Italian literature. Through readings of Dante Alighieri’s Vita nova, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Teseida, and Francesco Petrarca’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, we will consider how these authors made the most of the scribal practices and models they were familiar with to layer meanings beyond those they conveyed in their written texts. By looking at examples from the manuscript traditions of the Vita nova, the Teseida, and the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, we will see how these works lived through their copies and how scribes, readers, and scholars variously responded to their authors’ strategies of shaping authority and conditioning reception.

Five Brown Ph.D. alumnae in Italian Studies share their professional experiences in the variety of career paths they have chosen nationally and internationally, within and without academia, from museums to administration, language education, translation, and study abroad. 

This event will be a hybrid format, in person and on Zoom. In-person attendees will be in 190 Hope Street Room 102. Zoom attendees will use the following link: https://brown.zoom.us/j/99393963080

Anna Aresi (PhD, 2016) is a professional translator, educator, and all-around language enthusiast working with Italian, English, and Russian. She specializes in legal, academic, and literary translation and collaborates with several journals and publishers. She also works with Italian-speaking children in multilingual contexts and their families, providing language classes, education, and coaching to families and teachers worldwide. Her popular Substack, Parlo anch’io! L’italiano per bambine e bambini in contesti multilingui, reaches hundreds of readers every month. 

Alessandra Franco (Ph.D., 2015) is an Assistant Professor of Italian and History at the University of Mary Rome (Italy), where she also serves as the Administrator of Rome Campus Operations, coordinating logistics and academic excursions for the Rome program and additional University-sponsored programs in Italy. She teaches courses on the history of Rome, the development of Benedictine monasticism, and Italian language and culture. Her academic research focuses on the social and religious history of early modern Rome.

Valeria Federici (PH.D., 2019) recently rejoined the National Gallery of Art as a Research Associate. She recently served as a Lecturer, Undergraduate Advisor, and Italian Language Program Coordinator at the University of Maryland where she was also an affiliate faculty in the department of Cinema and Media Studies. As a multidisciplinary scholar, her research interests revolve around themes of art, information technology, sovereignty, relational space, social movements, cultural identity, and the digital humanities.

Karina Mascorro (PH.D, 2015) is a native of Michoacán, Mexico, and a first-generation professional raised in Los Angeles, passionate about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in higher education. As Director of Alumni Engagement at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Karina oversees the School’s alumni events and engagement strategies. Before joining the UCLA family, Karina was an adjunct professor in the Department of Modern Languages and director of study abroad at Rhode Island College, where she had experience supporting international, immigrant, undocumented, DACAmented, and refugee populations. 

Anna Santucci (Ph.D., 2018), is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Centre for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) of University College Cork (UCC, Ireland), where she directs CIRTL’s MA program in Teaching and Learning for Higher Education and co-leads UCC’s Teaching & Learning activities for the UNIC European University alliance. She was previously a faculty developer at the University of Rhode Island (USA), where she facilitated equitable learning efforts, Inclusive Excellence initiatives, and High Impact Teaching programs. Anna critically promotes interculturality, equity, and justice in higher education via co-creation, reflection, agency, and dialogue about teaching and learning.

Please join the Department of Italian Studies for an end of the year pizza party on May 7th at 5:30pm. We will be holding this event in the side yard of 190 Hope Street. There will be pizza and cannoli! 

Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Chair, Italian Studies) on May 3rd at 12pm at 190 Hope Street Room 102 and on zoom. Please contact Italian_studies@brown.edu for the zoom link and password as well as the reading being discussed. 

Time: April 19, 2024 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://brown.zoom.us/j/97467714026?pwd=V0ZJakM1cm9CdkR3QjlwRExJN3U5dz09

Meeting ID: 974 6771 4026
Passcode: Coll_S24

If you would like a copy of the reading being discussed, please email Italian_Studies@brown.edu

Sunday, 4/7, 6pm

Reading and conversation with Ubah Cristina Ali Farah at Riffraff bookstore. Sharing from new and old work, with time for Q&A.

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah is a Somali Italian poet, novelist, playwright, and librettist whose celebrated works address migration, colonial memory, and belonging across borders. Her critically acclaimed novels include Little Mother, The Phases of the Moon, and The Commander of the River, just published in English with Indiana UP. She holds a PhD from the University of Naples L’Orientale and is also UNDP consultant for a project on Oral Historiography for Peace Building in Somalia.

Ali Farah is joining the Department of Italian Studies as Short-Term Visiting Professor in the Humanities, with events throughout the week of April 1-7. Sponsored by the Dean of Faculty and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities. With special thanks to Riffraff for hosting this reading.

Saturday, 4/6, 10:30am

Keynote for Chiasmi, the annual graduate conference in Italian Studies: “Ricomporre la mappa dell’amore nei corpi sconsacrati”

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah is a Somali Italian poet, novelist, playwright, and librettist whose celebrated works address migration, colonial memory, and belonging across borders. Her critically acclaimed novels include Little Mother, The Phases of the Moon, and The Commander of the River, just published in English with Indiana UP. She holds a PhD from the University of Naples L’Orientale and is also UNDP consultant for a project on Oral Historiography for Peace Building in Somalia.

Ali Farah is joining the Department of Italian Studies as Short-Term Visiting Professor in the Humanities, with events throughout the week of April 1-7. Sponsored by the Dean of Faculty and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities.

Brian Robert Moore (class of 2014) presents his translations of Verdigris and You, Bleeding Childhood by Michele Mari, the first works to appear in English by an author hailed as an “Italian master” (Financial Times) and “one of Italy’s most eminent writers” (The Spectator). In Mari’s novel Verdigris (And Other Stories, 2024), a boy’s unlikely friendship with an old groundskeeper leads to a gripping investigation into personal and collective amnesia, as they unravel an eerie family mystery and exhume forgotten ghosts of the Italian Resistance. Following a reading of his translations, Brian will hold a craft conversation with celebrated translator Julia Sanches and will speak to his experience reworking Mari’s inventive use of wordplay, literary pastiche, and Italian dialect. Brian’s translations of Michele Mari have won several honors and awards, including two PEN Translates Awards, and have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker and Literary Hub.

Brian Robert Moore is a literary translator from New York. His translations from the Italian include the novels A Silence Shared by Lalla Romano, Meeting in Positano by Goliarda Sapienza, and Verdigris by Michele Mari, as well as Mari’s short story collection You, Bleeding Childhood. He has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, English PEN, the Santa Maddalena Foundation, and other institutions. He began studying Italian and translation at Brown University, where he completed a BA in Italian Studies and Comparative Literature before moving to Milan to work in the Italian publishing industry.

Michele Mari is one of Italy’s most renowned contemporary writers. He has published ten novels, in addition to several short story and poetry collections, and has received prestigious awards including the Bagutta Prize, the Mondello Prize, and the Selezione Campiello Prize. A former professor of Italian literature at the University of Milan, he has translated classic novels by Herman Melville, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, and H. G. Wells, among others. In a survey published by the magazine Orlando Esplorazioni in 2015, Mari was ranked the contemporary Italian author most likely to be read by generations to come.

Julia Sanches translates literature from Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish into English. Her most recent translations are Pedro and Marques Take Stock by José Falero and Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener. Her translation of Boulder by Eva Baltasar was shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize. Born in Brazil, she lives in Providence, RI.

Thursday, 4/4/2024, 2:30-3:50pm
190 Hope St., Rm. 203

Creative writing workshop with Ubah Cristina Ali Farah

Come write and reflect with the author on the theme “who stays, who leaves.” In English; no preparation necessary. RSVP by 3/22 to eleanor_paynter@brown.edu

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah is a Somali Italian poet, novelist, playwright, and librettist whose celebrated works address migration, colonial memory, and belonging across borders. Her critically acclaimed novels include Little Mother, The Phases of the Moon, and The Commander of the River, just published in English with Indiana UP. She holds a PhD from the University of Naples L’Orientale and is also UNDP consultant for a project on Oral Historiography for Peace Building in Somalia.

Ali Farah is joining the Department of Italian Studies as Short-Term Visiting Professor in the Humanities, with events throughout the week of April 1-7. Sponsored by the Dean of Faculty and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities.

Thursday, 4/4/2024, 10:00am-12:00pm
190 Hope St Room 204

Coffee and open hours with author Ubah Cristina Ali Farah

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah is a Somali Italian poet, novelist, playwright, and librettist whose celebrated works address migration, colonial memory, and belonging across borders. Her critically acclaimed novels include Little Mother, The Phases of the Moon, and The Commander of the River, just published in English with Indiana UP. She holds a PhD from the University of Naples L’Orientale and is also UNDP consultant for a project on Oral Historiography for Peace Building in Somalia.

Ali Farah is joining the Department of Italian Studies as Short-Term Visiting Professor in the Humanities, with events throughout the week of April 1-7. Sponsored by the Dean of Faculty and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities.

(Re)writing Borders: narrating Italy across memory and language

a reading and conversation with Ubah Cristina Ali Farah and Amara Lakhous

Join us in conversation with celebrated writers Amara Lakhous and Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, who will share from their recent work and discuss how questions of memory, translation, and borders shape their writing across languages and genres. Through fiction, theatre, mystery, and poetry, Lakhous and Ali Farah address colonial memory and forgetting, race and racism, and the politics of language. Their work illuminates crucial questions of identity and belonging in contemporary Italy that resonate well beyond the Italian context.

This event headlines the weeklong residency of Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, here as Short-term Visiting Professor in the Humanities. Please see the full schedule of events for more opportunities to hear from and be in conversation with the author.

BIOS

Amara Lakhous was born in Algeria in 1970 and moved to Italy in 1995. He has a degree in philosophy from the University of Algiers and another in Humanities from the University of Rome, La Sapienza where he completed a PhD with a dissertation entitled “Living Islam as a Minority.” He is the author of five award-winning novels, three of which Lakhous wrote in both Arabic and Italian. His best-known works are the much-acclaimed Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2008), Divorce Islamic Style (2012), A Dispute over a Very Italian Piglet (2014), and The Prank of the Good Little Virgin in Via Ormea (2016). His latest novel in Arabic Tir al-lil (The Night Bird) was longlisted in the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, 2021. His novels have been translated from Italian into English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Danish, and Persian. Lakhous has taught at New York University and is now Professor in the Practice in the Department of Italian Studies at Yale University.

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah is a Somali-Italian poet, novelist, playwright, librettist and oral performer. She has published three novels, Madre piccola (2007; Little Mother, IUP 2011), Il comandante del fiume (2014; The Commander of the River, IUP 2021), and Le stazioni della luna (The Stations of the Moon, June 2021), and a bilingual (French and Italian) collection of short stories Un sambouk traverse la mer (MEET 2020). Her work in theatre includes performances in Lagos and Italy, where her rewriting of Antigone was staged in Palermo (with Giuseppe Massa, 2018). Ali Farah holds a PhD in African studies and is the recipient of the Lingua Madre and Vittorini Prizes. She has participated in numerous writing programs and is also a UNDP consultant for a project on Oral Historiography for Peace Building in Somalia.

Moderators

Sara Colantuono is a PhD candidate in Italian Studies at Brown and a Lecturer at Tufts University, working at the intersection of Italian postwar feminist intellectual histories and translation studies. Her translations of Leopoldina Fortunati and Carla Lonzi are forthcoming with Verso book and Fillip.

Eleanor Paynter is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Italian Studies and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, working on Africa-Europe mobilities, transnational Italy, and literatures and politics of migration.

Organized by the Department of Italian Studies, with thanks to the Dean of Faculty and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities.

To join the Zoom, please register using the following link:  https://brown.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMtdumvqzIiE9JDnZEOoCz30cyklVVp5Ww8#/registration

Monday, 4/1/2024, 11:30am-1:30pm
190 Hope St Room 204

Meet-and-greet lunch with author Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Italian Studies Short-Term Visiting Professor in the Humanities. Stop by and meet the author!

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah is a Somali Italian poet, novelist, playwright, and librettist whose celebrated works address migration, colonial memory, and belonging across borders. Her critically acclaimed novels include Little Mother, The Phases of the Moon, and The Commander of the River, just published in English with Indiana UP. She holds a PhD from the University of Naples L’Orientale and is also UNDP consultant for a project on Oral Historiography for Peace Building in Somalia.

Ali Farah is joining the Department of Italian Studies as Short-Term Visiting Professor in the Humanities, with events throughout the week of April 1-7. Sponsored by the Dean of Faculty and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities.

SATURDAY, MARCH 16TH AT 5 PM

LAYLA WA ZI’AB (Leila and the Wolves)
Directed by Heiny Sour, 1980-1984, 90’, Arabic version with English subtitles
Introduced by Ariella Azoulay (Brown University). In collaboration with the Center for Middle East Studies

SATURDAY, MARCH 16TH AT 7 PM

Il Grido (The Cry)
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1957, 117*, starring Alida Valli, Italian version with English subtitles
Introduced by Giacomo Manzoli (University of Bologna)

FRIDAY, MARCH 15TH AT 7 PM

Cinema’s First Nasty Women: Contagious Revenge

A selection of short silent films curated by Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, and Elf Rongen-Kaynakci, 80’

With Live Musical Accompaniment by Donald Sosin (piano) and Joanna Seaton (voice)

THURSDAY, MARCH 14TH AT 6 PM

The Passion of Anna Magnani

Directed by Enrico Cerasuolo, Italy, 2019, 60’, Italian version with English subtitles

THURSDAY, MARCH 14TH AT 7 PM

Bellissima (Beautiful)

Directed by Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1951, 115’, starring Anna Magnani Italian version with English subtitles

Il Cinema Ritrovato at Brown and Film-Thinking presented L’amore, a 1948 anthology film directed by Roberto Rossellini, followed by a conversation featuring Timothy Bewes (English | Brown), Kristina Mendicino (German Studies | Brown), Massimo Riva (Italian Studies | Brown), and Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Italian Studies | Brown).

ABOUT THE FILM

L’amore [Love]
Italy, 1948 (79 mins)
Directed by Roberto Rossellini

Cast: Anna Magnani (segments “Una voce umana” and “Il miracolo”); Federico Fellini, Peparuolo, and Amelia Robert (segment “Il miracolo”) | Screenplay: Roberto Rossellini and Anna Benvenuti, based on the play “La voix humaine” by Jean Cocteau (segment “Una voce umana”); Federico Fellini and Tullio Pinelli, based on the novel Flor de santidad by Ramón del Valle-Inclán (segment “Il miracolo”) | Cinematography: Robert Juillard and Otello Martelli (segment “Una voce umana”); Aldo Tonti (segment “Il miracolo”) | Editing: Eraldo Da Roma (segment “Una voce umana”) | Music: Renzo Rossellini | Language: Italian with English Subtitles

L’amore is made up of two distinct short films, both starring the Italian powerhouse Anna Magnani. In “Una voce umana” [“A Human Voice”], an unnamed woman has a fraught conversation over the phone with her lover, and in “Il miracolo” [“The Miracle”] the devoutly religious Nannina believes she has been impregnated by Saint Joseph. It was this second film that sparked outrage in the United States, and the film was yanked from its New York premiere and condemned by the National Legion of Decency and Catholic authorities for indecency. When the New York Board of Regents revoked the film’s license entirely, distributor Joseph Burstyn took the battle all the way to the Supreme Court, who, in a unanimous 1952 ruling, decided that film was a form of artistic expression, and therefore free speech protected by the First Amendment. — Adapted from the Gene Siskel Film Center

Film-Thinking is a series of conversations hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, asking how cinema can help us to think the many challenges facing our moment. According to the novelist Jonathan Coe, “A movie is something we should only see when somebody else shows it to us.” In the spirit of Coe’s remark, each Film-Thinking event comprises a curated screening of a film and a post-screening conversation. A pre-circulated Film Note offers a point of departure for the screening and the discussion. The aim of Film-Thinking is to enlarge our sense of the politics of cinema and collectively expand our understanding of film’s capacity for thought. This project has been made possible, in part, by the Brown Arts Institute. Read more.

L’amore (Love)

Directed by Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 1948, 69’, starring Anna Magnani and Federico Fellini, Italian version with English subtitles.

The screening will be followed by a reception and a round table discussion, part of the Film-Thinking series of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities. With Timothy Bewes, Kristina Mendicino, Massimo Riva, and Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg

“Il fragile strumento / Vassallo della man: The Divine Presence and Overdetermined Voice of Adriana Lecouvreur” - Harrison Rose, Doctoral student in Italian Studies.

The Italian Studies Colloquium meets bi-weekly throughout the academic year, on alternating Fridays (see detailed program below) as an interdisciplinary forum for exchanging ideas and research from the community of Italian scholars at Brown and invited outside scholars. Graduate students present their work in progress, and engage the work of faculty and visitors. 

Italian Studies Colloquium/ Brown-University of Bologna Exchange

Valentina Cappi (University of Bologna). Valentina Cappi, Ph.D, is assistant professor at the Department of Sociology and Business Law of the University of Bologna, where she teaches “Climate change communication, media, and sustainability” and “Sociology of cultural and communicative processes”. She is currently conducting research on “Regenerating communication on climate change. Action-research with key players in the awareness-raising on the ecological transition”. She collaborates to several H2020 projects, including Perceptions. Her research interests concern the relationships between media narratives, imaginary and social practice.

Michael E. Papio (Brown Ph.D. 1999, Professor of Italian Studies, Italian Graduate Program Director, and Director of Medieval Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst)

“What Can Be Learned from a New Edition of Boccaccio’s Gazetteer?”

This presentation is based on Prof. Papio’s work-in-progress on a Critical Edition and Translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus et de nominibus maris (On Mountains, Woods, Springs, Lakes, Rivers, Swamps or Marshes, and on the Names of the Sea), principally funded by an NEH Scholarly Translations grant. 

The experience of Italian culture cannot be complete without a taste of Italian opera and food, but rarely do we think about the deep connection between the two. This graduate seminar offers an opportunity to explore how the convivial culture of the Renaissance shaped later opera-going rituals and informed the clever use of gastronomic signs in opera to dramatize how characters identify, interact, enjoy life, and die.

Pierpaolo Polzonetti is Jan and Beta Popper Professor of Music at the University of California at Davis.

“Italo Calvino: The Writer in the Trees.” A conversation with director Duccio Chiarini.

In his documentary, released on the 100th anniversary of Calvino’s birth, award-winning director Duccio Chiarini takes an original look at the relationship between the writer’s work and his times, through the lens of one of Calvino’s most celebrated novels, The Baron in the Trees (Il Barone Rampante, 1957). The documentary premiered at the Giornata degli Autori at the Venice Film Festival in August 2023.

What does genre-based instruction in the language classroom look like? Please join the Center for Language Studies for our last reading group of the semester. In preparation for our upcoming pedagogy workshop on genre-based instruction with invited guest speaker Professor Nigel Caplan (University of Delaware), we will discuss selected excerpts from Genre Explained (Tardy, Caplan & Johns, 2023). 

Please join the Center for Language Studies for a discussion on the use of rubrics in language assessment. This reading group will serve as a lead-up to our upcoming pedagogy workshop on building rubrics.

Our discussion will be based on Chapter 2 (“Why Use Rubrics?”) in Introduction to Rubrics: An Assessment Tool to Save Grading Time, Convey Effective Feedback, and Promote Student Learning (Stevens & Levi, 2013). Available here.

Additionally, for a similar but more language-focused discussion, you may read pp. 41-55 in “Assessing Student Language Performance: Types and Uses of Rubrics” (Davis & Kondo-Brown, 2012). Available here.

*Note:

If you can only attend via Zoom, please join us at this link: https://brown.zoom.us/j/99306122825

You must log in with your Brown email account.

Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with Luca Barra on April 21st at 12PM. 

Film screening and conversation with Italian filmmaker, Alina Marazzi. Her film, Tutto Parla Di Te (All About You), will be screened at 6PM with a panel conversation to follow. 

This event is associated with Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour (March 17-19). 

Bio for Alina Marazzi: 

A. M. is an award-winning Italian filmmaker. Her highly original films explore events of the recent past and present in Italy through a gendered perspective based on women’s biographical experiences. Marazzi’s Marazzi’s most critically acclaimed work is her trilogy on female subjectivity, motherhood, and memory: Un’ora sola ti vorrei (For One More Hour With You, 2002), Vogliamo anche le rose (We Want Roses Too, 2007) and Tutto parla di te (All About You, 2012), starring Charlotte Rampling. She also directed the short film Confini (Borderlands, 2014), using found footage shot in and around the First World War.

SUNDAY, MARCH 19 at 4:00 p.m.
LA RICOTTA
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini (Starring Orson Welles)
Italy-France | 1963 |35 minutes | Color | In Italian with English subtitles.
Special Screening: This screening is part of the Film-Thinking series organised by Timothy Bewes for The Cogut Institute for the Humanities and will be followed by a round table with Tim Bewes, Mauro Resmini (UMD), Massimo Riva (Brown), Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Brown).
Restored in 4K in 2022 by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Compass Film at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory

SUNDAY, MARCH 19 at 6:30 p.m.
PECCATO CHE SIA UNA CANAGLIA
Directed by Alessandro Blasetti (Starring Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio De Sica)
Italy | 1954 |95 minutes | Color | In Italian with English subtitles.
Restored and distributed by Movietime

SATURDAY, MARCH 18 at 4:00 p.m.
THAMP
Directed by Aravindan Govindan
India | 1978 | 129 minutes | Color | Malayalam version with English subtitles
Restored in 2022 by Film Heritage Foundation, The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd.’s Post Studios, Chennai and L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna in association with Producer K. Ravindranathan Nair of General Pictures and the family of Aravindan Govindan.

SATURDAY, MARCH 18 AT 7:00 p.m.
SCIUSCIÀ
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
Italy | 1946 | 93 minutes | In Italian with English subtitles
Restored in 4K in 2022 by The Film Foundation and Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Orium S.A. with funding provided by Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory

FRIDAY, MARCH 17 at 7:00p.m.
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR
Directed by Buster Keaton, and Charles Reisner
USA| 1928 | 79 minutes | With live Musical Accompaniment by Donald Sosin (piano) and Johanna Seaton (voice)
Restored in 2014 by The Cohen Film Collection at Modern VideoFilm laboratory. Distributed in the US by Cohen Film Collection.

Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with Mauro Resmini (University of Maryland) on March 17th at 12PM. 

Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with artist, Elisa Giardina Papa, on March 3rd at 12PM. 

Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with visual artist, Dawit Petros, on February 24th at 12pm. 

Dawit L. Petros is a visual artist, researcher and educator. His work is informed by studies of global modernisms, theories of diaspora, and postcolonial studies. Throughout the past decade, he has focused on a critical re-reading of the entanglements between colonialism and modernity. Petros is an Eritrean emigrant who spent formative years in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Kenya before settling in central Canada. The overlapping cultures, voices, and tenets of this constellation produced a dispersed consciousness, global and transnational in stance and outlook. His works aim for an introspective and textured analysis of the historical factors that produced these migratory conditions. Petros installs photographs, moving images, sculptural objects, and sound work according to performative, painterly, or site responsive logics.

Petros completed the Whitney Independent Study Program, an MFA in Visual Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University; a BFA in Photography from Concordia University and a BA in History from the University of Saskatchewan. Recent exhibition venues include KØS Museum for Art in Public Space, Nørregade, Køge; Ozangé Spanish Biennial of African Photography, Malaga; Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo; Huis Marseille Museum of Photography, Amsterdam; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC; The National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC; and the Bamako Biennale in Mali. He has been awarded a Terra Foundation Research Fellow, the Paul De Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award in Art Photography, an Art Matters Fellowship, and Artist Residencies at The Studio Museum in Harlem, The McColl Center for Visual Art, and Addis Ababa Photo Fest.

Dawit L. Petros is an Associate Professor in the Department of Photography at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is represented by Tiwani Contemporary in London, UK and Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal, Canada.

Image: Istruzioni (Transits, Trajectories, Invisible Networks), Part III, Serigraph on Arnhem paper 56x76cm(22x30in.), 2021.

Please join the Italian Studies department on February 10th for a lecture with Michael F. Moore on his new translation of Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed. 

SCREENING AND CONVERSATION BETWEEN ARTIST ELISA GIARDINA-PAPA
AND MACARENA GÓMEZ-BARRIS, CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF MODERN CULTURE AND MEDIA ON THE VIDEO INSTALLATION IN COMPETITION AT THE 59TH VENICE BIENNALE.

Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with Romy Golan (Graduate Center, CUNY) on October 21st at noon titled, “Hidden Temporalities in Italian Art in the 1960s.” 

The event will be held in person at 190 Hope Street Room 102 and virtually on ZOOM. Due to room capacity, precedence will be given to students enrolled and IS faculty. 

Please join the Italian Studies department for a colloquium with PhD candidate in Italian Studies, Pablo a Marca, titled “Entering the Fairy-Tale Forest: Reflections on the Anthropocene Through European Folklore.” The lecture will be held in person and on Zoom with in-person seating precedence given to Italian Studies faculty and graduate students enrolled in the Colloquium. 

Please join the Italian Studies Department for a colloquium with Jacopo Galimberti on September 23rd, 2022 at 12pm titled, “‘I Want Your Applause’: Milli Gandini from the Wages for Housework to the Italian Socialist Party.”

Due to room capacity, precedence for in person attendance will be given to enrolled students and Italian Studies faculty. All guests are invited to attend virtually using the zoom link: https://brown.zoom.us/j/99513303302?pwd=RmxGVGY2T09oKzZmelpRbDM2bWEyZz09

Join the departments of Italian and German Studies to kick off the new academic year! Light refreshments will be served. 

Join the Watson Institute for a discussion of Professor David Kertzer’s New York Times best seller, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler. Kertzer will be joined by discussants Sergio Luzzatto, Emiliana Pasca Noether Chair in Modern Italian History, University of Connecticut; Kevin Madigan, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Harvard University; and Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, Professor and Chair of Italian Studies, Brown University. Moderated by Watson Institute director Edward Steinfeld.

A reception and book signing will follow.

Please join the Italian Studies Department for a colloquium with Pavel Štichauer on September 9th, 2022 at 12pm titled, “Word-Formation in the History of Italian: Three Case Studies.” 

Due to room capacity, precedence for in person attendance will be given to enrolled students and Italian Studies faculty. All guests are invited to attend virtually using the zoom link: https://brown.zoom.us/j/99513303302?pwd=RmxGVGY2T09oKzZmelpRbDM2bWEyZz09

Luca Battioni (Italian Studies Ph.D. student): “Performing Folklore: Discipline, Control, and Surveillance in Fascist Italy”

Abstract: In the aftermath of WWI Italy was still a patchwork of diverse people, histories, traditions, cultures, and dialects that the regime sought desperately to bring together for political and economic stability. The ‘rebirth’ of national folklore promoted by the fascist government at once strengthened the sense of collective nationhood and created an indelible link between popular culture and political power. In this paper, I will explore the power mechanisms involved in the process of Folklorization during the regime before focusing on the diverse range of policies and technologies that were implemented in the national music education program to create a disciplined, nationalistic, and unified image of the country. Music and dance practices embodied folklore in a more straightforward way than other folklore-related events such as the exhibition of handicrafts or traditional clothes; thus, the human body itself became the object on which power mechanisms operated. This discussion will offer reflections on such key terms as surveillance, discipline, and mobility as they come into play in the fascist musical agenda. I will be reading them in conversation with recent debates from ethnomusicological, carceral, and fascist studies that will offer a provocative and interdisciplinary interplay.

Gisella Governi (Italian Studies Ph.D. student): “New Gender Perspectives on Intercessory Prayers in Dante’s Inferno and Purgatory”

Abstract:  The institutionalization of the Purgatory in 1274 meant that the importance of intercessory prayers grew among the lay population, especially amongst women who were able to shorten the pain of their loved ones through their devotions. In this presentation, I would like to investigate how some aspects of gender dynamics and certain stereotypical performances linked to the female gender in the Middle Ages are exemplified by Dante, especially when we speak about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ widowhood/wifehood and the intercessory activities of women. As the catalog of lustful women (Semiramis, Dido, and Cleopatra) in Inf. V makes clear, in the first cantica Dante usually depicts negative female characters whose behavior is contrary to social stereotypes of the good mother, wife, and widow. Yet in Purgatory, Dante does not always depict the stereotypical figures of the widow/wife and mother as positively as we might expect. In this regard, it is interesting to analyze the character of Sapia Senese (Purg. XIII), the only woman to whom Dante dedicates an entire canto of the Purgatorio and the only female sinner saved by the prayers of a saintly man, Piero Pettignano. In this case, the intriguing point is the relation between Sapia and Piero, which by inverting the usual configuration by which women save the souls of male sinners through intercessory prayers, may represent a parody of the stereotypical performance tied to the female gender and its function of intercession in the Middle Ages.

Sara Colantuono (Italian Studies Ph.D. candidate): “Carla Sono Io! Rethinking Carla Lonzi’s Place in the Canon of Italian Feminist Thought”

Abstract: What is the place of Carla Lonzi in today’s canon of Italian feminism? What is the impact of her legacy in today’s feminist theory and activism? Broadly concerned with practices of appropriation, representation, and citation in narratives of the history and theory of feminism in Italy, my article offers a reconsideration of the role of Carla Lonzi and a critique of today’s storytelling of Italian feminist history. Throughout my inquiry, Lonzi’s conceptualization of sexuality is taken up as the central knot that contextually holds together her aesthetic theory and reveals the limits of her critique.

The ninth edition of“Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour” (Rediscovered Cinema on Tour) will take place from March 10-12, 2022 at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Brown University. The festival is curated byMassimo Riva (Italian Studies, Brown University) and Guy Borlée (Festival Coordinator for the Cineteca di Bologna).The 2022 program is headlined by a spectacular 1911 silent adaptation ofDante’s Infernoand features two masterpieces of Italian “magical neorealism”:Miracolo a Milano,directed by Vittorio De Sica, andTheSpider’s Stratagem, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. A rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema,Chess in the Windby Iranian director Mohammad Reza Aslani, completes the program. All films were restored at the laboratories of the Immagine ritrovata in Bologna.

Brown University abides by public health guidance and health and safety protocols to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19. Event attendees, including visitors and guests, must comply with all University policies and protocols in place at the time of the event, including current University policy regarding face masks and coverings (see the University’s COVID-19 Campus Activity Status page for the current policy for both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals).

http://cineritrovatobrown.weebly.com

SATURDAY, MARCH 12 at 4 p.m.

LA STRATEGIA DEL RAGNO.

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Italy | 1970 |100 minutes | Color | In Italian with English subtitles.

Restored by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Massimo Sordella, at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna, Italy.

Bertolucci’s free adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story,The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,is a political mystery, focused on Athos Magnani (Giulio Brogi), the son of an anti-fascist hero who was assassinated three decades earlier. When he is called back to his father’s hometown by the man’s former mistress (Alida Valli), he has a series of perplexing, surreal encounters with her and the men who were his father’s allies long ago. As he tries to unravel the mystery of his father’s murder, he is forced to reckon with the nature of compromised ideals. The film is a unique example of what has been called “magical neorealism.” Bertolucci and Vittorio Storaro, the camera operator, “shot most of [the film] in the brief interval of light between day and evening when a traditional operator would have said ‘Stop’!”

The screening is part of theFilm-Thinking Series of the Cogut Institute for the Humanitiesat Brown, a series designed to enlarge our sense of the politics of cinema and collectively expand our understanding of film’s capacity for thought. It will be followed by a round table discussion with Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, Timothy Bewes, and Massimo Riva.

The ninth edition of“Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour” (Rediscovered Cinema on Tour) will take place from March 10-12, 2022 at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Brown University. The festival is curated byMassimo Riva (Italian Studies, Brown University) and Guy Borlée (Festival Coordinator for the Cineteca di Bologna).The 2022 program is headlined by a spectacular 1911 silent adaptation ofDante’s Infernoand features two masterpieces of Italian “magical neorealism”:Miracolo a Milano,directed by Vittorio De Sica, andTheSpider’s Stratagem, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. A rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema,Chess in the Windby Iranian director Mohammad Reza Aslani, completes the program. All films were restored at the laboratories of the Immagine ritrovata in Bologna.

Brown University abides by public health guidance and health and safety protocols to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19. Event attendees, including visitors and guests, must comply with all University policies and protocols in place at the time of the event, including current University policy regarding face masks and coverings (see the University’s COVID-19 Campus Activity Status page for the current policy for both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals).

http://cineritrovatobrown.weebly.com

FRIDAY, MARCH 11 AT 7 p.m.

MIRACOLO A MILANO

Distributed by Janus Film

Directed by Vittorio De Sica

Italy | 1951 | 97 minutes | Black & White | In Italian with English subtitles

Restored from the 35 mm original camera negative by Cineteca di Bologna and Compass Film, in collaboration with Mediaset, Infinity TV, Arthur Cohn, and Variety Communications, at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna, Italy.

Once upon a time in postwar Italy… Vittorio De Sica’s follow-up to his international triumph,Bicycle Thieves,is an enchanting neorealist fairy tale that combines his celebrated slice-of-life poetry with flights of graceful comedy and storybook fantasy. On the outskirts of Milan, a band of vagabonds work together to build a shantytown. When it is discovered that the land they occupy contains oil, however, it’s up to the cherubic orphan Totò (Francesco Golisano)—with some divine help—to save their community from greedy developers. Tipping their hats to the imaginative whimsy of Charlie Chaplin and René Clair, De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini (adapting his own novel) craft a bighearted ode to the nobility of everyday people. Distributed by Janus Film.

The ninth edition of“Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour” (Rediscovered Cinema on Tour) will take place from March 10-12, 2022 at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Brown University. The festival is curated byMassimo Riva (Italian Studies, Brown University) and Guy Borlée (Festival Coordinator for the Cineteca di Bologna).The 2022 program is headlined by a spectacular 1911 silent adaptation ofDante’s Infernoand features two masterpieces of Italian “magical neorealism”:Miracolo a Milano,directed by Vittorio De Sica, andTheSpider’s Stratagem, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. A rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema,Chess in the Windby Iranian director Mohammad Reza Aslani, completes the program. All films were restored at the laboratories of the Immagine ritrovata in Bologna.

Brown University abides by public health guidance and health and safety protocols to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19. Event attendees, including visitors and guests, must comply with all University policies and protocols in place at the time of the event, including current University policy regarding face masks and coverings (see the University’s COVID-19 Campus Activity Status page for the current policy for both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals).

http://cineritrovatobrown.weebly.com

FRIDAY, MARCH 11 at 5 p.m.

CHESS IN THE WIND

Distributed by Janus Film

Directed by Mohammad Reza Aslani

Iran | 1976 | 93 minutes | Color | In Farsi with English subtitles

Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

Screened publicly just once in 1976 before it was banned and then lost for decades, this rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema reemerges to take its place as one of the most singular and astonishing works of the country’s prerevolutionary New Wave. A hypnotically stylized murder mystery awash in shivery period atmosphere, Chess of the Wind unfolds in an ornate, candlelit mansion where a web of greed, violence, and betrayal ensnares the heirs to a family fortune as they vie for control of their recently deceased matriarch’s estate. Melding the influences of European modernism, gothic horror, and classical Persian art, director Mohammad Reza Aslani crafts an exquisitely controlled mood piece that erupts in a stunningly subversive final act in which class conventions, gender roles, and even time itself are upended with shocking ferocity. Distributed by Janus Film.

The ninth edition of “Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour” (Rediscovered Cinema on Tour) will take place from March 10-12, 2022 at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Brown University. The festival is curated by Massimo Riva (Italian Studies, Brown University) and Guy Borlée (Festival Coordinator for the Cineteca di Bologna). The 2022 program is headlined by a spectacular 1911 silent adaptation of Dante’s Inferno and features two masterpieces of Italian “magical neorealism”: Miracolo a Milano, directed by Vittorio De Sica, and The Spider’s Stratagem, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. A rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema, Chess in the Wind by Iranian director Mohammad Reza Aslani, completes the program. All films were restored at the laboratories of the Immagine ritrovata in Bologna.

Brown University abides by public health guidance and health and safety protocols to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19. Event attendees, including visitors and guests, must comply with all University policies and protocols in place at the time of the event, including current University policy regarding face masks and coverings (see the University’s COVID-19 Campus Activity Status page for the current policy for both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals).

http://cineritrovatobrown.weebly.com

Program

THURSDAY, MARCH 10 at 7 p.m.

DANTE’S INFERNO

Directed by Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, Giuseppe De Liguoro

Italy | 1911 | 66 minutes | B&W and hand-colored | Silent with Italian and English intertitles

Digitally restored in 2021 at L‘Immagine Ritrovata laboratory.

On March 1, 1911, the first public screening of Inferno was held at the Mercadante Theater in Naples. The production of the film took almost two years and the cost was unprecedented: at the time there was talk of the astronomical sum of one million lire. The enthusiasm for the film adaptation of the first cantica of Dante’s Divine Comedy was unanimous and shared by the distinguished writers and intellectuals present at the Neapolitan screening, including Benedetto Croce and Matilde Serao, who compared the film to the work of the most celebrated illustrator of Dante, Gustave Doré, an iconographic point of reference for the filmmakers.

The way we live, work, and play is very different today than it was just a few decades ago, thanks in large part to a network of connectivity that now encompasses most people on the planet. In a similar way, today we are at the beginning of a new technological revolution: the Internet is entering the physical space – the traditional domain of architecture and design – becoming an “Internet of Things” or IoT. As such, it is opening the door to a variety of applications that – in a similar way to what happened with the first wave of the Internet – can encompass many domains: from production to citizen participation, from energy to mobility to public hygiene, all of which requiring new insights due to the changes brought forth by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The contribution from Prof. Carlo Ratti will address these issues from a critical point of view through projects by the Senseable City Laboratory, a research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the design office Carlo Ratti Associati.

Francesca Zambon (Italian Studies Ph.D. candidate): “Goliarda Sapienza, Ancestrale, and the PCI: the Struggle to Say I”

Abstract: This chapter (the first of my dissertation) is dedicated to Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996) and the self-definition of her work as “autobiografia delle contraddizioni” (lit. autobiography of contradictions). It explores the challenge that the author faced in writing autobiographically and her struggle to question, reinvent, and express the status of the traditional subjective I. The project focuses on Sapienza’s first and only poetry collection, Ancestrale (written in the 1950s and still largely overlooked by the critics), to investigate the intersection between the cultural politics of the immediate post-war years, the relationship between literature and the PCI, and the formation of the notion of impegno. Goliarda’s practice of confessionalism and her constant deviations from it, her hyper-political education, and her anti-dogmatism both in life and at the level of language, will help us envision a new notion of a “political poetry” that her work instantiates.

Agata Nipitella (Italian Studies Ph.D. student): “Elena and Lila: Outside and Inside the Same Story”

Abstract: This paper (an article in progress) is an analysis of the friendship between the two protagonists of The Neapolitan Novels in light of feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray’s theories. It suggests the influence of Irigaray on Ferrante’s representation of Elena and Lila’s female friendship. Ferrante drew inspiration from the philosopher to create the play of shared creativity between the two protagonists and to design their opposite characters. Lila corresponds in many ways to the ideal female figure and behavior elaborated by Irigaray in When Our Lips Speak Together, while Elena represents the consequences of detachment from this model. Moreover, the society in which the protagonists live can be seen through the lens of Irigaray’s This Sex Which Is Not One and Speculum of the Other Woman, an approach that reveals its patriarchal essence. These societal constraints and Elena and Lila’s opposite ways of facing them do not allow a female bond outside what Irigaray calls “the same story” – namely, the usual separation that the patriarchal economy demands from women.

Diane Ghirardo (Professor of Architecture and Art History, University of Southern California) – Presentation of the book, Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).

Abstract: This crucial reassessment of Aldo Rossi’s (1931–1997) architecture simultaneously examines his writings, drawings, and product design, including the coffeepots and clocks he designed for the Italian firm Alessi. The first Italian to receive the Pritzker Prize, Rossi rejected modernism, seeking instead a form of architecture that could transcend the aesthetic legacy of Fascism in postwar Italy. Rossi was a visionary who did not allow contemporary trends to dominate his thinking. His baroque sensibility and poetic approach, found both in his buildings and in important texts like The Architecture of the City, inspired the critic Ada Louise Huxtable to describe him as “a poet who happens to be an architect.”

Rebecca Falkoff (Visiting Scholar), ”In the Air: Nitrogenous Fascism” ? (work in progress).

Abstract: Prof. Falkoff will discuss her project in progress entitled Modernity in the Air: The Rhetoric and Biopolitics of Nitrogen Capture in Italy, which examines the ways in which fantasies of abundance fostered by industrial chemistry informed discourses of nation and race, gender and sexuality in modern Italian literary and visual texts. Pre-circulated text is available from italian_studies@brown.edu.

This event is funded by: Charles P. Sisson II Memorial Lectureship

Italian Studies Colloquium: Erica Moretti (Brown PhD in Italian Studies 2012, Assistant Professor of Italian at the Fashion Institute of Technology-SUNY), The Best Weapon for Peace. Maria Montessori, Education, and Children’s Rights(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2021).

Abstract: In The Best Weapon for Peace, Erica Moretti reframes Montessori’s pacifism as the foundation for her educational activism, emphasizing her vision of the classroom as a gateway to reshaping society. Montessori education offers a child-centered learning environment that cultivates students’ development as peaceful, curious, and resilient adults opposed to war and invested in societal reform. Using newly discovered primary sources, Moretti examines Montessori’s lifelong pacifist work, including her ultimately unsuccessful push for the creation of the White Cross, a humanitarian organization for war-affected children. Moretti shows that Montessori’s educational theories and practices would come to define children’s rights once adopted by influential international organizations, including the United Nations. She uncovers the significance of Montessori’s evolving philosophy of peace and early childhood education within broader conversations about internationalism and humanitarianism.

This event is funded by: Charles P. Sisson II Memorial Lectureship

Stephanie Pilat, Director of the Division of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma will present a talk, The Afterlife of Fascist Architecture and Urbanism, sponsored by the Department of the History of Art and Architecture.

The Fascist regime left a physical legacy in nearly every Italian village, town, and city. From entirely new towns, roads, and infrastructure to stadiums, summer camps, schools, housing, and monuments, the regime sponsored a vast array of building projects. These lingering reminders of fascism provoke the question: who should now decide the fate of these buildings, towns, and monuments scattered across the country and in Italy’s former colonies? Who gets a say in the afterlife of fascism? What do the decisions made about what to preserve, adapt or demolish tell us about Italian society and nationalism today? An analysis of two sites in Rome will illustrate some of the ways in which the physical legacy of Fascism is being negotiated today.

Join Italian Studies for a presentation and conversation with Karen Pinkus (Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, Cornell University), on her book Clocking Out: The Machinery of Life in 1960s Italian Cinema(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020)

What can 1960s Italian cinema teach us about how to live and work today? Clocking Outchallenges readers to think about labor, cinema, and machines as they are intertwined in complex ways in Italian cinema of the early ’60s. Drawing on critical theory and archival research, this book asks what kinds of fractures we might exploit for living otherwise, for resisting traditional narratives, and for anticapitalism.

This event is funded by: Charles P. Sisson II Memorial Lectureship

Please join us for a discussion with Charles Leavitt (Associate Professor of Italian, University of Notre Dame), Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History(Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 2020).

Abstract: “Neorealism emerged as a cultural exchange and a field of discourse that served to shift the confines of creativity and revise the terms of artistic expression not only in Italy but worldwide. If neorealism was thus a global phenomenon, it is because of its revolutionary portrayal of a transformative moment in the local, regional, and national histories of Italy. At once guiding and guided by that transformative moment, neorealist texts took up, reflected, and performed the contentious conditions of their creation, not just at the level of narrative content but also in their form, language, and structure. Italian Neorealism: A Cultural Historydemonstrates how they did so through a series of representative case studies. Recounting the history of a generation of artists, this study offers fundamental insights into one of the most innovative and influential cultural moments of the twentieth century.”

This event is funded by: Charles P. Sisson II Memorial Lectureship

Join us for a conversation with Emanuele Lugli (Assistant Professor of Art History, Stanford University), Unità di Misura: Breve Storia del Metro in Italia(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014), Eng. Translation: The Making of Measure and the Promise of Sameness (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2019).

Abstract : Measurement is all around us - from the circumference of a pizza to the square footage of an apartment, from the length of a newborn baby to the number of miles between neighboring towns. Whether inches or miles, centimeters or kilometers, measures of distance stand at the very foundation of everything we do, so much so that we take them for granted. Yet, this has not always been the case. This book reaches back to medieval Italy to speak of a time when, far from being obvious, measurements were displayed in the open, showing how such a deceptively simple innovation triggered a chain of cultural transformations whose consequences are visible today on a global scale. Drawing from literary works and frescoes, architectural surveys and legal compilations, Emanuele Lugli offers a history of material practices widely overlooked by historians. He argues that the public display of measurements in Italy’s newly formed city republics not only laid the foundation for now centuries-old practices of making, but also helped to legitimize local governments and shore up church power, buttressing fantasies of exactitude and certainty that linger to this day. This ambitious, truly interdisciplinary book explains how measurements, rather than being mere descriptors of the real, themselves work as powerful molds of ideas, affecting our notions of what we consider similar, accurate, and truthful.

This event is funded by: Charles P. Sisson II Memorial Lectureship

We welcome you to a conversation with Stephen J. Campbell (Henry and Elizabeth Wiesenfeld Professor of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University), on his book The Endless Periphery: Towards a Geopolitics of Art in Lorenzo Lotto’s Italy(Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2019). 

Abstract: While the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance are usually associated with Italy’s historical seats of power, some of the era’s most characteristic works are to be found in places other than Florence, Rome, and Venice. They are the product of the diversity of regions and cultures that makes up the country. In Endless Periphery, Stephen J. Campbell examines a range of iconic works in order to unlock a rich series of local references in Renaissance art that include regional rulers, patron saints, and miracles, demonstrating, for example, that the works of Titian spoke to beholders differently in Naples, Brescia, or Milan than in his native Venice. More than a series of regional microhistories, Endless Peripherytracks the geographic mobility of Italian Renaissance art and artists, revealing a series of exchanges between artists and their patrons, as well as the power dynamics that fueled these exchanges. A counter history of one of the greatest epochs of art production, this richly illustrated book will bring new insight to our understanding of classic works of Italian art.

Theodore J. Cachey Jr., Professor of Italian,Ravarino Family Director of Italian and Dante Studies; and Co-Director, Center for Italian Studies

This presentation is part of a work-in-progress dedicated to a cartographic reading of Dante’s Commedia. “Mapping Dante” is about the way Dante maps the cosmos and himself within it as a means of transcending the experience of exile. The excerpt from the fourth chapter submitted for discussion focuses on “Il problema della lingua: il De Vulgari Eloquentia e l’Inferno.” It argues that the problem of how to map the inhabited world and Italy first becomes explicit and central for Dante in his post-exilic linguistic treatise, the De Vulgari Eloquentia(On vernacular eloquence), and that the treatise is foundational for the mapping program of the Commedia. The chapter, which will be reviewed in its main parts in English in discussion form, gives an account of the origins of the cartographic impulse in Dante; offers reflections on the nature of the transition from the treatise to the poem; describes the method of “translation” of the map of the treatise to the map of the poem; and proposes a preliminary cartographic reading of the first canticle, the Inferno.

“Looking at Arches in Italy, 81-114 CE.” After addressing how ancient patrons and artists channeled the communicative potential of arches through careful manipulation of their designs and locations, this presentation of a chapter from a book-in-progress turns the attention to their reception by ancient viewers, focusing on two monuments: the Arch of Titus in Rome (81 CE), and the Arch of Trajan at Benevento (114 CE). I consider each of these arches around the time of their construction, exploring how ancient viewers might have responded to the messages embedded in their visual programs—the reliefs and statues that decorate their facades—as well as in their shape, materials, and placement.

The Department of Italian Studies and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University invite you to join us for a Roundtable Discussion of Cecilia Mangini’s 1964 documentary Essere Donne [To Be Women]. Panelists include: Sara Colantuono, Silvia Federici, Leopoldina Fortunati, Laura Odello, Antonella Sisto, Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg.

Join us on zoom on Wednesday, March 10 at 5PM (link below).

Mangini’s documentary will be streamed on March 8-10, as part of the Cinema Ritrovato on Tour 2021, the Virtual edition, organized by the Department of Italian Studies in collaboration with the Cineteca of Bologna, and curated by Guy Borlée and Massimo Riva. Screenings are accessible on the platform hosted by the Brown Arts Initiative: https://watch.eventive.org/baibrownu. More information and full program at http://cineritrovatobrown.weebly.com/

Join Zoom Meeting
https://brown.zoom.us/j/97095805784

Meeting ID: 970 9580 5784
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,97095805784# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,97095805784# US (New York)

Dial by your location
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
877 369 0926 US Toll-free
877 853 5247 US Toll-free
Meeting ID: 970 9580 5784
Find your local number: https://brown.zoom.us/u/aclqwWTGaE

Join by SIP
97095805784@zoomcrc.com

Join by H.323
162.255.37.11 (US West)
162.255.36.11 (US East)
115.114.131.7 (India Mumbai)
115.114.115.7 (India Hyderabad)
213.19.144.110 (Amsterdam Netherlands)
213.244.140.110 (Germany)
103.122.166.55 (Australia Sydney)
103.122.167.55 (Australia Melbourne)
64.211.144.160 (Brazil)
69.174.57.160 (Canada Toronto)
65.39.152.160 (Canada Vancouver)
207.226.132.110 (Japan Tokyo)
149.137.24.110 (Japan Osaka)
Meeting ID: 970 9580 5784

ITALIAN Studies DUG Black History Month. Guest speaker: Fred Kuwornu,Against the backdrop of an urgent national conversation on race, it is also a pivotal moment for Italians to ask themselves whether Black lives matter in Italy and if the country is ready to reappraise the way in which it talks about itself. How can people define themselves as antiracist when Black people are excluded from the way in which Italy portrays itself, except in the use of stereotypes? When the horrors of Italian colonialism are scrubbed from history, or frozen out by collective memory? Fred Kuwornuis a filmmaker activist-producer-educator, born and raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn. His mother is an Italian Jew, and his father is a Ghanaian surgeon who has lived in Italy since the early 60’s. Fred Kuwornu holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Mass Media, from the University of Bologna.

Carla Simonini received a BA from Amherst College, an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Rhode Island and a Ph.D. in Italian Studies from Brown University (2006). Her research interests include 20th century and contemporary Italian literature and constructs of italianità in American and Italian American literature, which was the subject of her doctoral dissertation. She has taught at Brown University, the University of Rhode Island, Skidmore College and Youngstown State University. She is currently the founding director and endowed professor of a newly inaugurated interdisciplinary program at Loyola University Chicago serving as the Paul and Ann Rubino Associate Professor of Italian American Studies.

This workshop on print and digital publishing focuses on practical considerations and real possibilities for graduate students in Italian Studies. Topics include identifying publishing opportunities; working with editors; navigating peer review and the revision process; copyright guidance; selecting programs, tools, and platforms; and other issues. A list of readings and resources will circulate in advance of the workshop. An art historian educated at Bryn Mawr College, Levy has published widely on early modern Italy and serves as founding General Editor of the Amsterdam University Press book series Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700. She was previously founding General Editor of the Routledge series Visual Culture in Early Modernity. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Getty Research Institute, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the College Art Association Committee on Research and Scholarship.

Join us for a discussion of  “Politics and Poetics of Memorializing the Lampedusa Sinking: Left-Wing Melancholy, Right-Wing Resurgence and Eritrean Refugees” by Fiori Berhane, PhD candidate in Anthropology, Brown University.

Contact mona_delgado@brown for a pre-circulated paper and zoom link.

Chiasmi 2020 seeks to explore the entanglement between medicine and
the humanities evident throughout Italian history and literature. What
role has artistic production played in the development of medical
knowledge, and what insights can the humanistic sciences offer into
society’s experience with sickness, health, and the relationship
between patients and their doctors? They are questions all the more
pressing in the midst of this year’s global health emergency. In addition to four panels, the conference will feature keynote addresses by Prof. Lucia Dacome of the University of Toronto (October 23) and Prof. Anne Hudson Jones of the University of Texas (October 30). To better facilitate discussion, panelist papers
will be pre-circulated this year, so interested attendees should write
to chiasmi@brown.edu to request a reading packet.

Chiasmi 2020 seeks to explore the entanglement between medicine and
the humanities evident throughout Italian history and literature. What
role has artistic production played in the development of medical
knowledge, and what insights can the humanistic sciences offer into
society’s experience with sickness, health, and the relationship
between patients and their doctors? They are questions all the more
pressing in the midst of this year’s global health emergency. In addition to four panels, the conference will feature keynote addresses by Prof. Lucia Dacome of the University of Toronto (October 23) and Prof. Anne Hudson Jones of the University of Texas (October 30). To better facilitate discussion, panelist papers
will be pre-circulated this year, so interested attendees should write
to chiasmi@brown.edu to request a reading packet.

Join via Zoom for a discussion October 9: Serenella Iovino, Professor of Italian Studies & Environmental Humanities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “AlterLife: Italo Calvino and the Biosphere of the Anthropocene.”

Alessandro Moghrabi,  PhD candidate in Comparative Literature. Presdentation and discussion of his pre-curculated paper “The Gift That Keeps on Giving: gift, narration, and repetition among Derrida, Calvino, and Kierkegaard.”

Contact mona_delgado@brown.edu for paper 

Abstract: This paper builds upon Jacques Derrida’s theory of the pure gift in Given Time, and proposes a comparative analysis of Derrida’s gift, Calvino’s novel If on a winter’s night a traveler, and Kierkegaard’s Repetition in order to develop a theory of reading that allows for a pure Derridian gift to be possible in narration. ​

“AlterLife: Italo Calvino and the Biosphere of the Anthropocene.”

Prof. Serenella Iovino, Professor of Italian Studies & Environmental Humanities, University of North Carolina

Abstract : This presentation explores the Anthropocene biosphere with the help of a classic of Italian literature: Italo Calvino. Through Calvino’s stories of cats, ants, chickens, rabbits, and other nonhuman creatures, a challenging new figure emerges from the mirror: that of an anthropos without a capital “A,” with its fragile balances, its challenges and inequalities, a companion species on a difficult path of coevolution.

Alessandro Moghrabi, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature

“The Gift That Keeps on Giving: gift, narration, and repetition among Derrida, Calvino, and Kierkegaard.”

Abstract: This paper builds upon Jacques Derrida’s theory of the pure gift in Given Time, and proposes a comparative analysis of Derrida’s gift, Calvino’s novel If on a winter’s night a traveler, and Kierkegaard’s Repetitionin order to develop a theory of reading that allows for a pure Derridian gift to be possible in narration.

Sergio Luzzatto, Emiliana Pasca Noether Chair in Modern Italian History, University of Connecticut at Storrs

“The Red Brigades in 1970s Italy: a personal interpretation.”

Abstract : A close reading of the Red Brigades social implantation, political discourse, and militant activity points to a historical rationale, where the terrorist option figures as a pretty logical choice for a small group of social and political outcasts: young second-generation immigrants from the Italian South to the North who never fully adapted to the way of life in the Industrial Triangle. This presentation has also a personal dimension since it focuses on a single terrorist – Sicilian-born Riccardo Dura (1950-1980) – as the embodiment of a collective destiny, and the city of Genoa where the presenter came of age.

Anne Dunlop, Herald Chair of Fine Arts, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne

“The Mongols between Medieval Italy and Modern Seoul.”

Abstract : This presentation comes out of a current research project on artistic links between Mongol Eurasia and late-medieval Italy (c. 1240-1340), and a survey article on the topic written for a Korean audience. Marco Polo is only one case of a much larger and renewed Eurasian circulation of objects, peoples, and ideas in the Mongol period, but researching this history raises important issues of definition, source, and method, beginning with how we define and discuss artistic or cultural translation. Writing for an East Asian audience brought further challenges of language and disciplinary boundaries.

Andrea Sartori, PhD Candidate in Italian Studies,“Darwin’s Traces: The Struggle for Life in a Literary Perspective.”

Abstract: This paper analyzes the multiple meanings and the textual origin of the metaphor “struggle for life” in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species(1859). The paper argues that, in Darwin’s work, nature and factuality are neither the ultimate grounds of evolutionary epistemology, nor the unquestionable basis of Darwin’s understanding of man and society. This circumstance allows the reader of On the Origin of Speciesto be involved in a narrative experience on the one hand, and to be aware of the ideological (mis)interpretations of Darwin’s image of nature on the other.

“Have Fairy Tales Always Been Posthuman? Italian Fairy Tales, From Metamorphosis to Cybernetics.” Pablo a Marca (Doctoral student in Italian Studies, Brown University).

Abstract: In fairy tales, metamorphosis is a common trope that can entail the transformation of humans into animals and vice-versa, thus questioning the ontological categorization of the two. In recent times, posthumanism has started to reflect on this differentiation, showing how the boundaries between humans and animals are blurred, therefore advancing a type of thinking that can be described as post-anthropocentric. This paper compares metamorphosis with cybernetics in Italo Calvino’s “Body-without-Soul,” and argues that magic in this fairy tale can be seen as a way of already imagining a post-anthropocentric world.

“From Words to Covers: Metamorphoses of Italian Fiction in America (1945-1965).” Giulia Pellizzato (Visiting Scholar in Italian Studies, Brown University).

Abstract: The years following World War Two saw an unprecedented growth in translations from Italian into English, half of which were published in America. Some books met resounding success, and even came to epitomize Italy, as the case of The little world of Don Camillo shows. While venturing into their new cultural context, literary works went through different sorts of alteration, involving the text, its exterior appearance, and its meaning. This presentation will focus on the interaction between these three levels, in relation to the coeval horizon of expectations of the general public in the United States.

“Dante and the Cinema.”

Massimo Ciavolella, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, Director of the Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA.

Abstract: Dante’s fortune in cinematic adaptations goes back to the early years of the “sixth art” (later to become the seventh) as Ricciotto Canudo baptized the cinema, in 1911, the same year in which the blockbuster adaptation of Inferno was released. Ciavolella will provide an excursus on this long history, focusing in particular on the 1908 and 1909-10 Francesca da Rimini, Inferno (1911), The Drums of Love by D.W. Griffith (1928), and a recent darkly satirical animated retelling of the Inferno for hand-drawn paper puppets and miniature sets by Birk-Mulroney (2007).

Abstract: The analysis of the documents in the Archive of Giovanni Battista Giorgini (Forte dei Marmi, 1898 - Florence, 1971) offers unprecedented research opportunities related to the development of artistic craftsmanship and the importance of trade in international relations during the twentieth century. The scion of an ancient and aristocratic family from Lucca, Giorgini was the first to perceive the economic value of Italian craftsmanship on the international market, especially in the US. Between 1944 and 1946, he managed a Gift Shop for the Allied troops in the centre of Florence. In 1947 the Museum of Modern Art in Chicago hosted an exhibition he curated. Entitled Italy at work, it showcased the best of Italian craftsmanship (glass, ceramics, textiles, leather). On February 12th, 1951, Giorgini organized in Florence the First Italian High Fashion Show for American buyers. The second edition of the show, in July 1951, marked the decisive consecration of Italian fashion in the US.

“Italian Innovators: The Adventure of Academic Podcasting.” Luca Cottini, Associate Professor of Italian Studies, Villanova University.

Abstract: Italian Innovators is an academic podcast, presenting figures of great modern Italians in the fields of music, design, fashion, education, and technology. The podcast, based on Dr. Cottini’s volume The Art of Objects (UTP 2018), aims at elaborating a new sort of academic discourse, open to a more general audience, and aimed at connecting the spheres of industry and culture. The talk will present some of the contents of the show and will examine the advantages and challenges of converting an academic book into a podcast format.

Please come to the discussion of a paper by Daniel Rietze, PhD Candidate, Italian Studies, Brown University: “Typing Her Way up to God: Amelia Della Pergola’s Literary-Religious Conversion”. PDF of paper is available upon request to mona_delgado@brown.edu

Niall Atkinson, Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago researches the soundscapes of Renaissance Florence and the role of the acoustic environment in the meaning of built space and the construction of social communities. Atkinson’s talk is part of The Sensory series, which brings scholars to Brown to discuss how art and architecture play with the full range of our senses.

Please come to the discussion of a paper by Morris Karp, PhD Candidate, Italian Studies, Brown University: “Leopardi and the Renaissance”. PDF is available upon request to mona_delgado@brown.edu

Please join us for the discussion of a paper by Emilio Sala, Associate Professor of Musicology and the History of Music, University of Milano, Italy: “Fellini, Rota, La Dolce Vita, and the Deja-Entendu Effect”.  A PDF of the paper is available upon request to mona_delgado@brown.edu

Please join us for the discussion of a paper by Emanuela Patti, Senior research Fellow, Royal Holloway University, London: “Opera aperta. Italian Arts and the Digital”. PDF is of paper is available upon request: mona_delgado@brown.edu

Please come to a lunchtime talk by Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, Director, Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University: “Grounds for Reclamation”.

In this presentation, we will hear introductory remarks about Digital Humanities with specific examples about DH as practiced at Brown. No previous experience necessary!  Please come and engage with Allison Levy, Digital Scholarship Editor at Brown, and Professor Massimo Riva of Italian Studies to learn about Digital Humanities.

Please mark your calendars and plan on joining us for the final Center for Language Studies’ professional development workshop of fall 2018:  “Digital Humanities + Brown Digital Publications Initiative”. 

In this hands-on workshop we will collectively engage in practical activities and explore on our feet how the theater arts can foster community building and personal connections within our classrooms. Facilitators will then present some documentation on their experience with arts integration and encourage participants  to share ideas and think about possible applications within their own teaching contexts. 

Presenters:

Patricia Sobral, Distinguished Senior Lecturer, Portuguese and Brazilian Studies

Anna Santucci, PhD, Italian Studies and MA, Theater Arts & Performance Studies

Please join us for pizza and five important and amazing short films.

Learn about rules, guidelines and caveats relating to copyright from Karen Bouchard, Scholarly Resources Librarian and Sarah Evelyn, Head Instructional Design, Research and Outreach Services. First in a series of library workshops relating to the teaching and learning of languages.

Following a brief overview of the basics of copyright, exclusive rights, and fair use, we’ll look at what’s in the public domain, and what materials are available via Creative Commons licenses. We’ll also review a list of questions you can ask yourself about the use of a copyrighted work and how to answer them. Part of the session will cover issues related specifically to image use and copyright.

Presentation by
Karen Bouchard
, Scholarly Resources Librarian

Sarah Evelyn
m Head, Instructional Design 
Research and Outreach Services

Sponsored by Brown’s Center for Language Studies