Conference 2021 Session Proposals - Canadian Association ...

Conference 2021
                               Session Proposals

Contents
  •   Dreams and Visions in the Tre Corone
  •   Doctoral Dissertations in Progress
  •   Linguistica e letteratura
  •   Food Studies all’italiana
  •   La narrazione del Covid-19 in Italia: aspetti linguistici e semiotici
  •   I nuovi muri dell’odio: tra Social Network e panorami semiotici urbani
  •   Ecocritical Approaches to Italian Science Fiction
  •   I racconti del mare. Rappresentazioni del Mediterraneo in Italia dall’800 a oggi
  •   Didattica dell’italiano online: stato dell’arte, prospettive e criticità
  •   Il racconto della malattia e la malattia come racconto nella Letteratura italiana moderna
      e contemporanea
  •   Spazi urbani e zone rurali nella narrativa italiana dal Novecento a oggi
  •   ICAP: 10 years of Italian-Canadian Archival Projects
  •   The weird and the urban: Italian street art between interstices and ecocriticism
  •   Small Revolutions: Race, Italian Media, and the Question of National Belonging
  •   A Literary Society of Women in the Pre-Modern Times?
  •   «La Morte! La Morte!» Mapping Italian Death Cultures from the Late Eighteenth
      Century to the Present
  •   “Effetto Rinascimento”: Images of the Renaissance in Contemporary Culture and
      Society
  •   Religion and Ideas in Southern Italy: the Thin Line Between Erudition and Heresy.
      16th-18th Century
  •   Cultura solidaristica e premesse antirazziste nella Napoli della Nuova Italia
  •   Ferrante Unframed II
  •   Life in Renaissance Venice
  •   Lo studio critico-letterario della canzone: analisi, tradizioni, prospettive
  •   Literary Readings and Performances by Queer Italian-Canadians
  •   Contemporary Writing and Other Works by Queer Italian-Canadians
  •   Italian Women, 1880-1950
  •   Food Justice: Ecocritical Approaches to Social Justice and Food
  •   Unveiling Art Through Words: Interartistic Encounters in Italian Literature
  •   La communauté italienne de Montréal entre tensions et affirmation de son identité
  •   Convergenze plurilingui. Incroci e convivenze linguistiche in testi manoscritti tra
      Medioevo e inizi Cinquecento.
  •   Fruttero and Lucentini’s La Donna della Domenica at Fifty
  •   The Uncharted Territory: Environmental Issues in Italian literature in the 2020’s

Dreams and Visions in the Tre Corone
Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė

From Dante’s purgatorial dreams to Petrarch’s sonnets, the language of dreams and visions permeates the
writings of the Tre Corone, where it amounts to the vocabulary of the liminal. In Petrarch’s ‘Dream of Scipio
the Elder’, Petrarch experiences visions that identify him as a successor of Homer and Ennius, and in
Boccaccio’s De casibus VIII.1, Petrarch appears to Boccaccio in a dream, reviving his desire for immortal
fame. As Boccaccio appropriates and re-interprets Dante’s dream vocabulary in the Trattatello in laude di
Dante, he is inscribing himself in a genealogy of inspired dreamers, divided from Dante by space and time,
but partaking in interconnected (literary) dreams.

This session will analyse how the Tre Corone engage with the vocabulary of dreams and visions, and how
early Italian literary dreams meditate upon the perpetuation of literary memory and the formation of the
Italian literary canon.

Potential paper topics include but are not limited to:

    •   The relationship between dreams and visions in the writings of the Tre Corone;
    •   Literary dreams and the imitation of classical authors;
    •   Dante’s, Boccaccio’s, Petrarch’s literary dreams and visions and their relationship to the broader
        medical, astrological, religious, and philosophical discourses;
    •   The intersection of models and genres in dreams and visions;
    •   The role of the body and the senses in dreams and visions;
    •   The reception of Dante’s, Boccaccio’s, and Petrarch’s dreams and visions in the commentary
        tradition, visual arts, cinema, and literature.

Papers that explore the interconnections between the depiction of dreams and visions in two or more
members of the Tre Corone are particularly welcome.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1, 2021

ORGANIZER
Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė
University of Cambridge
ak914@cam.ac.uk

Doctoral Dissertations in Progress
Andrea Penso

In this session we welcome papers from PhD candidates who wants to present their research topics, or
show the first results of their doctoral work. The goal is to provide a platform for early career researchers to
showcase their research and discuss their strategies in a collegial atmosphere, in order to receive feedback
and advice within the frame of an international conference. Submissions could include any topic related to
Italian studies, such as the following:

    •   Italian Literature from the origins to the 21st century;
    •   Italian History;

•   Comparative literature with an Italian component;
    •   Italian linguistics;
    •   Italian Language and Second Language acquisition;
    •   Pedagogy and Italian studies;
    •   Gender Studies and Italian;
    •   Italian Theatre;
    •   Italian Journalism and history of the Press;
    •   Italian Studies and Digital Humanities.

Data di chiusura per la ricezione delle proposte: 28 Febbraio 2021.

ORGANIZER:
Andrea Penso
VUB – Vrije Universiteit Brussel
andrea.penso@vub.be

Linguistica e letteratura
Andrea Penso

Una delle componenti fondamentali della letteratura è, certamente, l’uso artistico del linguaggio. La
“linguistica letteraria”, lo studio cioè della letteratura da un punto di vista linguistico, sovrapponibile al ricco
filone della critica stilistica, è un campo di studi dal potenziale illimitato. Il panel, che prende le mosse dai
fondamentali lavori di, tra gli altri, Fabb, Banti, Giattanasio e Culler, ambisce a investigare i molteplici
scambi e le intersezioni che occorrono tra la linguistica e la letteratura nel dominio dell’Italianistica,
oltrepassando i confini della stilistica stricto sensu. I potenziali argomenti delle comunicazioni possono
includere, ma non sono assolutamente limitati a:

    •   Sociolinguistica e letteratura
    •   Pragmatica, semantica e linguistica testuale
    •   Le lingue speciali e la letteratura
    •   Studio delle varietà dell’Italiano impiegate in testi letterari, e loro funzione
    •   Linguistica storica: la formazione e l’evoluzione del lessico letterario
    •   L’italiano letterario in prospettiva diacronica
    •   Italiano 2.0: l’irruzione del linguaggio di internet e di forestierismi nell’italiano letterario
    •   Lingua della poesia e lingua della narrazione nel 21esimo secolo
    •   Metodologie digitali di analisi linguistiche del testo

Le comunicazioni dovranno essere calibrate su una lunghezza di 15-20 minuti, e possono essere effettuate
in Italiano, Francese o Inglese. Chiunque fosse interessato a inoltrare una proposta di comunicazione può
farlo inoltrando un riassunto di circa 150 parole, corredato da un breve profilo biografico, ad Andrea Penso,
al seguente indirizzo di posta elettronica: andrea.penso@vub.be

Data di chiusura per la ricezione delle proposte: 28 Febbraio 2021.

ORGANIZER
Andrea Penso

VUB – Vrije Universiteit Brussel
andrea.penso@vub.be

Food Studies all’italiana
Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano

In this interdisciplinary session we welcome papers on topics related to Italian food studies in a broad
sense. Submissions could include, but are not limited to, the following: Italian food and cultural studies,
culinary linguistics, food and literature, cinema, travel; recipes and cookbooks in historical contexts and in
modern day; comparative studies in world gastronomy; Italian food and social media; regional gastronomy
in Italy. Please send all submissions (name, affiliation, title of paper, abstract of no more than 150 words) to
roberta@ryerson.ca.

ORGANIZER
Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano, PhD (she/her pronouns)
Ryerson University
roberta@ryerson.ca

La narrazione del Covid-19 in Italia: aspetti linguistici e semiotici
Massimo Vedovelli

La pandemia da virus SARS-CoV-2 (anche detto Covid-19) ha assunto una portata storica che rimarrà
nella memoria collettiva della nostra epoca. Al di là dell’impatto sanitario, è stato un fenomeno totalizzante
sia in senso geografico sia perché ha investito radicalmente la vita degli individui e delle collettività.

Fin dalla sua fase iniziale, in un continuo crescendo, l’evento pandemico ha di fatto monopolizzato anche il
discorso pubblico di tutti Paesi coinvolti. Una dinamica comunicativa totalizzante, in cui hanno assunto una
posizione di spicco proprio i mass media – giornali, TV, siti di informazione – che sono stati un’importante
tribuna per i vari soggetti coinvolti nella dialettica pubblica sul Covid-19: politici, istituzioni, medici e
scienziati. Proprio sulle pagine dei giornali, nei servizi televisivi e nei siti web l’evento pandemico è stato
costruito in forme variabili sia dal punto di vista sincronico che da quello diacronico.

In questa sessione ci si vuole soffermare proprio sullo spazio massmediatico italiano e sulle dinamiche
linguistiche e semiotiche che hanno caratterizzato la narrazione di un evento di portata epocale, la
pandemia da Covid-19.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 1 marzo 2021

ORGANIZER
Massimo Vedovelli
Università per Stranieri di Siena
vedovelli@unistrasi.it

I nuovi muri dell’odio: tra Social Network e panorami semiotici urbani
Massimo Vedovelli

Negli ultimi anni abbiamo assistito a un’involuzione del dibattito pubblico e al all’emergere sempre più
consistente di discorsi dell’odio, discorsi razzisti e discorsi denigratori. Un vero e proprio fenomeno sociale
che sta assumendo i contorni di un’emergenza: nel 2015 il rapporto della “Commissione Europea contro il
razzismo e l’intolleranza (ECRI)”, un organismo del consiglio d’Europa, sottolineava come l’aumento dei
discorsi d’odio online fosse una delle tendenze più preoccupanti di quell’anno. E proprio lo spazio online, di
fatto, è centrale nella dinamica di produzione e diffusione degli attuali discorsi dell’odio che sembrano
innescarsi e diventare egemonici sui Social Network, per poi trasmettersi su altri canali di comunicazione e
arrivare fino ai “muri architettonici”, dove acquisiscono caratteristiche narrative e linguistiche specifiche.
Quali sono le caratteristiche linguistiche e più in generale semiotiche degli attuali discorsi dell’Odio? E’
possibile costruire delle risposte pedagogiche?

La sessione intende mettere in evidenza le dinamiche linguistiche e semiotiche che caratterizzano gli
attuali discorsi dell’odio in Italia e in Nord America, analizzando anche eventuali risposte pedagogiche.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 1 marzo 2021

ORGANIZER
Massimo Vedovelli
Università per Stranieri di Siena
vedovelli@unistrasi.it

Ecocritical Approaches to Italian Science Fiction
Marco Malvestio

Since its inception, Italian science fiction has addressed the most significant environmental problems of
Italian history, connected to the modernization and industrialization of the country. Science fiction creates
scenarios in which the human species, in the face of ecological catastrophe, must confront non-humans
and environmental situations in radically different ways than those prescribed by evolutionary history, and
in so doing calls into question the paradigms that have long guided our interactions with the non-human
other. Such a poetics attests to the crisis of anthropocentrism and suggests the need for alternative
ontological categories.

Potential paper topics include but are not limited to:

    •   The representation of environmental problems in Italian science fiction (urbanisation,
        industrialisation, pollution…);
    •   Speculative realism as a tool to overcome anthropocentrism;
    •   Ecocritical approaches to Italian authors of science fiction (e.g. Lino Aldani, Gilda Musa, Vittorio
        Catani…);
    •   Ecocritical approaches to science fictional texts by canonical Italian authors (Primo Levi, Paolo
        Volponi, Italo Calvino…);
    •   The representation of environmental issues in Italian science fiction cinema;
    •   The representation of alienness and the problem of anthropocentrism;

• Animals in Italian science fiction;
   • Plants in Italian science fiction;
   • Terraforming in Italian science fiction;
   • Science fiction and climate change in twenty-first century eco-dystopias;
   • The representation of posthuman subjectivities in Italian science fiction texts and films.
Papers focusing on non-canonical authors and/or the content of science fiction magazines (e.g. Galassia,
Robot, Futuro…) are particularly welcome.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st 2021

ORGANIZER
Marco Malvestio
Università degli Studi di Padova / University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
marco.malvestio@unipd.it

I racconti del mare. Rappresentazioni del Mediterraneo in Italia dall’800 a oggi
Andrea G.G. Parasiliti
Alessio Aletta

Il Mar Mediterraneo, il mare che sta fra le terre, o mare bianco di mezzo (dall’etimologia araba), viene
riconosciuto da Carl Schmitt nel celeberrimo Terra e mare quale il mare dell’Odissea. Questa agnizione è
tutto un destino di favole, di mito, di incontri, di avventure e di sciagure. “I Greci”, per citare Maria Grazia
Ciani, “non amano il mare”. Sentimento ereditato dai Siciliani, intenti a “darsi l’illusione quanto il più
possibile completa che il mare non esista”, stando alle parole di Leonardo Sciascia (si pensi almeno al
“Rapporto sulle coste siciliane” in La corda pazza). È un male/mare dell’Italia che ha sempre preferito,
tranne in pochi casi, riversarsi nelle campagne, quasi a dimenticare il proprio essere al centro del
Mediterraneo, cerniera di Europa, Asia e Africa, in bilico, direbbe Bufalino, fra “sofismo greco e magismo
cartaginese”. Questa sessione si propone di indagare l’ambiguità semantica data da questa polarizzazione:
avventura/tragedia, incontro/scontro, Italia/Africa, conquistati/conquistatori al fine di tentare di approfondire
e ricostruire un puzzle semantico di tal fatta.

Sono particolarmente benvenute comunicazioni che, inserendosi nella cornice dei Mediterranean Studies,
affrontino questi possibili ambiti di interesse:

    •   Racconti di ambientazione marinara
    •   La percezione del Mediterraneo nella letteratura italiana
    •   Il mare come identità italiana o come identità mancata
    •   Migrazioni di ieri e di oggi
    •   Mare africano o mare italiano (Pirandello, Marinetti...)
    •   Il mare come opportunità o pericolo (Verga; Buttafuoco...)
    •   Migranti e invasori (Pietro Bartolo, Davide Enia...)
    •   Il mare delle traversate
    •   Il mare nella letteratura siciliana
    •   Il mito di Venezia da salvare (Manganelli, Tiziano Scarpa, Hofmannsthal, Marinetti...)
    •   Letterature coloniale, mare e conquiste (Salgari, Futurismo, letteratura di consumo…)
    •   Mare d’acqua, mare di fuoco

•   Mare e narrazione popolare (Giufà etc…)
    •   Rapporto mare/scrittori (Giuseppe Scaraffia, D’Annunzio, Pirandello...)
    •   Il Mediterraneo nei nuovi media (cinema, fumetto…)

Si accettano comunicazioni in italiano, inglese e francese.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st

ORGANIZERS
Andrea G.G. Parasiliti; Alessio Aletta
University of Toronto
andrea.parasiliti@utoronto.ca; alessio.aletta@mail.utoronto.ca

Didattica dell’italiano online: stato dell’arte, prospettive e criticità
Matteo La Grassa

Sebbene siano passati diversi anni dalla diffusione ad ampio spettro del cosiddetto web 2.0 anche in
contesti educativi, l’insegnamento delle lingue che fa uso più o meno ampio delle tecnologie di rete rimane
per così dire strutturalmente caratterizzato da un cambiamento continuo ponendo alla ricerca scientifica
numerose questioni da indagare sul piano teorico, metodologico e applicativo.

Con specifico riferimento all’italiano L2, negli ultimi anni si è assistito ad una notevole proliferazione e
differenziazione delle esperienze che riguardano la didattica in e-learning. Queste risultano varie per
modalità di erogazione dei corsi (interamente online o blended; per piccoli gruppi o massivi), pubblici di
riferimento, tipologie dei percorsi di apprendimento (corsi completi; lezioni individuali; attività esercitative;
semplice distribuzione di materiali di approfondimento linguistico) livello di formalità/informalità, supporti
tecnologici prevalentemente utilizzati (postazioni fisse; dispositivi mobili), piattaforme di riferimento
(Learning Management System; Learning Content Management System).

Il panel si propone pertanto di essere una occasione di confronto su aspetti relativi alla didattica dell’italiano
in modalità e-learning. In particolare, saranno accolti interventi incentrati sui seguenti aspetti:

    •   Metodologie e modelli operativi per la didattica online;
    •   Ruolo dell’ambiente e-learning nel percorso di apprendimento;
    •   Sviluppo delle abilità e delle competenze in contesti e-learning;
    •   Valutazione delle competenze;
    •   Didattica per grandi numeri di apprendenti;
    •   Didattica integrativa ai contesti d’aula.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 28 febbraio 2021

ORGANIZER
Matteo La Grassa
Università per Stranieri di Siena
lagrassa@unistrasi.it

Il racconto della malattia e la malattia come racconto nella Letteratura italiana moderna e
contemporanea
Paola Villani; Michele Paragliola

“Appare davvero strano che la malattia non figuri insieme all’amore, alle battaglie e alla gelosia tra i temi
principali della letteratura” dichiara Virginia Woolf nel 1926 e, forse, proprio a partire da quel periodo, la
malattia, non solo psichica, ma anche fisica, ha occupato a poco a poco uno spazio privilegiato fra i grandi
temi della letteratura contemporanea. Attraversando tanto le pagine della prosa, quanto quelle della poesia
degli scrittori maiores e minores del secolo passato e presente, la malattia dell’individuo - scrittore e/o
dell’individuo - personaggio assume molteplici significati, divenendo spesso metafora di una malattia
collettiva, che coinvolge l’intero genere umano. Non solo la nevrosi e la follia, ma anche l’epidemia, la
tubercolosi, il tifo, il colera,, l’epilessia si manifestano in corpi destinati ad abitare, per la loro
“degenerazione” (Nordau), un numero sempre più cospicuo di opere. Si tratta di “storie da onorare”,
secondo Charon, che, come strumenti letterari, valicano i confini delle scienze umane, per intersecarsi con
quelle mediche, col fine di “porre al centro della terapia il paziente”, incoraggiandone la relazione con i
medici e i familiari e ottimizzando i tempi della sua guarigione.

Sono particolarmente benvenute le comunicazioni che, oltre a inserirsi nell’ambito del racconto della
malattia e della malattia come racconto, includano riflessioni legate ai seguenti campi di interesse:

    •   La medicina narrativa e narrazione della medicina; il futuro e il presente della Narrative medicine.
    •   La Biblioterapia e le storie che curano nei secoli XX e XXI.
    •   La malattia come metafora: ruolo e incidenza degli stereotipi sociali e culturali nel processo di
        interazione, relazione e cura tra medico e paziente;
    •   Storytelling. Leggere, comprendere e interpretare le storie. Costruzione e architettura delle
        narrazioni della contemporaneità.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 1 Marzo 2021

ORGANIZERS
Paola Villani; Michele Paragliola
Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa
paola.villani@unisob.na.it; micheleparagliola95@libero.it

Spazi urbani e zone rurali nella narrativa italiana dal Novecento a oggi
Sergio Di Benedetto; Luca Gallarini

Il processo di industrializzazione e urbanizzazione nel XX secolo ha prodotto in Italia una costante tensione
tra grandi città e piccoli centri, zone urbane e spazi rurali, divenuti simboli semplificati di modi di vita, di
valori, di culture, in sostanza di Weltanschauung differenti e non sempre compatibili. Fin dalla polemica tra
“Stracittà” e “Strapaese”, questa tensione ha percorso la narrativa italiana del Novecento, chiamata a
rappresentare i processi di modernizzazione e la perdita del secolare ethos contadino, mentre le
esperienze più recenti propongono sintesi più o meno originali tra i ripiegamenti nel "mondo piccolo", le
ibridazioni "glocal" e le utopie sovranazionali.

La dialettica tra mondo urbano e mondo rurale attraversa autori differenti per poetiche, cronologie e
geografie differenti: scopo della sessione è indagare le varie declinazioni che essa ha assunto nella
narrativa italiana del Novecento e oltre, sia soffermandosi su autori o movimenti emblematici, sia su opere
che esprimano in modo problematico tale rapporto tra universo cittadino e universo rurale, quest’ultimo
inteso in un’accezione ampia, stante la particolarità geografica dell’Italia (territori di pianura, collina e
montagna).

Chiunque sia interessato a partecipare può inviare un abstract (max 250 parole) e una breve nota bio-
bibliografica entro e non oltre il 1 marzo 2021 a Sergio Di Benedetto (sergio.dibe83@gmail.com) o Luca
Gallarini (luca.gallarini@unimi.it).

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 1 marzo 2021

ORGANIZERS
Sergio Di Benedetto; Luca Gallarini
Università della Svizzera Italiana; Università degli Studi di Milano
sergio.dibe83@gmail.com; luca.gallarini@unimi.it

ICAP: 10 years of Italian-Canadian Archival Projects
Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano

This panel will host various scholars and community members in Canada and internationally to speak
about the interesting and impactful work of ICAP: The Italian-Canadian Archives Project.

Please send a message by March 1, 2021 to Professor Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano
(roberta@ryerson.ca), the panel organizer on behalf of ICAP, should you be interested in participating.
Colleagues will present briefly for 10 minutes each and then have a discussion around ICAP and its
projects.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 1 marzo 2021

ORGANIZER
Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano, PhD (she/her pronouns)
Ryerson University
roberta@ryerson.ca

The weird and the urban: Italian street art between interstices and ecocriticism
Vittorio Parisi

The history of Italian street art appears to be ingrained in a specific urban landscape, filled with both
historical and post-industrial interstitial architectures: empty lots, infrastructures, abandoned and unfinished
buildings across the country have been since the late 1990s the privileged stage of a new generation of
creators developing new, spontaneous and mostly illegal forms of muralism and urban painting.

This panel aims thereby to revisit the history of Italian street art from its origins to nowadays by focusing on
and questioning two peculiar aspects:

    1. The (aesthetic, socio-anthropological, critical…) interaction between street artworks and their
       diverse architectural and environmental settings, particularly the abandoned and the unfinished:
       what role did such landscape play in the development of street art in Italy?
    2. The ecocritical, non-human and post-human representations in Italian street art, an aspect that is
       particularly present in the works of first-generation street artists such as 108, Andreco, Blu, Dem,
       Ericailcane, Microbo, among others. An imagery imbued by horrific, dystopian and Anthropocenic
       representations, mostly driven by a marked ecocritical and antispecieist sensibility, and possibly
       fitting the concept of the weird as elaborated by British theorist Mark Fisher. Can such an imagery
       respond to a specific “Italian weird canon”?

Papers no more than 15 minutes long from a wide range of academic domains (art history, aesthetics,
critical theory, literature, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, ethnology, urban studies,
architecture and design, geography, environmental studies…) and from non-academic contributors (artists,
independent researchers…) are both welcome.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st 2021

ORGANIZER
Vittorio Parisi
Université Côte d’Azur, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
vittorio.parisi@villa-arson.org; vittorio.parisi@univ-paris1.fr

Small Revolutions: Race, Italian Media, and the Question of National Belonging
Jessica Harris

The issue of race relations in Italy is now part of the national mainstream discourse due to ongoing debates
surrounding non-Western European immigration, anti-Black racism, and of recent, the emergence of
#BlackLivesMatter Italy. These dialogues continue to raise questions regarding the visibility and depiction
of African descent people in Italian media. While Italian colonialism indelibly led to racist depictions of
African descent people in the nation’s cultural imaginary, recent scholarship demonstrates the influence of
the African diasporic presence on Italian popular culture (Brioni and Brioni, 2018). Within the last two
decades, at least in the field of fictional television productions, African-Italians have been represented as
part and parcel of the national community. As such, the panel seeks to address and interrogate the ways in
which Black people have represented themselves and are represented in Italian media in the 20th and 21st
centuries. How does Italy’s “colonial unconscious” (Ponzanesi, 2005) still inform representations of African-
Italians in Italian media? Further, while Italy has initiated a non-discriminatory constitutional policy
(Deplano, 2018), how can what Igiaba Scego describes as the “small revolution” (Scego, 2015),
acknowledge the decades-long contributions of African-Italians to the Italian media, as well as re-present
the nation itself? Please send a brief abstract and bio to Jessica L. Harris at harrisj2@stjohns.edu.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1, 2021

ORGANIZER

Jessica Harris
St. John’s University
harrisj2@stjohns.edu

A Literary Society of Women in the Pre-Modern Times?
Giulia Cardillo; Eleonora Buonocore

This panel prompts a discussion about how women writers established their legitimacy as intellectuals in
the context of Medieval and Early Modern Italian literature. Our panel seeks to explore various networks of
women writers, who are using each other to find their own voices, and thus give birth to a broader
community of non-canonical authors, connected by various degrees of affinity. We specifically look for
contributions on how women writers had an impact on other men and women of letters, and how their
words reverberated across literatures, going beyond the limits of time and space. The aim of this session is
to uncover new literary relationships that highlight the role of women in the shaping of Italian literature
within the larger European tradition.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st, 2021

ORGANIZERS
Giulia Cardillo; Eleonora Buonocore
James Madison University; University of Calgary
cardilgx@jmu.edu; eleonora.buonocore@ucalgary.ca

«La Morte! La Morte!» Mapping Italian Death Cultures from the Late Eighteenth Century to the
Present
Simona Di Martino; Mattia Petricola

The global cultural transformations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic are drastically reshaping the
construction of death, dying and disposal in the North Atlantic world. A systematic, interdisciplinary
exploration of the modern thanatological imagination is thus urgently in order in every field of the
humanities. This panel aims to provide an opportunity for such an investigation from the perspective of
Italian studies. What are the features that characterise the Italian thanatological imagination? How can we
trace its diachronic evolution? And what role did (and do) literature, arts and the media play in shaping it?
In other words: how can we map the Italian cultures of death, grief, and memory?

The relation between death and literary and artistic creations has inspired some of the most relevant
products of Italian culture since the Middle Ages—suffice to think of the Tre corone, or mementos such as
the popular theme of the Dance macabre. However, the emergence of a modern thanatological imagination
in Italy can be traced back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These decades are indeed
dense of artistic, sociological, and political changes. A minor stream of authors finds its way on the market
with melancholic and sepulchral poems, while a fashion for nocturnal atmospheres flourished in prosaic
works such as Le notti romane by Alessandro Verri and Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, a novel that Ugo
Foscolo quilted with premonitions of death, graveyards, and stormy, sublime nights. Concurrently, the
Napoleonic Edict of St Cloud imposed to bury the dead outside cities, triggering a lively debate on burial
sites and public health—a pioneer work was Scipione Piattioli’s Saggio intorno al luogo di seppellire. From

that moment on, monumental cemeteries were created in response to changes in Italian politics—such as
the fight for independence and the establishment of a nation state. Hygienic matters around burials ignited
the creativity of novelists: cases of premature burials became the twist in the plots of popular feuilleton, as
demonstrated by the great success of Carolina Invernizio’s eerie stories. Finally, the interest in
psychological turns, scientific experiments and anatomical dissections lead to works by the Scapigliati,
contemporary sci-fi, fantasy and murders’ stories.

These premises invite us to look at the Italian thanatological imagination from multiple interdisciplinary
perspectives, highlighting how fictions and media actively contributed to the elaboration of a number of its
essential traits while exploring (non-)fictional characters and histories that still remain in the shadows.

Themes for paper proposals include (but are not limited to):

    •   Italian death cultures and the medical humanities
    •   Italy and the Gothic
    •   Cemeteries, monuments, cenotaphs, and their representation across media
    •   Mediums, séances, mesmerists
    •   The elegy, the componimento in morte, the necrologio
    •   Italian sepulchral literature
    •   Thanatological crossings between fiction, anthropology, and ethnography: ritual weeping, funeral
        rites and dirges
    •   Suicide
    •   Heroic deaths and war memorials
    •   The representation of partigiani
    •   Journeys through the afterlife, from A. Varano’s Visioni sacre e morali to F. Fellini’s Il Viaggio di G.
        Mastorna through D. Buzzati’s Viaggio agli inferi del secolo
    •   The reception of Danze macabre and Trionfi della Morte across media
    •   Pestilences, epidemics, and catastrophes
    •   Death in Italian crime fiction
    •   Death and the supernatural in Italian fiction
    •   Death, esotericism, and the occult
    •   The undead in Italian literature and media
    •   Folk horror
    •   Death in Italian speculative fiction

If you are interested in contributing with a paper (in English or Italian) please send a short abstract (250
words) and a bio (150 words) to S.Di-Martino@warwick.ac.uk and mattia.petricola@univaq.it by 1st March.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1, 2021

ORGANIZERS
Simona Di Martino; Mattia Petricola
University of Warwick, UK; University of L'Aquila, Italy
S.Di-Martino@warwick.ac.uk; mattia.petricola@univaq.it

“Effetto Rinascimento”: Images of the Renaissance in Contemporary Culture and Society
Irene Lottini

The expression “effetto Rinascimento” (“Renaissance effect”) has been coined to recall the idea of a
continuity between the Renaissance artistic tradition and the craftsmanship of Italy’s 21st-century fashion
houses. This strategic reappropriation and “manipulation” of history to promote the “made in Italy” testifies
to the prominent position that the Renaissance occupies in the collective imagination. Indeed, the myth of
the Renaissance as the golden age of Italian civilization, which has been celebrated since the 19th century,
has influenced artistic productions and marketing strategies in the 20th and 21st centuries. This panel aims
to investigate the interpretations and representations of the Renaissance in contemporary culture and
society.

Topics include but are not limited to:
   • contemporary readings of the Renaissance;
   • echoes and representations of the Renaissance in contemporary literary, visual, and performing
        arts;
   • images of the Renaissance in popular culture;
   • the myth of the Renaissance in economic and marketing initiatives.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1, 2021

ORGANIZER
Irene Lottini
The University of Iowa
irene-lottini@uiowa.edu

Religion and Ideas in Southern Italy: the Thin Line Between Erudition and Heresy. 16th-18th
Century
Milena Sabato; Isabel Harvey

How it could be possible today to rethink the religious history and historiography of Southern Italy? On the
one hand, writing an history of Southern Italy means giving a great attention to the distinctive features of
the territory, and illustrating its particular forms of religion and worship, its experiences of spiritual life and
its aspects of doctrinal reflection, its artistic production, its iconography, as well as the popular religiosity.
On the other hand, however, the history of Southern Italy needs also to be projected into a broader context:
the Italian peninsula, but also Europe and the World. An undertaken of contextualization that is necessarily
hard to reconcile with the founding concept of southern “specificity.” This panel will address this paradoxical
duality of Southern Italy historiography through the lens of a specific topic, the relation between religion and
ideas either inside the institutional Church as in the secular world.

Possible topics include:
   • Historiography and new trends in religious history of Southern Italy
   • Disputes between secular and Church authorities
   • Boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable writings
   • Religion and ideas in parishes/role of lower clergy
   • Intellectual life in religious orders (male and female)

•   Cultural environments in southern cities
    •   Circulation of ideas
    •   Circulation of books and writings
    •   Roles of women in the diffusion of ideas/writings
    •   Dialogue and exchanges between religions: Hebraism and Islam

We are particularly interested in papers addressing issues of historiography, in papers that analyze an
unedited, newly founded, or little-known source, or in papers that present a social network analysis. This
call for papers is a second step in a research journey we started at the 2019 Orvieto CAIS conference,
where we presented a successful trio of panels about the issues around religion and ideas in Southern
Italy. With this second edition, we aim to publish the proceedings of these panels in the form of an edited
collection. To geographically equilibrate the essay collection we strongly encourage papers offering a sigh
over the whole territory of Southern Italy, or analyzing cases from the actual Molise, Basilicata and
Calabria.

Papers should be 15-20 minutes.

Please email your abstract (max 300 words) and a short CV (max 1 page) in English, French, or Italian to
Isabel Harvey (isabel.harvey@hu-berlin.de) and Milena Sabato (sabato.milena@libero.it) by the deadline of
March 1, 2021.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st 2021

ORGANIZERS
Milena Sabato; Isabel Harvey
University of Salento; Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
sabato.milena@libero.it; isabel.harvey@hu-berlin.de

Cultura solidaristica e premesse antirazziste nella Napoli della Nuova Italia
Saverio Carillo

«Chi crede che nella vita cristianamente civile tutto debba essere antico, non erra meno di chi crede che in
essa tutto debba esser nuovo»1. Con queste parole Alfonso Capecelatro, sacerdote napoletano, storico e
interprete del Secondo Ottocento, sintetizzava la complessa valenza che assumevano le dialettiche istanze
di italianità della neonata nazione con i ‘contenuti’ culturali della tradizione che andavano a legittimare
proprio l’idea stessa di italianità. Capecelatro, infatti, nello stendere la Vita di un cospicuo riformatore del
contesto civico della Nuova Italia, propugnava i caratteri di una socialità christianamente orientata.
Singolare, al riguardo, resta la figura del frate francescano Ludovico da Casoria, dedito a replicare in sé
l’ideale ascetico del Poverello di Assisi, intento a creare opere di sollievo alla condizione di minorità in tutta
Italia. Questi era stato tra i primi che, già nella Napoli borbonica, aveva evidenziato la piaga sociale
dell’infanzia abbandonata, così come ad Assisi aveva fondato l’Istituto Serafico per i bambini sordo-ciechi.
Ulteriore impegno profuse nell’intento del riscatto degli schiavi africani, comprati nei mercati del
Mediterraneo, per farne sacerdoti onde convertire l’Africa alla Buona Novella Cristiana.

La stessa Africa restava quale implicito modello del luogo di schiavitù contro la quale si era adoperato,
dandosi schiavo volontario, Paolino di Nola, modello di ideale cristiano del V secolo che, in quegli anni,

nella Pompei che, grazie a Giuseppe Fiorelli, restituiva i corpi degli antichi abitanti, diventava santo patrono
dell’archeologia cristiana con una cappella a lui dedicata nel perimetro della città archeologica. La stessa
Festa dei Gigli, celebrata a Nola per ringraziare il Santo Vescovo che aveva operato la liberazione dalla
condizione di schiavitù dei suoi confratelli di fede, registrava tra le macchine lignee trasportate a spalla –
riconosciute nel 2013 dall’UNESCO quale patrimonio immateriale dell’umanità- la ‘barca’, macchina
simbolo del Santo Patrono, guidata da un timoniere di colore.

Il modello culturale promosso da Ludovico da Casoria appare quale opzione cosmopolita e multirazziale in
una città, la Napoli di quegli anni, per la quale egli addirittura arriva a scrivere a Vittorio Emanuele II, per
risolvere la ‘questione romana’, proponendo di lasciare l’Urbe al Papa e di stabilire la capitale del Regno in
quella Napoli che egli voleva rendere “egalitaria”.

ORGANIZER
Saverio Carillo
Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Dipartimento di Architettura e Disegno Industriale
saverio.carillo@unicampania.it

Ferrante Unframed II
Roberta Cauchi-Santoro; Costanza Barchiesi

Following the success of the series of panels “Ferrante Unframed” (CAIS annual conference in Orvieto
[Italy] in 2019), and in anticipation of the edited volume Ferrante Unframed ( forthcoming with Società
Editrice Fiorentina, 2021), we would like to invite papers to amplify our discussion on the variegated
spectrum of readings of Elena Ferrante’s works. Ferrante’s novels, and the ensuing film series inspired by
these novels, have attracted an increasingly voluminous corpus of scholarly studies that has raised debate
on topical issues. We are particularly interested in the ascendancy in Ferrante’s novels of Italian voices
from the margins, the re-shifting of focus to the paradoxes of the traditionally marginalized South, the
thorough re-evaluation of Neapolitan-ness, including the Neapolitan dialect and its metanarrative
techniques in written Italian, issues of authorship, and the cross-contamination of elitism and popular
culture which appeal to a vast international audience, including Italian immigrants across the globe. We are
also particularly interested in contributions that focus on the reception and re-elaboration of classical myths
in Ferrante, especially in their conjunction with feminist perspectives, as well as the “Ferrante effect” (as it
has been dubbed in the journalistic world) that has had visible repercussions on the rich and oftentimes
ignored literature of modern and contemporary Italian women writers.

Papers should be between 15-20 minutes long. Please email a 300-word abstract and a one-page CV to
Roberta Cauchi-Santoro (rcauchis@uwaterloo.ca) and Costanza Barchiesi (costanza.barchiesi@yale.edu)
by March 1st 2021.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st 2021

ORGANIZERS
Roberta Cauchi-Santoro; Costanza Barchiesi
St. Jerome’s University, University of Waterloo; Yale University
rcauchis@uwaterloo.ca; costanza.barchiesi@yale.edu

Life in Renaissance Venice
Cristina Perissinotto; Julie Fox-Horton

The population in Renaissance Venice consisted of citizens, a large immigrant population, for labor, and a
constant stream of foreign visitors. While this diversity posed a unique problem for Venetian authorities, it
enriched the material culture of the city, making the function and experience of culture and everyday life
unique for each inhabitant.
This session welcomes papers employing inter-disciplinary approaches to understanding everyday life in
Renaissance Venice.

Possible topics include:
   • Women (elite or ordinary)
   • Citizens and foreigners
   • Trading objects and foreign goods
   • The physical environment
   • Domestic space
   • Fashion and fabric
   • Objects of significance (sacred or profane)
   • Places of significance (bridges, canals, cemeteries, etc.)
   • Art and artists
   • Architecture and culture
   • Culture and controversy
   • Cultural transitions
   • Experiencing and participating in culture

Papers should be 15-20 minutes in duration.

Please submit a 250-word abstract, biographical information or brief CV, and audiovisual requirements to
Cristina Perissinotto (cperissi@uottawa.ca) and Julie Fox-Horton (foxhorton@etsu.edu). Please do not
forget to include your email address, academic affiliation, and institutional contact information with your
abstract. Submission deadline is March 15th, 2021.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 15th, 2021
ORGANIZERS
Cristina Perissinotto; Julie Fox-Horton
Univerity of Ottawa; East Tennessee State University
cperissi@uottawa.ca; foxhorton@etsu.edu

Lo studio critico-letterario della canzone: analisi, tradizioni, prospettive
Mario Gerolamo Mossa; Stefania Bernardini; Jan Gaggetta

Nel corso dell’ultimo ventennio, gli studi letterari dedicati alla canzone italiana hanno seguito tre principali
direzioni critiche. La prima, di interesse storico-culturale, ha avuto per oggetto sia la contestualizzazione
dei repertori musicali popular all’interno della storia italiana, sia la canonizzazione della ‘canzone d’autore’
come genere autonomo appartenente alla tradizione letteraria contemporanea. La seconda tendenza,

molto più variegata della prima, raccoglie contributi volti a definire, attraverso analisi stilistiche e
intertestuali, le peculiarità formali dei singoli testi e delle poetiche d’autore. Un simile interesse per la
testualità poetico-musicale anima, infine, le ricerche sperimentali che, combinando gli strumenti della
filologia d'autore, della musicologia e della metricologia, hanno tentato di tradurre in termini quantitativi il
delicato equilibrio tra parole, musica e voce alla base di ogni singolo evento performativo. Se, da un punto
di vista storico, queste tre direzioni critiche appartengono soprattutto alla tradizione italiana e francese,
l'accademia angloamericana ha inteso valorizzare maggiormente gli aspetti culturali, sociologici e politici
connessi al mondo della popular music. Per questa ragione, obiettivo del panel è sia verificare lo stato
dell’arte, sia stimolare un dialogo comparatistico e interdisciplinare che metta in risalto limiti e potenzialità
di ogni metodo. Le proposte di relazione, in italiano o in inglese, dovranno rispettare almeno una delle
seguenti linee guida:

    •   Analisi poetico-musicale di singoli brani/raccolte/autori/repertori
    •   Analisi culturale di performances storicamente rilevanti
    •   Teorizzazione di metodologie sperimentali e/o nuovi strumenti di analisi
    •   Canzone e letteratura: composizione, generi, intertestualità, riscritture
    •   Canonizzazione della canzone d’autore come genere autonomo
    •   Scelte linguistiche (tra cui dialetto, metrica, traduzioni) e implicazioni sociali
    •   Confronto tra tradizioni bibliografiche

Le proposte, comprensive di un abstract (max 250-300 parole) e di una breve nota bio-bibliografica (max
500 parole), dovranno essere inviate via mail, entro il 28 febbraio 2020, a tutti gli organizzatori del panel:
Mario Gerolamo Mossa (mariogerolamo.mossa@phd.unipi.it), Stefania Bernardini
(stefania.bernie@gmail.com), Jan Gaggetta (jan.gaggetta@unifr.ch).

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 28 febbraio 2021

ORGANIZERS
Mario Gerolamo Mossa; Stefania Bernardini; Jan Gaggetta
Università di Pisa; Aix-Marseille Université; Université de Fribourg / Università di Siena
mgerolamomossa@hotmail.it / mariogerolamo.mossa@phd.unipi.it; stefania.bernie@gmail.com;
jan.gaggetta@unifr.ch

Literary Readings and Performances by Queer Italian-Canadians
Licia Canton

This session invites proposals for literary readings and performances of recent work by queer Italian-
Canadians. Proposals may include readings or performances of flash fiction, short stories, poems,
memoirs, excerpts of novels, plays, film scripts, spoken word... We encourage established and emerging
writers/creators to submit a proposal.

Please send a 200-word excerpt of your creative writing and a short biographical note (60 words) to
lcanton@accenti.ca.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st, 2021

ORGANIZER
Licia Canton
Editor-in-Chief, Accenti Magazine
lcanton@accenti.ca

Contemporary Writing and Other Works by Queer Italian-Canadians
Licia Canton

This session invites proposals for academic papers on recent works by queer Italian-Canadians.
Academics, scholars, research-creators, researchers and graduate students from all disciplines are
encouraged to submit proposals in Italian, English or French. Papers from multidisciplinary perspectives
(migration studies, literary studies, film studies, queer studies, women and gender studies, history,
sociology, art history…) are welcome. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

   •   Representations of queerness
   •   The creative process
   •   Cultural memory
   •   Roots and traditions in contemporary works
   •   Reception and media attention
   •   Translation and self-translation
   •   Adaptations (from novel to film, story to play…)

For academic papers (20 minutes), please send a 200-word abstract and short biographical note (60
words) to lcanton@accenti.ca. Preference will be given to papers that discuss new works.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st, 2021

ORGANIZER
Licia Canton
Frank Iacobucci Centre, University of Toronto / Editor-in-Chief, Accenti Magazine
lcanton@accenti.ca

Italian Women, 1880-1950
Sandra Parmegiani; Cristina Caracchini

This session welcomes contributions on Italian women whose work outside of the domestic sphere
represented a model of social advancement through writing, educational projects, or social action, between
1880 and 1950 . The areas to be explored can also include women’s collaborative projects in a variety of
fields, from philanthropic enterprises to creative collaborations and political activity.

Please submit a 150 word-abstract in English or Italian and a short bio to Sandra Parmegiani
(sparmegi@uoguelph.ca) and Cristina Caracchini (ccaracch@uwo.ca) by March 1st.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st, 2021

ORGANIZERS
Sandra Parmegiani; Cristina Caracchini
University of Guelph; Western University
sparmegi@uoguelph.ca; ccaracch@uwo.ca

Food Justice: Ecocritical Approaches to Social Justice and Food
David Del Principe

This session welcomes papers that address social justice and food in contemporary culture, thought,
philosophy, or literature from an ecocritical perspective. While Antispeciesism and Veganism have become
cultural trends in Italy, the US and beyond and now occupy, along with Critical Animal Studies, Animal
Philosophy, and Animal Law, an important place in academic curricula, the role that social justice and ethics
play in our food choices remain excluded from most discussions of Food Studies. This session takes an
ecocritical and ethical look at how we eat and asks why speciesism remains underrepresented in
discussions on social justice.

Paper topics may include but are not limited to the following:
   • Critical Animal Studies / Liberazionismo
   • Antispeciesism / Antispecismo
   • Environmentalism and Ecosustainability / Ambientalismo e Ecosostenibilità
   • Animal Philosophy, Animal Law / Filosofia, Difesa degli animali
   • Veganism / Veganisimo
   • Factory Farming / Allevamento intensivo
   • Bioethics / Bioetica

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1 or a later date to allow for submissions

ORGANIZER
David Del Principe
Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, USA
delprinciped@montclair.edu

Unveiling Art Through Words: Interartistic Encounters in Italian Literature
Sara Parisi

The reflection on the relationship between images and words which has interested many critics, especially
in the last decades, has been encouraged by the rise of the ‘pictorial turn’, defined as ‘a postlinguistic,
postsemiotic rediscovery of the picture as a complex interplay between visuality, apparatus, institutions,
discourse, bodies and figurality’ (Mitchell, 1994).

The opposition between images and words is defined by Mitchell as a ‘war of signs’ in which each medium
claims its ability to represent the world. In this sense, ekphrasis, outlined as ‘the verbal representation of
visual representation’ (Heffernan, 2004), exacerbates the conflict between the verbal and the visual which
is fought on equal terms.

This session seeks to explore the relationship between interartistic practice and experimental creativity in
Italian writings from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century in the light of the Visual Culture Studies
developed in the 1990s, with a specific focus on how the latter can shed new light on the narrative and
linguistic dimension of the text.

Possible topics include:
   • Visual strategies in texts
   • Text and image in Sicilian literature
   • Text and image in feminist and post-feminist literature
   • Ekphrastic theories and strategies
   • Cinematic ekphrasis
   • Italian scopic regimes
   • Theories of interartistic practice and intermediality
   • The study of vision and perception
   • Text-image relations

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 1st March 2021

ORGANIZER
Sara Parisi
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
sara.parisi@strath.ac.uk

La communauté italienne de Montréal entre tensions et affirmation de son identité
Luca Sollai

La communauté italo-montréalaise – une des plus anciennes communautés italiennes au Canada - est
aujourd’hui bien intégrée dans la société québécoise.

Ce ne fut pas toujours le cas, son parcours d’intégration depuis le début du XXe siècle fut parsemé de
tensions avec la communauté locale.

À travers ce parcours, les Italo-Montréalais ont associé l’affirmation de leur identité et la cohabitation avec
la communauté francophone.

Ce panel a comme objectif de réfléchir sur les moments de tensions qui se sont produits pendant ce
processus d’intégration des Italo-Canadiens de Montréal et sur les modalités à travers lesquelles la
communauté italienne a affirmé son identité au fil des décennies:

Liste non-exhaustive de thèmes et de sujets:
    • Analyse des moments de ruptures entre la communauté des Italo-Montréalais et la communauté
        d’accueil
    • Liens identitaires entre les Italo-Montréalais et leur communauté d’origine
    • Représentation de la culture et des traditions italiennes dans le domaine des arts et de la littérature
        italo-québécois

•   Identité religieuse des Italo-Montréalais
    •   Question linguistique
    •   Représentation politique

Les communications en français, italien et anglais sont acceptées.

Date limite de réception des propositions pour cette session : 15 mars

ORGANIZER
Luca Sollai
Université de Montréal
luca.sollai@umontreal.ca

Convergenze plurilingui. Incroci e convivenze linguistiche in testi manoscritti tra Medioevo e inizi
Cinquecento.

La recentissima pubblicazione di Europa romanza, Torino, Einaudi, 2021, di Lorenzo Tomasin, vuole
attirare l'attenzione sulla storia plurilingue europea attraverso lo studio di testi non letterari in cui convivono
e s’intrecciano diversi volgari. Sulla scia di questo importante lavoro, la sessione vorrebbe accogliere le
presentazioni che esplorino, ad esempio, le aree tematiche seguenti:

    •   Compresenza nei manoscritti di testi in lingue o scriptae diverse
    •   Elementi di contrasto / diffrazione tra scripta del testo e lingua del copista nel processo di copia
    •   Testimonianze di operazioni di mimesi di un’altra area linguistica o di altre varianti
    •   Testimonianze di volgari italiani in scritti non letterari oltre i confini dell’Italia

Punto di partenza e di forza della sessione sarà la presentazione del volume Europa romanza, in
compagnia dello stesso autore, il quale, inoltre, fungerà da autorevole discussant per le relazioni.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 15 April 2021

ORGANIZERS
Alice Martignoni; Franco Pierno
University of Toronto; University of Toronto
alice.martignoni@mail.utoronto.ca; franco.pierno@utoronto.ca

Fruttero and Lucentini’s La Donna della Domenica at Fifty
Maria Grazia Lolla

A bestseller when it was first published in 1972, Fruttero and Lucentini’s La donna della domenica is part
crime fiction and part novel of manners. Deftly constructed and elegantly written, it investigates the murder
of a small-time architect in Turin, while chronicling the mood of a city adjusting to the economic, social and
cultural rise of the middle class. Not unlike what Eco, a few years later, would do with detective fiction in Il
nome della Rosa, Fruttero and Lucentini recast the genre of pulp fiction and made it an art. Combining
sustained intellectual engagement with readability, La donna della domenica pioneered a formula that was

to define much of the Italian mystery tradition coming after it. Almost fifty years after its publication, now out
of print but sparking bidding wars for used copies, the novel's critical reputation has never equaled its
popular success. This panel seeks to read the novel anew and rethink its importance. It welcomes
contributions on all aspects of the novel.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 15 April 2021

ORGANIZER
Maria Grazia Lolla
Harvard
mglolla@fas.harvard.edu

The Uncharted Territory: Environmental Issues in Italian literature in the 2020’s
Nattapol Ruangsri

The past two decades have seen growing interest in Italian environmental humanities. Scholars have
contributed to a number of publications that bring to light Italy’s potential as a fertile field in which
environmental issues can be explored. A demonstration of Italy’s rich connections to environmental
humanities is the volume Italy and the Environmental Humanities. Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies (2018)
which presents a wide range of approaches towards environmental issues in Italian literature, films, art, etc.
As we look to the future of Italian environmental humanities in this new decade, one wonders: Which other
“texts'' can still be studied? What are emerging and new ways of approaching the study of Italian
environmental humanities?

This panel seeks to explore new materials and methods to approach environmental issues in Italian
literature. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
     • Ecocritical approaches to works by authors who are not generally studied from an ecocritical lens;
     • Ecocritical approaches to works by canonical authors;
     • Animal studies in Italian literature;
     • Social justice and environmental justice in the works by Italian authors of marginalized groups;
     • Italian environmental writing by scientists, social scientists, political activists or journalists;
     • Intersectionality of science and literature towards nature;
     • Environmentalism in Italy;

All periods of Italian literature are welcome.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: April 12, 2021

SESSION ORGANIZER
Nattapol Ruangsri
University of Toronto
nattapol.ruangsri@mail.utoronto.ca