Quod non est in libris non est in mundo. Sull’interdisciplinarità nella letteratura italiana

Matteo Maselli, Teresa Agovino

Il panorama letterario italiano è da sempre oggetto di studi interdisciplinari, intrusioni negli (e dagli) “altrui mestieri” che impreziosiscono o alterano il contenuto originale di opere fondamentali e hanno ricadute sui messaggi di volta in volta veicolati dagli scrittori.

Ciò accade sin dalla letteratura delle origini, in cui la commistione tra più discipline è prassi comune della creazione artistica: dai bestiari o lapidari medievali alle prime enciclopedie, forme testuali in cui le scienze in senso lato si rapportavano alle lettere, fino all’apporto della teologia alla poesia come nelle prove di Albertino Mussato o nella Commedia dantesca. O ancora, si pensi al connubio tra letteratura e arte che raggiunse autentici vertici con Le Vite del Vasari o alle speculazioni che poco meno di un secolo dopo alimentarono la prosa scientifica di Galileo.

In tempi più recenti, esempi di tal genere si fanno ancora più frequenti: dalla chimica di Primo Levi alla psichiatria di Mario Tobino, via via fino alle grandi prove della letteratura industriale ed ecologica, trame, discipline e mestieri si incrociano costantemente nella narrativa nazionale.

Il panel si propone dunque di raccogliere comunicazioni che vertono sull’interdisciplinarietà letteraria a tutto tondo. Alla luce di tali premesse, si invitano gli studiosi interessati a presentare una proposta di intervento (max 250 parole, in italiano o in inglese) e un breve profilo biobibliografico a m.maselli2@unimc.it e teresa.agovino@unimercatorum.it entro e non oltre il 1 marzo 2023.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st 2023

ORGANIZERS

Matteo Maselli

Università degli Studi di Macerata

m.maselli2@unimc.it

Teresa Agovino

Universitas Mercatorum Roma

teresa.agovino@unimercatorum.it

Territori dell'impossibile. Riflessioni sul fantastico moderno, contemporaneo e ipercontemporaneo

Simone Pettine, Domenico Tenerelli

Per oltre due secoli il fantastico ha riconfermato la propria natura di genere letterario problematico: agevole da individuare anche ad una prima lettura, ma estremamente complesso da definire nel suo statuto teorico (Todorov preferì considerarlo non un genere, ma una frontiera tra generi differenti) e da sondare nelle sue concrete realizzazioni (contenuti e strategie narrative). Questa sessione si propone di indagare i testi del fantastico italiano – noti e meno noti, letterari e paraletterari – a partire dalle prime, timide comparse ottocentesche fino al fantasy dell’estrema contemporaneità, passando naturalmente per il mare magnum novecentesco. Saranno valutate proposte basate su approcci teorico-critici, semiotici, comparativi, e anche linguistici, purché basati su metodologie di indagine rigorosamente scientifiche.

Gli studiosi interessati sono invitati a presentare una proposta di intervento entro il 1 marzo 2023, allegando agli indirizzi mail simone.pettine@unich.it e domenico.tenerelli@gmail.com un unico file contenente: un abstract di circa 250 parole (ITA o ENG); un breve profilo bio-bibliografico.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1, 2023

ORGANIZERS

Simone Pettine

“G. d’Annunzio” University (Chieti-Pescara)

simone.pettine@unich.it

Domenico Tenerelli

Université Rennes 2

domenico.tenerelli@gmail.com

Italian Literature in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality

Adele Bardazzi

The panel ‘Italian Literature in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality’ aims to discuss Italian literature that engage with recent developments in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, and Quantum Machine Learning.

If AI has been recurrent theme in science fiction, it is now directly implicated in the making of literary works – both fiction and poetry – across linguistic, cultural, and geographical borders. How is this developing within Italian literature and shaping new directions for the discipline of Italian Studies? To what extent, if at all, the literary and critical language employed so far can still work to investigate works produced by AI? In what ways can AI and AR, rather than bringing forward innovation – as they do in the sciences – lead literature backwards? How can AI shake and diversify the Italian literary canon? Does the advent of AI make the use of computer programming and other technologies used so far in literary works out-dated (e.g. Python programming language)? What does the interaction with AI and AR tell us about the nature of literature and poetry?

Papers engaging with questions of temporality, authoriality, communities, genre, and gender are particularly welcome, as well as theoretical and comparative analyses.  Contributions wishing to focus on how Italian Studies could incorporate in its teaching methodologies AI and AR are also welcome.

Please consider submitting an abstract of no more than 150 words and a short bio-bibliographical note by 15 February 2023 to Dr Adele Bardazzi: bardazza@tcd.ie.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 15 February 2023

ORGANIZER

Adele Bardazzi

Trinity College Dublin

bardazza@tcd.ie

Doctoral Dissertations in Progress

Andrea Penso

In this session we welcome papers from PhD candidates who want 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.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1, 2023

ORGANIZER

Andrea Penso

VUB – Vrije Universiteit Brussel

andrea.penso@vub.be

Dante's Trasumanar and monsters

Chiara Caputi, Francesca Lopez

Dante Alighieri expressed the transcendence of the human condition beyond its limitations through the verb trasumanar in Paradiso 1. It is rare evidence that Alighieri had thought of a kind of "transhuman" change in the early 1300s. In the past years, we witnessed the change raised by the feminist movements, especially the last wave called ''transfeminism'', which pointed out how ''being human'' it is not enough for the subjectivities in order to be recognized by politics. For this reason, the word ''posthuman'' was used to show how monsters can be active participants in our society, being part of us. In Dante's Inferno, throughout the journey of the character Dante into the depth of Hell, he encounters several beasts and monsters as he passes along the way. The seven main monsters - namely Minos, Cerberus, Plutus, Minotaur, Centaurs, Harpies, and Geryon - have the active role of guardians of the circles of Hell. Dante transformed their mythological identity to adapt their presence to his poem. We are interested in the exploration of how Dante represents the transcendence of the human condition and how this process involves monsters. 

Participants are invited to give papers that explore the following aspects:

1. the transcendence of the human condition through characters and metaphors mainly in the first canticle
2. the relationship between the human and the other elements that characterize the monsters and their combinations
3. the intertextual references to mythological texts in comparison to Inferno
4. the genderization or even the anthropomorphization of the monsters
5. monsters and proto-capitalism

We accept papers in English and Italian. All submissions must be sent via email in a single Word document entitled "Last Name CAIS 2023" and contain the following items: an abstract (maximum 200 characters), a short bio, full name, email address, and affiliation. Please use "CAIS 2023" in the subject line.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 1st, 2023

ORGANIZERS

Chiara Caputi

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

ccaputi@gradcenter.cuny.edu

Francesca Lopez

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

flopez@gradcenter.cuny.edu

Sicilia Erotica

Chiel Monzone

La Sicilia è da sempre una terra di scrittura erotica. Sin dai secoli a.C. fino ai giorni nostri, molti autori e autrici hanno avuto inclinazione verso tale canone. Oltre al “famoso” Domenico Tempio poeta osceno del secondo Settecento, ma in verità portatore di ben differente tempra letteraria, altri hanno lasciato trace in versi e in prosa, sia in modo più sistematico sia occasionalmente. Il rimando, ad esempio, è ai vari Pirandello, Brancati, Meli, Camilleri, Aniante, Torregrossa, Panarello, ecc. Il panel che si propone, dunque, intende mettere assieme interventi che siano volti a evidenziare un erotismo siciliano variamente declinato, dai toni più crudi a quelli più blandi. Gli studiosi interessati a partecipare potranno far pervenire le proposte di contributo su un particolare scrittore e sulla dimensione erotica così come appare dalle opere che ha redatto. Si richiede che le proposte, anche in chiave comparata, non superino le 250 parole e che siano accompagnate da un breve profilo biobibliografico entro e non oltre il 1 marzo 2023.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 1st March 2023

ORGANIZER

Chiel Monzone

Independent scholar (PhD) - Università Roma Tre

chiel.monzone@uniroma3.it

Framing Ferrante: Adaptation and Intermediality from Troubling Love to The Lying Life of Adults

Russell Kilbourn, Roberta Cauchi-Santoro

This panel surveys the cinematic and televisual adaptations of Elena Ferrante’s literary works, from Mario Martone’s L’amore molesto (1995) and Roberto Faenza’s I giorni dell’abandono (2005) to Saverio Costanzo’s L’amica geniale series (2018-), Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter (2021), and Edoardo De Angelis’s Netflix series La vita bugiarda degli adulti (2023). In their 2021 collection, Ferrante Unframed, Roberta Cauchi-Santoro and Costanza Barchiesi set out to “unframe” Ferrante, “releasing [her] from the tight confines” of the debate around the strangely problematic status of a successful author whose writing has generally been associated with the works of Italian women writers. This panel seeks to build on this research by considering the literal framing and re-framing of Ferrante on TV and film screens. The aim is to extend and expand upon existing scholarship by considering the older forays into Ferrante adaptation alongside the more recent, 21st century remediations. In this respect the panel organizers seek papers that conjoin questions of modality (analog or digital), medium, mediation, and transmediation, with those of authorship, authority, and gender, around such key issues as genre and influence, commercial vs. independent, arthouse vs. ‘prestige,’ etc.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 01, 2023

ORGANIZERS

Russell Kilbourn

Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario

rkilbourn@wlu.ca

Roberta Cauchi-Santoro

St. Jerome's, University of Waterloo, Ontario

roberta.cauchi-santoro@uwaterloo.ca