Contents

• Visions and Dreams in Early Modern Italy (Kristen Keach, Giulia Cardillo)
• Fear of Being Forgotten: Silence and Oblivion in Pre-modern Italian Women Writers (Eleonora Buonocore, Giulia Cardillo)
• Increasing Learning Opportunities in Language and Culture Education: Blended and Online Approaches Revisited (Luisa Canuto)
• Plurilingualism and Multimodality in Second Language Education: Experiences and Proposals (Giuliana Salvato)
• Representations of Motherhood and Mothering in Contemporary Italy (Veronica Frigeni)
• Fascism and Italian Cinema (Carlo Testa)
• Medi@evo. La rappresentazione della letteratura italiana medievale nei media e nei contesti digitali. (Matteo Maselli, Teresa Agovino)
• Crowds in Italian painting between the Quattrocento and the Ottocento (Mathilde Legeay, Franziska Kleine)
• “A questo punto guarda con i tuoi occhi e anche senz’occhi”. Culture visuali della letteratura italiana del Novecento e oltre: tra teoria e analisi. (Michele Bordoni, Emma Pavan)
• Page by Page: Mastering Italian Language and Culture Through Reading" (Morena Svaldi)
  

Visions and Dreams in Early Modern Italy
Kristen Keach, Giulia Cardillo

We welcome papers that explore the significance, representations, and interpretations of visions, dreams, and dreamscapes in the literature, art, and culture of Early Modern Italy (c. 1400-1800). Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Literary depictions of prophetic visions, mystical experiences, or altered states of consciousness
• The role of dreams in early modern philosophy, medicine, science, socio-political ideologies, and theology
• Visual representations of visionary or dreamlike imagery in early modern art
• The intermedial dialogue between text, image, public pageantry, music, etc.
• Methodological approaches to analyzing and interpreting visions and dreams in early modern primary sources
• Comparative analyses of visions/dreams across different media or cultural contexts in early modern Italy

Abstracts of 250-300 words, along with a brief biographical note, should be submitted via email to the panel organizers Giulia Cardillo cardilgx@jmu.edu and Kristen Keach keachk@wfu.edu by March 20, 2025.

We welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages, including graduate students.

We look forward to your submissions and to an engaging conference exploring the rich and multifaceted role of visions and dreams in early modern Italian culture.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: March 20, 2025

ORGANIZERS
Kristen Keach
Wake Forest University
keachk@wfu.edu

Giulia Cardillo
James Madison University
cardilgx@jmu.edu

Fear of Being Forgotten: Silence and Oblivion in Pre-modern Italian Women Writers
Eleonora Buonocore, Giulia Cardillo

This panel seeks contributions that explore the fear of literary oblivion in women’s intellectual productions from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. How do they express the anxiety of being silenced or erased by a male-dominated canon? What strategies do they adopt to ensure the survival, recognition, and remembrance of their works and names? What citation, translation, publication strategies do they employ? How do they adapt or adopt other women’s models, and engage with each other’s works? The panel will discuss how women intellectuals want to be remembered and how they face issues of authority and anonymity through their agency and generative power.

We welcome contributions that take an interdisciplinary approach, examining these issues in women’s contributions in the fields of literature, the arts, and the sciences. Papers might investigate specific case studies, analyze themes or topoi and trace broader trends in women’s artistic and scientific creations. Proposals are welcome from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including Cultural and Literary Studies, History, Intellectual History, Gender Studies, Art History, and Music History.

We welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages, including graduate students. Please send your (250 words) abstracts and a short biographical note to:
Eleonora.buonocore@ucalgary.ca
cardilgx@jmu.edu

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 20 March 2025

ORGANIZERS
Eleonora Buonocore
University of Calgary
Eleonora.buonocore@ucalgary.ca

Giulia Cardillo
James Madison University
cardilgx@jmu.edu

Increasing Learning Opportunities in Language and Culture Education: Blended and Online Approaches Revisited
Luisa Canuto

Submission Instructions:

• Please send your proposals to Luisa Canuto, luisa.canuto@ubc.ca, by March 20, 2025
• Notifications of acceptance will be sent by March 27, 2025

As the landscape of education continues to evolve, blended or hybrid, and online learning environments continue to present a number of different and unique opportunities and challenges for teaching language as well as culture courses. This panel seeks to explore innovative pedagogical strategies, research findings, and practical applications in the realm of language and cultural education within these formats. Sample themes and questions to explore may include, but are not limited to: integrating cultural competence into online settings; technology-enhanced language learning; community engagement in/through online learning; assessment strategies for blended and online learning; learner autonomy and motivation; challenges encountered in blended and online courses, and solutions implemented; strategies to design, develop, and offer online courses; Impact of online courses on curriculum and enrollment.

Please submit a 200-300 word abstract and include the following information:

• Title of the presentation 
• Description of the topic and its relevance to the theme (200 words maximum)
• Brief biography of the presenter(s) which includes your full name, current affiliation and email address

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 20 March 2025

ORGANIZER

Luisa Canuto
University of British Columbia
luisa.canuto@ubc.ca

Plurilingualism and Multimodality in Second Language Education: Experiences and Proposals
Giuliana Salvato

This session aims to create a space for critical reflection and exchange among scholars who would like to reformulate second language education through novel interpretations of theories that promote plurilingualism and multimodality in teaching and learning practices. This session offers the opportunity for participants to present and discuss their ideas and experiences in second language education, where Italian is the target language or is one of the languages being considered. The session hopes to be a venue where participants can learn from thinking beyond the traditional approaches to second language pedagogy, and from on-going and future research work. This session welcomes presentations whose theoretical framework endorses:

• plurilingualism or multilingualism or translanguaging
• multimodalities or multiliteracies

Please submit a 200-300 word abstract and include the following information:

• Title of the presentation
• Description of the topic and its relevance to the theme (200 words maximum)
• Brief biography of the presenter(s) which includes your full name, current affiliation and email address

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session:
Please send your proposals by March 20th 2025 to Dr. Giuliana Salvato, gsalvato@uwindsor.ca


ORGANIZER
Giuliana Salvato
University of Windsor, ON, Canada
gsalvato@uwindsor.ca

Representations of Motherhood and Mothering in Contemporary Italy
Veronica Frigeni

Building on Adrienne Rich's pioneering distinction between motherhood as an institution and mothering as lived experience, this panel invites contributions that explore and question representations of motherhood and mothering in response to the growing politicisation of the maternal role in contemporary Italy.  

This panel seeks to investigate how mothering and motherhood are depicted and enacted across diverse media—cinema, literature, graphic novels, visual arts, television, and social platforms—particularly in light of increasing public debates on reproductive rights, family policies, and gender roles. It encourages interdisciplinary approaches, drawing, for example, from feminist and queer theories, sociology, cultural studies, and political analysis. Contributors are invited to consider how traditional ideals of motherhood and mothering coexist or clash with more subversive or intersectional narratives.  

Key questions include: How do these representations reflect or resist the institutionalisation of motherhood within Italy's political and cultural discourse? In what ways do they engage with issues of class, race, and gender? How do new digital platforms contribute to amplifying or contesting these debates?

By addressing these questions, the panel aims to illuminate the dynamic and contested roles of motherhood and mothering within Italy’s contemporary cultural and political landscape.

Proposals are welcomed from scholars at all career stages, including graduate students.

Please send your (250 words) abstracts and a short biographical note (150 words) to: veronica.frigeni@gmail.com

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 28 February 2025

ORGANIZER
Veronica Frigeni
Centre for Feminist Research - York University
veronica.frigeni@gmail.com

Fascism and Italian Cinema
Carlo Testa

This panel welcomes proposals for contributions addressing any aspect of the intersection between “Fascism” and “Italian Cinema,” whether they be a critical re-visitation of Italian cinema during the Fascist regime, or an analysis of the ways in which post-1945 Italian cinema has re-visited the years of the regime, be it via fiction films or documentary films.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 15 March 2025

ORGANIZER
Carlo Testa
UBC Vancouver
ctesta.canada@gmail.com

Medi@evo. La rappresentazione della letteratura italiana medievale nei media e nei contesti digitali.
Matteo Maselli, Teresa Agovino

Nel corso dei secoli XX e XXI, ampio spazio è stato dato a livello mediatico (filmico, televisivo, …) alle rappresentazioni di un Medioevo dapprima filtrato nel tempo da una cupa, tenebrosa e, pertanto, distorsiva lente che si può far risalire indietro sino all’epoca umanistico-rinascimentale, poi rivisitato in una chiave certamente più realistica e storicamente obbiettiva. Con l’avvento del digitale nuove forme di espressività sono state sondate, restituendo un mondo ancora più variegato, ricco e per certi versi imprevedibile di quello offerto fino ad allora dagli approdi esegetici più tradizionali.

Questo panel – che si terrà in presenza – vuol, dunque, indagare a tutto tondo tanto le (re)visioni contemporanee della nostra letteratura medievale – quali, ad esempio, il Decameron di Pasolini (1971) o il videogioco Dante’s Inferno (2010) – quanto le forme inventive medievaleggianti dell’era contemporanea, come la ripresa filmica (1986) e la serie televisiva (2019) de Il nome della rosa di Umberto Eco (1980).

Ampio spazio verrà, poi, riservato ai contributi incentrati sul panorama digitale quale nuovo approccio all’analisi testuale di opere di epoca medievale, come l’applicazione di ontologie e web semantico ai testi del canone letterario, la digitalizzazione dei manoscritti, le potenzialità fornite da portali, piattaforme e archivi informatizzati.

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 20 marzo 2025.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session:  20 marzo 2025

ORGANIZERS
Matteo Maselli
Università di Macerata
m.maselli2@unimc.it

Teresa Agovino
Universitas Mercatorum, Rome
teresa.agovino@unimercatorum.it

Crowds in Italian painting between the Quattrocento and the Ottocento
Mathilde Legeay, Franziska Kleine

As a manifestation of the nameless and the innumerable, the crowd plays a secondary role in the narrative picture, which was primarily codified in modern Italian painting. Peripheral, ephemeral and informal groups oppose the clearly contoured hero at the center, the individual who acts willfully. Nevertheless, as its counterpart, the crowd can both demonstrate the protagonist’s power and question it. If we consider the crowd as a minimal form of community, often uniting the most marginalized of society, the position it takes in narrative paintings becomes a political issue.

During this session, we want to explore representations of the crowd in Italian narrative painting between 1400 to 1900 through a few suggested topics, to which you will be able to add some if needed:

• The making of the crowd: How did painters proceed to give shape to the crowd as an under-determined, maximally variable and expandable entity?
• The reception of the crowd: What connection does the picture of a crowd entertain with its location and its viewer?
• The sociology of the crowd: Which stereotypes of social groups do the different representations of the crowd maintain or break?
• The politics of the crowd: Which agency or agenda can be ascribed to a represented crowd?

Abstracts of 250-300 words, along with a brief biographical note, should be submitted via email to the panel organizers Franziska Kleine (f.kleine@fu-berlin.de) and Mathilde Legeay (Mathilde.Legeay1@univ-nantes.fr) by March 20, 2025.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 20 March, 2025

ORGANIZERS
Mathilde Legeay
Nantes Université
Mathilde.Legeay1@univ-nantes.fr

Franziska Kleine
Freie Universität Berlin
f.kleine@fu-berlin.de

“A questo punto guarda con i tuoi occhi e anche senz’occhi”. Culture visuali della letteratura italiana del Novecento e oltre: tra teoria e analisi.
Michele Bordoni, Emma Pavan

La cultura visuale occupa un ruolo centrale negli studi umanistici. Il Pictorial turn (Mitchell, 1992) e lo sviluppo trentennale di questa “indisciplina” (Cometa, 2020) hanno influito notevolmente non solo sull’autorappresentazione degli studi letterari, ma anche sull’idea di letteratura in generale: non più ambito disciplinare autosufficiente, ma pratica necessariamente inserita nel contesto delle relazioni tra immagini e parole (cf. gli studi di fotoletteratura di Montier, 2018, e quelli sugli iconotesti di Louvel, 2011), narrazione e descrizione (Wolf, 2007), sguardo e dispositivo. In ambito italiano abbiamo assistito a un importante sviluppo degli studi di cultura visuale (Pinotti-Somaini, 2009; 2016 – Cammarata, Cometa, Coglitore, 2022), tuttavia, le potenzialità di questo approccio non sono ancora state del tutto esplorate nel campo della letteratura italiana. Domande come “che ruolo ricoprono le immagini nella cultura contemporanea?”, “Qual è la loro agency?”, “Come si relazionano con i media e i dispositivi che le veicolano?” rappresentano oggi un punto di partenza per interrogare molti testi e opere in maniera inedita. Questo panel vuole essere l’occasione per riflettere sugli aspetti visuali della letteratura italiana dal primo Novecento ad oggi. Lo scopo è quello di analizzare, da un lato, la cultura visuale degli scrittori e la presenza di elementi visuali nelle loro opere e, dall’altro, le riflessioni teoriche su temi visuali (immagini, sguardi, dispositivi) degli autori stessi. Saranno benvenute le proposte che mirino all’integrazione del lato teorico con quello analitico, e che si propongano di mostrare come l’ibridazione di pratiche differenti permetta di illuminare aspetti inattesi della letteratura italiana.

‘A questo punto guarda con i tuoi occhi e anche senza occhi’. Visual cultures in twentieth-century Italian literature and beyond: between theory and analysis.

Visual culture plays a pivotal role in the field of humanities studies. The Pictorial Turn (Mitchell, 1992) and the thirty-year development of this ‘indiscipline’ (Cometa, 2020) have had a significant impact on not only the self-representation of literary studies, but also the concept of literature in general. The notion of literature as a self-sufficient disciplinary field has been challenged, and this practice is necessarily situated within the context of the relations between images and words (cf. the studies on photoliterature by Montier, 2018, and the ones on iconotexts by Louvel, 2011), narration and description (Wolf, 2007), gazes and devices. In the Italian context, there has been a notable advancement in the field of visual culture studies (Pinotti-Somaini, 2009; 2016 – Cammarata, Cometa, Coglitore, 2022). However, the full potential of this approach remains to be seen in the domain of Italian literature. The questions of what role images play in contemporary culture, what their agency is, and how they relate to the media and the devices that convey them represent a starting point for interrogating many texts and works in a new way. This panel has been convened with the intention of facilitating reflection on the visual aspects of Italian literature from the early twentieth century to the present day. The objective of this panel is to analyse, on the one hand, the visual culture of the writers and the presence of visual elements in their works, and on the other, the theoretical reflections on visual themes (images, gazes, devices) of the authors themselves. We welcome proposals that integrate the theoretical and the analytical sides, and that demonstrate how the combination of different practices allows us to shed light on hitherto unanticipated aspects of Italian literature.

« A questo punto guarda con i tuoi occhi e anche senza occhi ». Les cultures visuelles dans la littérature italienne du XXe siècle et au-delà: entre théorie et analyse.

La culture visuelle occupe une place centrale dans les études en sciences humaines. Le Pictorial turn (Mitchell, 1992) et le développement trentenaire de cette « indiscipline » (Cometa, 2020) ont considérablement influencé non seulement l’autoreprésentation des études littéraires, mais aussi l’idée de littérature en général : non plus un champ disciplinaire autosuffisant, mais une pratique nécessairement insérée dans le contexte des relations entre images et mots (cf. : les études de photolittérature de Montier, 2018, et celles sur les iconotextes de Louvel, 2011), de la narration et de la description (Wolf, 2007), du regard et du dispositif. Dans le contexte italien, on a assisté à un développement important des études sur la culture visuelle (Pinotti-Somaini, 2009 ; 2016 - Cammarata, Cometa, Coglitore, 2022), mais le potentiel de cette approche n’a pas encore été pleinement exploré dans le domaine de la littérature italienne. Des questions telles que « Quel rôle les images jouent-elles dans la culture contemporaine ? », « quelle est leur agency ? », « quelle est leur relation avec les médias et les dispositifs qui les véhiculent ? » représentent désormais un point de départ pour interroger de nombreux textes et oeuvres d’une manière nouvelle. Ce panel vise à réfléchir sur les aspects visuels de la littérature italienne du début du XXe siècle jusqu’à nos jours. L’objectif est d'analyser, d’une part, la culture visuelle des écrivains et la présence d’éléments visuels dans leurs oeuvres et, d’autre part, les réflexions théoriques sur les thèmes visuels (images, regards, dispositifs) des auteurs eux-mêmes. Toute proposition visant à intégrer l’aspect théorique à l’aspect analytique et à montrer comment l’hybridation de différentes pratiques nous permet d'éclairer des aspects inattendus de la littérature italienne sera accueillie favorablement.

Closing Date for Receiving Proposals for this Session: 20th March 2025

Bibliografia
Cammarata, Valeria and Cometa, Michele and Coglitore, Roberta, Cultura visuale in Italia. Sguardi, immagini, dispositivi, Meltemi, 2022
Cometa, Michele, Cultura visuale. Una genealogia, Raffaello Cortina, 2020
Mitchell, William John Thomas, Picture Theory, University of Chicago Press, 1992
Montier, Jean-Pierre, Photoliterature: trading gazes, Image & narrative, 2018, 19 (2), pp.77-90 Louvel, Liliane, Poetic of the Iconotext, Ashgate, 2011
Pinotti, Andrea and Somaini, Antonio, Cultura visuale. Immagini, sguardi, media, dispositivi, Einaudi, 2016
Pinotti, Andrea and Somaini, Antonio, edited by, Teorie dell’immagine, Raffaello Cortina, 2009
Wolf, Werner and Bernhard, Walter, edited by, Description in Literature and Other Media, Rodopi, 2007

ORGANIZERS
Michele Bordoni
Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium)
michele.bordoni@uclouvain.be

Emma Pavan
Università di Cagliari
emmapav95@gmail.com