Comparative Italian Studies?

The field of comparative literary studies is often centered on English-language perspectives. In the United States, Italian has tended to remain somewhat peripheral for Comparative Literature. But with Italian Studies’ increased investment in comparative frameworks and the growing popular attention to contemporary Italian authors in English translation, both Italian’s role in comparative literature and comparative approaches in Italian studies appear to be shifting. What particular challenges and opportunities does comparative work in Italian Studies present? These connected panels, taking place virtually and in Bologna, will offer a series of case studies of comparative works that include broader reflections on the field. Organized with Ramsey McGlazer.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUld-6rrTkvHteQE37LTX3wJzOLE3R_Jb7n

Virtual Panel One, Comparative Italian Studies?: Saturday, May 14th 9:30-10:45 a.m. ET

Chair: Ramsey McGlazer & Saskia Ziolkowski

Michael Subialka, University of California, Davis, “Modernist Idealism as Comparative Paradigm: Italy’s Place in a Global Discourse”

Marika Strano, Swansea University of Wales, “Other traces of Italy in James Joyce: the presence of Giacomo Leopardi in the Irish writer’s masterpieces”

Salvatore Pappalardo, Towson University, “Comparative Heterotopias: Italian Literature between Transnationalism and Transculturalism”

Robert A. Rushing, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, “Italian Film and Transnational Popular Culture.”

Virtual Panel Two, Comparative Italian Studies?: Saturday, May 14th  11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. ET

Chair: Rebecca Falkoff, University College London

Ramsey McGlazer, University of California, Berkeley, “Comparison: A Cry for Help (On Fachinelli, Freud, and Others)”

Saskia Ziolkowski, Duke University, “In and Out of Italian Ghettos: Mapping a Confined Space across Fields”

Emma Bond, University of St. Andrews, “La straniera as Strangers I Know: Comparative readings of Claudia Durastanti”

Comparative Italian Studies? Panel Three: Tuesday, May 31st 10:00-11:15 a.m. in Bologna!

Chair: Emma Bond, University of St. Andrews

Ernesto Livorni, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “The Refugees of Parga” by Giovanni Berchet: Italian and European Romanticism across the Borders”

Giulia Riccò, University of Michigan, “Finding the Center in the Margins: Enrico Corradini, Italy, and Brazil”

Adele Bardazzi, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Oxford, “‘The word is a thread and the thread is language’: Poetics and Textility in the Works of Cecilia Vicuña, Susan Howe, Elisa Biagini, and Antonella Anedda”

Rebecca Falkoff, University College London, “Possessed: Etiology of a First Book”