Invited Talks

“Black, Jewish, and Italian: Intersections in Igiaba Scego and Claudio Magris” for the Columbia University Seminar in Modern Italian Studies, New York, December 13th, 2019. 

“Kafka, Fascism, and Family in Modern Italian Literature,” Hebrew University,  Jerusalem, April 2017. 

“Kafka and Italian Literature: Some Remarks on Reception and Methods,” for the Research group, “Storia e mappe digitali della letteratura tedesca in Italia nel Novecento: editoria, campo letterario, interferenza,” Rome, June 2014.

“Italian Literature with and without ismi: From Svevo to Ferrante, via Kafka,” for the Graduate Studies  Seminar at Villa La Pietra, New York University’s Florence campus, March 2014. 

“‘Hu huh m hm uh cr cr. . .’: Talking Animals, Kafka, and Italian Literature,” Department of Italian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, March 2012.

“A Kafkan Perspective on Modern Italian Literature: Talking Animals in Landolfi, Morante, and Svevo,”  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, November 2011.

Conference Talks

“Where and When does Austria End?: An Italian Literary Exploration” for the panel “Embodied Borders” at AAIS (American Association of Italian Studies), May 2021.

“From Franz Kafka to Pietro Grossi: What Italian Talking Animals Reveal about the Human Crisis” for “Talking Animals in Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature” at NeMLA (Northeast Modern Languages Association) in Washington D.C., March 2019. 

“Scego, Sausages, Jewish Italy, and Us” for the panel “Teaching Scego” at AAIS in Wake Forest, N.C.,  March 2019.

“Ferrante as Jewish Author” for “Form and Genre in Recent and Contemporary Jewish Literature” at the ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) conference in Los Angeles, April 2018. 

“Imperial Traces in Italian Trieste” for the conference “Empire, Socialism and Jews,” Duke, April 2016.

“Kafka as Detective Novelist?: The Italian Case, from Carlo Emilio Gadda to Paola Capriolo” for the  panel “The Kafkaesque in German Literature, Film, and Culture (1933-present)” at SAMLA (Southern Atlantic Modern Language Association) in Durham, NC, November 2015.

“Editing Kafka for the World: Roberto Calasso’s Zürau Aphorisms” for GSA (German Studies Association) Conference in Washington D.C., October 2015.

“Dreams of Fiction: Kafka’s Quaderni in ottavo, Lalla Romano, Antonio Tabucchi, and Giorgio Manganelli” for AAIS University of Colorado, Boulder, March 2015.

“Emilia Galotti as a Galeotto: Whose Go-Between?” for the panel “Universal and Particular in Lessing,” MLA Vancouver, January 2015.

“Kafka Leaves Home: Das Schloss, Il castello, The Castle and World Literature” for “Kafka’s Das Schloss as an Axial Work of Art,” GSA Conference, Kansas City, September 2014.

“What Does the volpe Say?: Literature’s Role in Animal Studies, an Italian Perspective.” Ars et Scientia: Animalia Symposium. The Norwegian Institute in Rome, June 2014.

“Kafka vs. Kafka: Lukács and German-language Literature in Italy,” AAIS, University of Zurich, Switzerland, May 2014.

“Parental Bonds: Kafka and the Family in Modern Italian Literature,” SIS (Society for Italian Studies) Interim Conference, “Interstitial Italy: Reassessing Global Questions through the ‘Peculiar’ Italian Case,” The British School at Rome, Italy, March 2014.

“The Temptation to Kill: Calvino, Moravia, and Italian Literature of the 40s and 50s.” Temptation Symposium. The Norwegian Institute in Rome, Italy, May 2013.

“‘Amo Kafka perché è realista:’ Calvino’s Early Stories,” AAIS, University of Oregon, April 2013.

“Kafka and Morante: Animals, Family, and Guilt,” “Elsa Morante and the Italian Arts,” Catholic University of the Arts, Washington D.C., October 2012. 

Kafkaesque Trieste,” “Italian Cities: Visible and Invisible,” CICIS – California Interdisciplinary Consortium for Italian Studies, Scripps and Pomona College, Claremont, CA, February 2012. 

“From Kafka to Primo Levi: Jewish Kafka in Italy,” “Kafka and Holocaust” Roundtable, MLA Seattle, January 2012.

“Kafka and Conversing Creatures in Italy: Interrogating the Human-Animal Boundary,” “Animal Studies, Ecocriticism and Modern Italy,” MLA Seattle, January 2012. 

“Living like Dogs: Humor and Compassion in Svevo and Kafka,” “International Conference on ‘Italo Svevo and his Legacy,’” Oxford, England, December 2011. 

“Frustrating Reading: Problematic Journeys in Kafka, Calvino, and Buzzati,” Carolina Conference on Romance Literatures, “Textual Journeys,” Chapel Hill, NC, March 2011.

“Austrian Italian Literature? Trieste and the Migrations of Modernism,” “Modern Austrian Literature,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, Honolulu, November 2010.

“Kafka’s Progeny: For a New Genealogy of Italian Modernism,” “Kafka at 125,” An International Scholarly Conference in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, April 2009.

“Svevo’s uomini senza qualità: Musil and Modernism in Trieste,” “Gender and Modernity in Central Europe: The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and its Legacy,” Ottawa, Canada, May 2008.

“‘So, also hierher kommen die Leute um zu leben/E così dunque viene la gente per vivere:‘ Trieste between Empire and Peninsula,” The Southern Comparative Literature Association’s Thirty-third Annual Conference, “Topographies of Otherness,” Raleigh, NC, September 2007.

“Kafka in Trieste: From Roberto Bazlen and Unknown to Kafkamania,” Italian Graduate Student Conference, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, April 2007.

“Editing Scandal/The Scandals of Editing: Questionable Incest in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften,” German Graduate Student Conference, “Skandal!”, Columbia University, February 2007.

Public Lectures (Invited)

“The Italian Racial Laws and their Legacy” for the Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Raleigh, NC, December 2019. 

“Jewish Italy: The Most Ancient Minority and its Cultures” for the JCC in Raleigh, NC, January 2019. 

“Kafka in Italia” for the members of Berkeley’s “Sezione Italiana,” May 2012.