CIS is now accepting submissions for Volume 5 (2014). Submissions may be for either

the thematic or the open-theme parts of the volume (see below), in either English or

Italian. Deadline for submission is April 15, 2014.

Editors of CIS, Vol. 5 (2014):

Jon R. Snyder, University of California Santa Barbara

Laura Wittman, Stanford University

Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, University of California Santa Barbara

Submissions may be made directly through the California Italian Studies submission form:

Part I. Scholarly essays, articles, interviews, and translations which address some

aspect of the following special topic:

The Sacred in Italian Culture: Forms and Practices

Despite or because of the papacys role at the center of the Roman Catholic Church, Italy

has also been the catalyst for a sustained meditation on the sacred in art and architecture,

in monastic life and mystical experience, in folklore, in literature both religious and

blasphemous, in politics, in medicine, and in modern philosophical investigations. As

present day global culture witnesses the confrontation between various religious

fundamentalisms and dogmatic assertions of secularism, Italy provides a thoughtprovoking

and longstanding example of dialogue – not always easy, but often very

creative – between institutional religion, popular religiosity, personal religious experience,

culture, politics, and science. We invite submissions that explore the multiple facets of the

sacred in Italian culture, from any period, and from all the various fields that approach the

question, including but not limited to religious studies, literature, history, art history,

anthropology, philosophy, media studies, political science, sociology, biology, and

neuroscience.

Part II. Scholarly essays, articles, interviews, and translations with a

significant Italian component on any topic that meets one or more of the

following basic criteria:

a) interdisciplinary work that combines within itself the practices of multiple disciplines,

makes significant use of the tools of one discipline in the service of another, or relates to

a cluster of other scholarly works, representing the approaches of multiple disciplines to a

single topic;

b) comparative work placing the study of the history, culture, society, artistic products,

and languages of the Italian peninsula and islands, and of Italian diasporas, in relation to

other geographical, cultural, and linguistic formations;

c) critically reflexive work that not only studies a given object but also engages in

theoretical and/or methodological reflection on its own approach and on its implications

within larger disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts.