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Dear all,
The California Italian Studies is now accepting submissions for Volume 8 (2018): ENDS OF POETRY. Submissions may be for either the thematic or the open-themed parts of the volume in either English or Italian.
“In my beginning is my end,” writes T. S. Eliot, stressing even that the end
precedes the beginning. Nothing could be truer of the beginnings of Italian poetry, which in its vernacular and religious form and the unprecedented innovations of Dante, are strictly tied to the very origins and capacities of the Italian language.
Over the coming centuries, Italian poetry performed a foundational role in the culture, politics, philosophy, and collective self-understanding of the peninsula. From the medieval city states to the Renaissance courts, from the Risorgimento and the enlightenment
circles of Milan and Naples to 20th century totalitarianism and avant-garde movements, Italian poetry has pursued high no less than troublesome ends, often advancing itself as the ultimate arbiter of human affairs. Now, in the 21st century,
lofty understandings of the poet as vate and critical gadfly of society have all but vanished. Our age rather suggests that poetry may have reached its end, losing not only readers and institutional supports, but also its ability to tell the tale of
the tribe.
This volume of our journal addresses the double valence of the word
ends. Has contemporary poetry indeed lost its place as generator of productive thought? If so, why? What other ends might be embraced by poetry, and what guises might it assume to achieve them? How has poetry operated as cognitively critical tool,
traditionally and innovatively? What were and are its modes of representation? Does it harbor less visible ends beneath its surface? Answering such questions may require new reflections on the history of Italian poetry and poetics, along with their ties
to proximate and distant cultures. One might also ask how Italian poetic history has shaped notions of the environment, of material subjectivity, of authority, identity, and gender, of ethics, religion and philosophy. Volume 8 of
California Italian Studies welcomes studies of penetrating theoretical import, using methodologies that are comparative, thematic, interdisciplinary or cross-cultural.
Additional topics of interest include: Poetry and trauma / Poetry and the other arts / Poetic liminality and borders / Ecological poetics / Poetry, philosophy
and critical theory / The political ends of poetry, explicit or implicit / Current conditions of poetry / Poetry as rhetoric and propaganda / Local or transhistorical poetics / Poetry, sexuality and gender / Italian poetry within world literature / Poetic
crises, historically or epistemologically / E-poetry and the media sphere / Practices of reading / Poetry as an alternative linguistic practice / Critical interviews and translations
*The second, open-themed, issue of California Italian Studies, Volume 8 does not address the ends of poetry, yet welcomes:
a) an interdisciplinary scholarly study that combines the practices of multiple disciplines, making significant use of the tools of one discipline in the service of another, or studies a cluster of scholarly works representing the approaches of various disciplines
to a single topic
b) a comparative work that relates the history, culture, society, artistic products or languages of the Italian peninsula, islands and diasporas to other geographical, cultural and linguistic formations
c) a critical work that, in studying a given object, engages in theoretical or methodological reflection on its own approach and its implications within larger disciplinary and interdisciplinary
contexts.
The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2018, although earlier submissions will be given priority.
Submissions should be made directly through the California Italian Studies submission form:
https://submit.escholarship.org/subi/directSubmit?target=ismrg_cisj
Please direct inquiries to the editors:
Thomas Harrison, University of California Los Angeles,
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Gian Maria Annovi, University of Southern California,
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Questions regarding formatting and how to submit articles through our website should be sent to our managing editor, Leslie Elwell, at
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Carolyn EmBree
Program Coordinator
UCLA Royce Humanities Group
212 Royce Hall, Box 951539
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1539
Ph: (310) 794-9377
F: (310) 825-9754