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italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies

I wish to inform members of this list of the Jan. 31 deadline for the
submission of proposals

*International Conference*



*Passeurs**. Italian Culture Beyond Italian Shores (1945-1989). **Reception
and Imagination*



*Literature – Cinema – Media*



*26-28 August 2020*



*Universidad de Buenos Aires*



*Premise: Reception and Imagination *



Beginning in the year 2018, a group of Italianists hailing from various
European universities— including Caen Normandie (France), Humboldt zu
Berlin (Germany), Mons (Belgium), Compultense de Madrid (Spain), Siena
Stranieri (Italy), and UCLondon (United Kingdom)—organized several seminars
on the topic of “Italian Literature of the Second Half of the Twentieth
Century (1945-1989): Reception and Imagination”.



By “reception” we mean the set of processes and channels through which
Italian culture (and particularly, literature) of the period being studied,
was received, translated, disseminated, read, interpreted and also
challenged in national and linguistic-cultural contexts outside of Italy.
Reception, therefore, has been studied using the latest methodological
approaches – from the history of reading to the new studies on publishing
and translation – in European and extra-European contexts. Starting with a
“material” research on works that originated in Italy and circulated in the
rest of the world, such an approach provides a critical insight into what
Italian culture ended up representing outside of its national borders.



By “imagination” the research group intends a mental mechanism which
utilizes images and associations of images – textual and iconographic – to
affirm the power of “poetic thought”, as conceived by the French
philosopher Gaston Bachelard against the absolutism of rationality. The
imagination is thus seen not as a “function” but as a “space” of exchange,
of freedom and of tensions. This concept was successively adopted by Gilles
Durand in his studies on “mythocriticism” in which the imagination is
affirmed as a dynamic force of “polarization of images”: a recomposition of
reality which includes (with no hierarchical divisions) symbolic, mythical,
oneiric, fantastical elements, etc. (with explicit reference also to
psychoanalysis). In light of this interpretation, the role of the *passeur*
is not limited to the traditional function of a simple mediator but should
also be seen as the activity of the person—intellectual, artist, scholar,
novelist or poet—who wanted to freely reconfigure an Italian cultural
imagination through “lyrical thinking”. To give an example, our attention
will be directed towards non-Italian writers who chose to set their
narrations in a significantly reinvented Italy, reinterpreted as a
reservoir of sensitive and poetic images or as a screen on which to project
their own concerns.



The period of time chosen (1945-1989) finds its justification in an
assumption of methodological coherence that refers to the two historical
ruptures of the century: the end of the World War II, on one side, and the
Fall of the Berlin Wall, on the other. Both events entail socio-political
reorganizations at the European level, which were in turn marked by
corresponding events more or less regarding the main technological, social
and cultural changes which (starting in 1945 after the reconstruction
phase) marked the beginning and the end of an exceptional period of
socio-economic development. As for 1989, instead, it is noted that the Fall
of the Berlin Wall imposed coincident and radical political changes with
the end of a certain vision of Europe and the world. From that moment
onwards, the digital culture began and proceeded to develop, such that,
within a few decades, digital culture imposed itself on all intellectual
and cultural players. The two dates therefore appear to be concurrently
symbolic and representative of a clearly defined Italian culture of the
second half of the twentieth century.



*Conference macro-sections and locations in Buenos Aires*



The conference, scheduled on 26-28 August, 2020, will take place in various
venues of the University of Buenos Aires. The conference, open to the whole
scientific community related to it, is divided into two macro-sections:
Literature and Cinema & Media.



The choice of the Argentine capital as the venue for the conference is not
accidental, but is rather the result of extensive planning which aspires to
conclude the meetings on the *Passeurs* in one of the symbolic locations
imbued with a widespread Italian spirit. Buenos Aires, a metropolis of 16
million inhabitants, is composed of a mixed social and cultural fabric, a
high percentage of which holds Italian origins. The Universidad de Buenos
Aires, on the other hand, boasts one of the best positions in international
rankings and is always among the top five academic-learning centers in
Latin America.



For these reasons, the three days of the Conference will also include a
guided visit of the city in search not of a “Little Italy”, but rather of a
widespread Italian spirit present in many material and immaterial traces
(buildings, domes, popular districts, coffee shops, signs, writings) of a
“city-world” that, international and cosmopolitan, jealously preserves its
historical ties to Italy and Europe.



The languages of the conference are: Italian, Spanish and English.



*Literature *



*Passeurs**. Italian Literature Beyond Italian Shores (1945-1989).
Reception and Imagination*



*Scientific Committee*

Marco Carmello (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)

Alejandro Patat (Università per Stranieri di Siena, Italy)

Brigitte Poitrenaud-Lamesi (Université de Caen Normandie, France)

Thea Rimini (Université de Mons, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)

Beatrice Sica (University College of London, United Kingdom)

Nora Sforza (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Roberto Ubbidiente (Universität Humboldt zu Berlin, Germany)

The questions posed, as well as those yet-to-be pondered,  revolve around
the characteristics of the reception of literature and culture, focusing on
the transmission methodologies and instruments (texts, publishing, series,
anthologies, journals, projects, foundations, institutions), which either
aided, selected or hindered the dissemination of Italian culture outside of
Italy: furthermore, this section will consider the various figures of
“passeurs” – editors, intellectuals, writers, translations, journalists
etc. – who had a central role in defining an Italian cultural imagination
beyond the Alps.

The *Literature* section, therefore, aims to engage with the issue of
cultural mediation with the objective of creating a map of Italian culture
during the second half of the twentieth century outside of Italy. The
section will be divided by the scientific committee in panels based on
themes, authors and issues.



The proposed themes are:



·   The *Passeurs* as protagonists in both the reception and the
imagination of Italian literature of the second half of the twentieth century
outside of Italy.

·   Reception, dissemination, and translation of a work by an author of the
second half of the  twentieth century outside Italy.

·   Anthologies of Italian literature of the second half of the twentieth
century in other languages.

·   Monographic issues of magazines or magazines on the debates and texts
of Italian literature of the second half of the twentieth century.

·   Critical texts on Italian literature of the period in question written
and published outside Italy.

·   Essays and fictional texts on Italy of the second half of the twentieth
century published in other literary systems that restore, reinvent or
reinterpret contemporary Italy.



Please submit proposals (maximum 250 words) in Italian, Spanish or English,
together with a biographical note (maximum 150 words) to the Presidents of
the selection committee "Literature" section—Prof. Alejandro Patat (
[log in to unmask]) and Prof. Brigitte Poitrenaud (
[log in to unmask])—no later than 31 January, 2020. The
selection of the proposals will be made by the Scientific Committee on the
basis of scientific quality and originality as well as the thematic
relevance. The outcome of the selection process will be communicated by the
first week of March 2020. Plans are in place for the publication of a
selection of the papers in a single volume.





*Cinema and Media *



*Intersections Between Italian and Latin-American Cinema and Media:
1945-1989*



*Scienfitic Committee*

Flavia Brizio-Skov (University of Tennessee, United States)

Milly Buonanno (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)

Monica Jansen (Utrecht University, Netherlands)

Inge Lanslots (KU Leuven, Belgium)

Flavia Laviosa (Wellesley College, United States)

Mariano Mestman (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Cristina Perissinotto (University of Ottawa, Canada)

Antonio Traverso (Curtin University, Australia)

Maria Bonaria Urban (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)



Italian cinema and media are translational and transnational. They have
been imported and exported, transferred, translated, adopted, adapted and
re-interpreted. The lure of Italian cinema’s legends and the interest in
revisiting its genealogy create bridges across global artistic languages.
With the intent to revisit the history of Italian cinema and media, we are
committed to trace the evidence of their international polysemy and
polycentrism, to define the extent of their inspirational force and to
examine other cinemas and media artistic innovations resulting from their
osmosis with the Italian productions. Italian cinema and media have moved
in many directions constantly intersecting with other cinemas and media in
particular with Latin America.

Latin American and Italian cinemas enjoy a long tradition of exchange which
is best manifested in the influence of Neorealism on the Latin American
social and political cinema and also in the works of a generation of Latin
American filmmakers who studied at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinema in
Rome in the 1950s. Furthermore, the work of Italian filmmakers on Latin
American politics and literature is of considerable interest. It is also
worth remembering that, since its inception, the Latin American film
industry employed directors and actors of Italian origin while Latin
American stars acted in Italian films. More generally, all spheres of
popular culture turned out to be a fertile ground for the relations and
exchanges between the television series and the soap operas, between
the *commedia
all’italiana *(comedy Italian style) and the *spaghetti western* set in
Latin America.  Lastly, throughout the years many transnational
co-productions of film and television works took place, which contributed
to strengthen the links between Italian and Latin American visual and media
cultures.



Within such transnational framework, scholars are invited to engage in a
methodological tension between studying national cinema and media and
transnational critical approaches thus recovering these overlooked
connections and re-composing them in a historic and aesthetic map, marked
by cross-national dialogues and trans-generational exchanges in particular
in the 1945-1989 period of European and world history.

*Topics include, but are not limited to:*

·         Global Neorealisms: dialogues between Latin-American and Italian
cinemas.

·         The Centro Sperimentale di Cinema and Cinecittà: Latin American
filmmakers and writers in Rome.

·         Links between Italian political cinema and Latin America.

·         Popular genres between the two continents: the Western, the *commedia
all’italiana*, the soap operas, the television show, the photo comic,
cartoons.

·         Italian films belonging to the tradition of
Meridionalism/melodrama which see the participation of Latin American
actors.

·         The reception of Italian cinema in Latin America and the
reception of Latin American cinema in Italy.

·          “Traveling filmmakers” in Latin America.

·         The Cosmopolitanism of the Latin American film industry:
filmmakers and actors of Italian origins.

·         Transnational stardom in cinema and television.

·         The use of stereotypes and exoticisms in the Italian and Latin
American collective imaginations.

·         Audiovisual representations of Italian migration towards Latin
America and of return migrations.

·         Transnational co-productions and the adaptation to the needs of
the respective national markets of film and television productions.



Please submit proposals of 250 words (in Italian, English or Spanish) of
original and unpublished papers together with a bio-note of about 150 words
to Prof. Flavia Laviosa ([log in to unmask]), President of the
selection committee of the Cinema and Media section by 31 January 2020. The
selection criteria of the papers will be their scientific quality and their
relevance to the themes of the section. The outcome of the selection
process will be communicated by the first week of March 2020. Selected
articles will be considered for publication in a special issue of the *Journal
of Italian Cinema and Media Studies*.



*Conference sites*

The conference will be held at the Centro Italo-Argentino de Altos Estudios
and Facultad de Filosofía y Letras dell’Universidad de Buenos Aires.



*Registration*

Registration will take place after acceptance of proposals following the
review of the Scientific Committee. The registration fee is US$30 for Latin
American speakers, and US$50 for speakers from the rest of the world. The
payment method and deadline will be indicated in a subsequent communication.



*Sponsors*

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras - Universidad de Buenos Aires

Centro Italo-Argentino de Altos Estudios – Universidad de Buenos Aires

Università per Stranieri di Siena

Ambasciata d’Italia in Argentina

Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Buenos Aires

Museo de la Inmigración de Buenos Aires (Universidad de Tres de Febrero)















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Flavia Laviosa, PhD
Senior Lecturer
Department of Italian Studies
Wellesley College, USA
Editor, Book Series *Trajectories of Italian Cinema and Media *
Editor-in-Chief, *Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies *

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