Ketty La Rocca and Women Artists of the Italian Neo-avant-garde

Tuesday 11 November 2025, 9.30 – 18.00

Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

Organised to coincide with the first UK museum exhibition dedicated to the artist’s brief yet stimulating career, Royal Holloway University of London and the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art invite 250-word proposals for cross-disciplinary papers of 20 minutes, or short work-in-progress papers of 10 minutes, taking the above themes as a starting point and exploring them in the context of art history and literary or cultural studies.

Themes for investigation might include, but are not limited to:

• New readings of La Rocca’s work
• Intermedia experimentation in Italy c. 1960–75
• Italian feminism in the 1960s and 1970s

All proposals should be sent to symposium@estorickcollection.com by 31 August 2025.

See the full Call for Paper below.

L'articolo Ketty La Rocca and Women Artists of the Italian Neo-avant-garde: Symposium CfP sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

The summer school explored the concept of transnationality in Italian comics and how both transnationality and intermediality can be used as methodological approaches for the study of comics and, more broadly, visual media. Dr Manuela Di Franco introduced the concept of transnationality as a methodological approach to the study of comics and delivered a workshop on reading and analysing a comic by Italian popular comic artist Zerocalcare. Prof Nancy Pedri (Memorial University of Newfoundland) delivered her keynote on transnationality in documentary comics, and explored intermedial storytelling practices of comics, linking the talk with Prof Clodagh Brook’s introduction to intermediality. Prof Brook’s seminar explained intermedial approaches, as well as the history of the field, and encouraged participants to reflect on how intermediality can be used in their research.  Dr Lisa Maya Quaianni Manuzzato introduced alternative comics and comics zines to show how different production practices can impact the transnational dimension of comics in Italy. The summer school ended with a workshop on comics zines creation delivered by local artists, the Bad Way Press, who showed how alternative printing works and guided participants in creating their own zines. The workshop was an opportunity to put into practice concepts addressed during the seminars. It also offered an opportunity to connect with artists.

Participants collaborated to analyse comics from a scholarly perspective, engaging in group discussions on methodological approaches in comics and visual studies. These discussions provided an opportunity to reflect on how comics integrate into the broader landscape of Italian popular culture. The summer school not only facilitated academic exploration but also fostered new academic collaborations among participants. The exchange of ideas during seminars and workshops created a dynamic environment where scholars and artists could connect, leading to the initiation of potential research projects and partnerships. The hands-on activities, particularly the zine-making workshop, allowed participants to apply theoretical concepts practically, further strengthening their understanding and appreciation of comics as a significant cultural medium. This collaborative and immersive experience emphasised the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in the study of comics and visual media, highlighting their role in contemporary cultural and academic contexts.

The summer school, alongside the Interdisciplinary Italy website remain important legacies of the Interdisciplinary Italy project, which is carried on through these channels, and through the continuing research of the Interdisciplinary Italy research group (Brook, Mussgnug, Pieri, Bellardi, Brioni, Di Franco, Lima, Patti), and the postdocs and PhD students who work with the members of the research group.

L'articolo Report of the 5th Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School (Dublin 2024) sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

Transnational Italian Comics

11-12 July 2024, Trinity College Dublin

Organised by: Manuela di Franco and Clodagh Brook

The study of comics as an interdisciplinary field has surged in recent years. Studies like Stein, Denson, and Meyer (2013) have examined how graphic narratives have overcome national boundaries and connected with global culture from a visual, literary, and cultural perspective. More recently, Comberiati, and Spadaro (2023) have investigated Italian comics and their transnationality, introducing the specificities of the Italian fumetto to a field still focused on (and dominated by) anglophone comics. The study of transnational Italian comics reveals the symbiotic relationship between national and global cultures and sheds light on the discursive power that the medium of comics had in shaping modern Italian popular culture.

The 5th Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School aims to contribute to the flourishing field of Comics Studies and actively engage with the study of Italian fumetti and their global cultural exchange. The study of Italian comics allows for a reflection on how transnational interactions can shape national culture and create a cultural product that combines both local and global contents.

Through lectures and hands-on workshops, the next summer school enables you to acquire the tools to interpret comics, understand their transnationality, and approach Italian popular culture from an overlooked perspective. By the end of the summer school, you will have acquired hands-on experience in the analysis of comics and a deeper understanding of how Italian culture has been shaped by an increasingly globalised context.

We welcome PhD candidates and Postdocs working in any field of Italian culture.

The Summer School is entirely free of charge.

Confirmed keynote speaker: Prof Nancy Pedri (Memorial University of Newfoundland)

To apply, please send a 150-250 word motivation statement and short bio (100 words) to Manuela.difranco@ugent.be by 30 April.

This Summer School has receive funds from the SIS and the EU.

In the PDF below, the full Workshop Programme:

L'articolo 5th Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School (Trinity College Dublin, 11-12 July 2024) sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

The two days saw a number of interactive workshops led by our keynotes speakers. Prof Emma Bond (Oxford), in a workshop entitled ‘The Museum as Interdisciplinary Space: Concepts and Practices’, drew on her extensive work with museum practitioners and curators to invite us to think about the museum space as fundamentally interdisciplinary and the place where theory and practice come into creative encounter with different communities of practice. Prof Charles Burdett, in his keynote lecture ‘Transnational Time: Approaches to Temporality in Research’, introduced us to the most recent developments of of his seminal work on transnationalizing Italian Studies highlighting the significance of understanding and promoting our discipline within the broader context of modern languages. Dr Adele Bardazzi (Utrecht) took on the challenge of AI in relation to poetry; her talk ‘Poetry’s Ends: Artificial Intelligence and Contemporary Italian Poetry’ reflected on experimental poetic practice, the (many) current limitations and flaws of AI in the field, and the expansion of the material and intermedial boundaries of poetic practice in twentieth and twenty-century Italy. Dr Julia Caterina Hartley and Roberto Binetti delivered a dynamic workshop on impact and dissemination which cast light onto a key concern in British universities.

The growth in importance of taking academic research to wider audiences has been a seminal shift in the way research is evaluated and conceived in Britain. It has led to a much greater engagement with communities and the wider public. Differentiating between impact and dissemination remains a key concern, guiding, from the very beginning, the way we plan how our research will travel beyond academia.

Networking and thinking proactively about the pipelines of interdisciplinary talent into our discipline has always been at the forefront of our project and an integral part of the Summer School programme. This has taken different shapes, from providing an open space for interdisciplinary exchange to sharing ideas and practical advice on career progression. The latter was a particular focus of the 2023 Summer School.

Prof Simon Gilson led an interactive session on pathways for PhD and early career researchers which mapped past and present routes into academic positions and industry opportunities for researchers. We run a CV clinic in which we gave one-to-one guidance and an outsider’s view that brought into sharp relief the need to be mindful of contexts and culture, and the need for careful tailoring of one’s profile to suit diverse institutions. The second day opened with a practical session on grants and fellowships.Prof Giuliana Pieri (Royal Holloway University of London) encouraged participants to think like a reviewer and interrogate one’s research project as a dispassionate outsider, who will invariably be less critical than ourselves in evaluating our work but whose work of evaluation needs to be made easier, with clear signposting and scaffolding of information. The day ended with an exhilarating session: in the elevator pitch participants took it into turn to deliver a one-minute elevator pitch on their current research project. We used the rehearsal room technique; each participant delivered their very brief speech, and received feedback on delivery, content, pace, and tone.

L'articolo Report of the 4th Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School (London 2023) sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

L'articolo Conference ‘Il Gruppo 63 e le arti’ (16-17 November, Berne) sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

Please see below the program of the 2023 Annual Conference of the Associazione svizzera di letteratura generale e comparata (ASLGC/SGAVL) titled Sull’orlo del visibile: Letterature comparate e visualità (November 16-17, Lugano – Università della Svizzera Italiana).

L'articolo Conference ‘Sull’orlo del visibile: Letterature comparate e visualità’ (Nov. 16-17 – Lugano) sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

Italian Studies in Interdisciplinary Spaces, Transnational Times, and Digital Minds

L'articolo 4th Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School (London, 15–16 September 2023) sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

NON SOLO MUSE 2023 CONFERENCE

These Lovely Sheaves of Poetry: A Conference-Tribute to Patrizia Cavalli

London, 15-16 December 2023

With the support of

Trinity College Dublin | Royal-Holloway University of London | Interdisciplinary Italy | Italian Cultural Institute London

Submission deadline: 23 June 2023

Conference website: https://www.nonsolomuse.com/#conference

This conference results from the ongoing work of Non solo muse: panorama della poesia Italiana contemporanea, curated by Adele Bardazzi and Roberto Binetti since 2020 when it begun its first project: a podcast series and an edited volume collecting a series of interviews to contemporary women’s poets writing in Italian (now in print and forthcoming with Perrone editore).

This conference is part of Non solo muse’s objective to held an yearly conference focused on women’s poets in contemporary Italy. For the first conference we will focus on the works of Patrizia Cavalli (Todi, 1947 – Rome, 2022), one of the most significant authors of contemporary Italy and who was initially planned to be involved in the documentary/podcast series but whose premature departure prevented it.

L'articolo CfP Non solo muse 2023 Conference: A Conference-Tribute to Patrizia Cavalli sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

Venue: Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) 1-3 September, 2022

Organising committee: Prof Clodagh Brook (TCD), Dr Cecilia Brioni (TCD)

Scientific Council: Dr Adele Bardazzi (TCD), Dr Marco Bellardi (TCD), Prof Clodagh Brook (TCD), Dr Cecilia Brioni (TCD), Dr Eleonora Lima (TCD), Prof Florian Mussgnug (UCL), Dr Emanuela Patti (University of Edinburgh), Prof Giuliana Pieri (RHUL)

The 6th conference of the International Society for Intermedial Studies focused on concepts of ‘inbetweenness’ and ‘moving across’. These two spatial metaphors capture the tension between stasis and fluidity that underlies all intermediality. The need to map these shifting spaces, to chart directions, and to see where, and how, these in-between zones connect to other neighbouring spaces was addressed by many of our delegates.

As intermedial ‘in-betweenness’ becomes a mainstream, rather than marginal, phenomenon, and as academic disciplines themselves have become more fluid, this was an exciting opportunity for international researchers to explore and re-explore this territory together. The conference was structured by 4 main themes which enabled us to return to some very familiar ground, as well as to bring intermedial questioning to less familiar areas of inquiry:

• In-between and across disciplines
• In-between and across geographies, ecologies and cultures
• In-between and across arts
• In-between and across technologies

The conference, with its attention to the geographical and postcolonial terms ‘Mappings and contact zones’, also enabled us to spotlight intermedial theories and practices arising from Modern Languages, drawing on the political, and national, aspects of border crossings.

The conference was attended by over 100 international delegates, with representation from universities in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and the US.

The first keynote was given by Ravi Sundaram, Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSCS), Delhi (India). Entitled ‘Paper, Intermedia and the Political’, it proved to be a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion of the place of paper in the era of social media platforms: what happens when millions of paper documents circulate as digital screen shots? The lecture explored the place of paper in populist and right-wing nationalist reconfigurations of the political aesthetic.

The second keynote was provided by Nicola Camerlenghi, Associate Professor at Dartmouth College (US). ‘Virtual Presence: Between and Beyond Medieval Artistic Media,’ gave us a marvellous insight into an immersive and navigable diachronic virtual reality model of the Basilica of St Paul in Rome. He stressed the potential of this technology for more robust understanding of cultural artefacts, greater kaleidoscopic thinking, and increased cross-disciplinary fluidity.

The conference was marked by the sudden, tragic loss of Lars Elleström – founder and leader of ISIS and Professor of Comparative Literature at Linnaeus University – who passed in December 2021. Many delegates paid tribute to the intellectual and personal affect that Lars had had on them, and a plenary roundtable and a panel were dedicated to commemorating his life and work. Paying tribute to Lars Elleström in her closing remarks Anne Gjelsvik drew attention to the words ‘new directions’ in the conference title. Anne said that the conference had been a fitting tribute to Lars, and that that the Intermedial Society would not halt, but would proceed after his passing towards new directions. Research internationally would continue to be influenced by his seminal theoretical work.

Our warm thanks go to Bord Fáilte Éireann, who generously sponsored this conference, to Trinity College, and especially SLLCS, for supports, and to Trinity catering for providing excellent sustainable options. We especially thank the Interdisciplinary Italy research group for their very concrete work in shaping the conference, the ISIS board, and all our wonderful attendees and speakers.

L'articolo Report on 6th Conference of The International Society for Intermedial Studies (ISIS) sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

Through sessions combining short talks with interactive activities, we aimed to tackle three questions:

• How does co-creating research work in practice?
• How can we as researchers think creatively about opportunities for collaboration in, and emerging from, our own research?
• How can co-creation be leveraged to support us in winning research funding grants?

Clodagh Brook’s talk, which opened the Summer School, discussed different models of co-creation that could be applied to our research, by underlining the non-linearity of the process of co-creation and the advantages of bringing collaborators on board right at the start of a research project.

The subsequent sessions were divided onto three main areas, namely relations with education, industry and the arts. The sessions on education, led by Cecilia Brioni and Giuliana Pieri, discussed experiences of collaboration with undergraduates and secondary-school students, namely Giuliana’s ‘Interart in Schools’ project and Cecilia’s project to bring her research on YouTube into a collaborative university classroom. The session on industry was led by Martina Mendola, a recent graduate of Trinity with a PhD in Italian who now works for Accenture. She discussed her experience as a researcher in the industry and how relevant our work on identity can be in an industry setting. The two sessions led by Derek Duncan and Simone Brioni respectively dealt with co-creation of outputs with artists. Derek shared with us his experience of collaborating with photographer Mario Badagliacca for their book, Italy is Out. Simone talked about his documentary, Oltre I bordi, which uncovered Italy’s fascist-era colonialisation through a box of family photographs.

The second part of each session was designed to encourage participants to experiment with different kinds of creative collaborative activities, including designing a module with co-creative elements, making a pop-up exhibition, brainstorming research questions using post-its, discussing how to collaborate with artists as early career researchers, and creating the storyline for a documentary.

The final activity of the Summer School was a research sandpit, where participants were asked to work in groups to write the rationale for a research grant and identify the intended outputs for a collaborative research project that would fit each participant’s research interests and involve a co-creation element. The three groups produced three projects: ‘Before Ferrante. Women Writers between Visibility and Invisibility’, ‘The Aest(h)etics of memory in Urban Spaces’ and ‘Minority Engagement in the Metaverse: Voice and Visibility’. Results of the sandpit were then presented to a panel of judges, from Trinity’s Research Office and Trinity’s Tangent: Ideas Work Space, who decided the winning project. The prize was supported by the SIS.

Overall, the Summer School was very well received. Participants particularly appreciated its learning-through-doing approach that enabled them to experiment with different techniques of, and approaches to, co-creation. Our speakers actively participated in all activities, providing useful feedback on the ideas that were shared in the small group activities.

The Summer School enabled us all to carve out two days to reimagine our research and teaching in a more collaborative and impactful way.

L'articolo Report of the 3rd Interdisciplinary Italy Summer School: Collaboration and Co-Creation in Italian Studies sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.