Italian Studies at Notre Dame announces the “giornata di studi” Italian Identities: Dialects, Minorities, Literatures. This one-day conference will investigate the connections between the modern anthropological and sociological context of Italy and the use of dialects. The conference will focus in particular on how literature has responded to both the ever-present issue of the uneven economic development and the crisis of the so-called Italian identity in the last thirty years. In order to achieve its goals, our one-day symposium will be divided in three main panels, each one dedicated to exploring the topic from a specific – linguistic, socio-anthropological and more purely literary – perspective.
“Italian Identities: Dialects, Minorities, Literatures”
March 23, 2012
9:00 am – 10:30 am
Opening Lecture: Franco Brevini (University of Bergamo, Italy)
Chair: Joseph Francese (MSU)
10:30 am – 10:45 am
Coffee break
10:45 am – 12:15 am
LINGUISTIC FOCUS: Dialects & Orality
- Edward Tuttle (UCLA)
- Luisa Del Giudice (Independent Scholar)
Chair: Theodore Cachey (ND)
12:15 pm – 2:00pm
Lunch
2:00 pm – 3:30pm
SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL FOCUS: Migrations and Minority Languages
- Maurizio Albahari (ND)
- Giuseppe Marci (University of Cagliari, Italy)
Chair: Joseph Buttigieg (ND)
3:30 pm – 3:45 pm
Coffee Break.
3:45 pm – 5:15 pm
LITERARY FOCUS: Dialect poetry and multilingual prose
- Luigi Bonaffini (CUNY)
- Gigliola Sulis (University of Leeds, UK)
Chair: John Welle (ND)
5:15pm – 7:30pm
Reception/Dinner
7:30pm – 9:00pm
Closing lecture: Gian Mario Villalta (Independent Scholar and Italian poet)
Final discussion and conclusion – Chair: Joseph Francese (MSU)
For more information, contact Damiano Benvegnù (dbenvegn@nd.edu)