Department of Modern and Classical Languages

Fourth Annual Robert Dombroski Italian Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

© Michelangelo Miani 1982

Crossing Boundaries

Perspectives on the Fantastic in Italian Arts and Cultures

Keynote Speaker: TBA

September 22-23 , 2007

University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

The Fantastic has traditionally been a source of new epistemologies for it allows a crossing of the threshold between diverse realities. The Dantesque journey and the Ariostean flight, for example, represent models of voyages to other worlds that offer new paths through the meanderings of existence. The present age of ontological doubt has seen an increasing recourse to the various manifestations of this heritage and thus cultural expressions in modern Italy continue to present fantasies that unveil “truths” and allow for a re-examination of Italian Fantastic traditions.

Comparative and interdisciplinary analyses pertinent to Italian Studies are welcome and may encompass literature, film studies, Italian-American studies, history, art history, philosophy, anthropology, music, political science, religion, gender studies and any other relevant discipline.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to the following:

*Old and New Cultural Traditions of the Fantastic: in Literature (from Dante, Boccaccio, Ariosto and Campanella to Tarchetti, Deledda, Bontempelli, Pirandello, Buzzati and Tabucchi), in Cinema (from Fregoli, Pastrone and Blasetti to Fellini, Bava, Ferreri, Argento, Avati and Salvatores), in Folklore (Carlo Levi, Perodi, Tozzi), Anthropology (Di Nola, De Martino), Visual and Plastic Arts (Boccioni, De Chirico, Clerici), Sequential Art (Pazienza, Sclavi).

*Theorizing the Fantastic: Italian Theorists of the Fantastic (Vico and the Universali Fantastici, Marinetti and Futurism, Ceserani, Branca and the Universes of the Fantastic, Calvino, Petronio, Dorfles, Solmi, Eco, Spagnoletti and Evangelisti); Theories of the Fantastic Applied to Italian Literature and Culture (the Freudian Uncanny and Oneiric, the Todorovian Fantastic, Suvin and Metamorphoses of the Fantastic, Jackson and the Subversive Fantastic, Jameson and Archaeologies of the Fantastic).

*Forms of the Fantastic: The Utopian (the Dystopian and the Eutopian), the Uchronic, the Political and Geographical Fantastic, the Villain and Expressions of Evil, the Fantastic across Time and Space, the Metaphysical and/or Spiritual, the Mythic and the Legendary, Entrapments of the Fantastic, the Horrific, Witchcraft, the Monstrous, the Supernatural, the Surreal, Extrapolation, the Collective Imaginary, the Subconscious, the Other and the Doppelgänger, the Bestial, the Grotesque, the Fantastic as Flight, Magic Realism, the Baroque and Maraviglia, il Fantastico siciliano, the Holocaust and the Fantastic.

*Politics of the Fantastic: The Myths of Immigration, El Dorado and Lamerica, the Imaginary and the Regime, the Imaginary as Resistance, the Fantastic and Gender, the Exotic (Orientalism and Neo-Orientalism), Postcolonial Fantastic, Italian Americans and the Myth of laPatria, the Fantastic and New Italians.

Comparative and interdisciplinary approaches pertinent to Italian Studies are welcome.