Windows to Italy Lecture Series. “Quieting the Human in Premodern Italy” by Dr. Arielle Saiber (Johns Hopkins University). Wednesday, April 1, 7:00 – 8:30 pm. Argyros Forum 201.
We can barely imagine what it is really like to be another person, much less a beloved pet. How can we even begin to know what it is like to be a coastline, a tree, or a chair? How did thinkers in Renaissance Italy, famed for celebrating the dignity of the human, and even Dante before them, imagine the essence of the nonhuman? How did they write about nonhuman entities from flora to fauna, architecture to automata, demons to angels? It turns out that many Renaissance luminaries, such as Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci, along with Dante, had a great deal more empathy and love for the nonhuman than has been attributed to them. This talk looks at how “textual nonhumans”—the ones written onto a page—are fascinating expressions of hybridity and compassion and make us rethink our definitions of both Renaissance humanism and a canonical author of the late Middle Ages.
Screening of the documentary Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence with director Valerio Ciriaci and producer Antonella Di Nocera in attendance. Friday, April 17, 1-3 pm. Digital Media Arts College (DMAC), room 123.
Elvira Notari, Italy’s first woman film director, left behind only a few surviving films and fragments, and little is known about her life. In the golden age of Neapolitan silent cinema, she created around sixty films blending melodrama with realistic urban life, reaching audiences in Italy and abroad. Forced to stop filmmaking in 1930 due to Fascist censorship and personal struggles, her work largely disappeared. Now, 150 years after her birth, renewed scholarly and artistic interest is restoring her legacy, as Elvira Notari: Beyond Silence highlights her lasting impact as a pioneering filmmaker.
The Italian Research Day in the World. Monday, April 20, 12:45-2:30 pm. Beckman 401. This year’s program explores how Italy remembers and re-imagines its cultural identity. Dr. Pacchioni will discuss Federico Fellini’s evocative “creative saint” figure and its role in shaping modern artistic legacy. Advanced Italian Studies students from “ITAL 375 Masterpieces of Italian Literature” will present posters on Italian statues and symbolic heritage figures, offering fresh perspectives on how monuments preserve and transform collective memory. The event is open to the public.
“Italian Cinema, Environmental Imaginaries: Ecocritical Video Essays,” a presentation by visiting Italian graduate students, May 8, 1-3 pm. Beckman 104. A selection of video essays created by students in the Critical Writing for Cinema and Performing Arts Lab (MA in Television, Cinema and Media from Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione, IULM, Milan), explores ecocritical themes through the reuse and reinterpretation of existing film images, contributing to an evolving A–Z ecocritical dictionary, with a focus on Italian cinema past and present.