{"id":2471,"date":"2025-06-08T02:15:46","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T09:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/?p=2338"},"modified":"2025-10-10T15:21:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:21:24","slug":"from-sorrento-to-california-a-semester-of-epic-poetry-pedagogy-and-cultural-exchange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/2025\/06\/08\/from-sorrento-to-california-a-semester-of-epic-poetry-pedagogy-and-cultural-exchange\/","title":{"rendered":"From Sorrento to California: A Semester of Epic Poetry, Pedagogy, and Cultural Exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Professor Corrado Confalonieri\u2019s 2025 began in Germany, where on January 14 he was invited to give a lecture<\/a> on the concept of time in Renaissance epic poetry at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universit\u00e4t Erlangen-N\u00fcrnberg. The following day, he presented<\/a> his book Torquato Tasso e il desiderio di unit\u00e0<\/em> (2022) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit\u00e4t M\u00fcnchen.<\/p>\n

Upon returning to California directly from Germany, Dr. Confalonieri prepared and taught two courses during the Spring 2025 semester: an intermediate Italian language course and an advanced course, also in Italian, on the history and forms of theater. Both courses concluded with student projects in which participants created short films, allowing them to explore creative writing and acting, as well as to apply their understanding of regional nuances in Italian, including words and accents in local dialects studied throughout the semester.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Even after his trip to Germany, Professor Confalonieri\u2019s semester remained full of commitments for conferences and presentations, both at Chapman and at other institutions. At Chapman, he collaborated in organizing and participated in several events sponsored by the Ferrucci Institute, including Stephanie Malia Hom\u2019s lecture for the \u201cWindows to Italy<\/a>\u201d series. On the same day, Professor Hom also visited Professor Confalonieri\u2019s Italian theater course for a discussion of her work on Italia in Miniatura<\/em>, a theme park in Rimini that explores miniature representations of Italy. Other events included the screening of Fred Kuwornu\u2019s documentary We Were Here: The Untold Story of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe<\/a><\/em>, and the \u201cItalian Perspective\u201d event, which this year focused on the theme \u201cSpace and Culture<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, Professor Confalonieri participated in the RSA annual meeting in Boston<\/a>, presenting a paper on the theme of ruins in Tasso\u2019s Gerusalemme Liberata<\/em>. His presentation was part of one of four panels and a roundtable that he co-organized with colleagues from other universities. The sessions were well attended and featured around twenty presentations exploring various aspects of Tasso\u2019s work and its reception.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In April, Professor Confalonieri introduced the writer Andrea Bajani at Chapman University as part of the 2025 Reading Series<\/a> organized by the John Fowler Center for Creative Writing, directed by Mark Axelrod. On this occasion, he focused primarily on Bajani\u2019s latest novel, L\u2019anniversario<\/em><\/a> (2025), which has not yet been translated into English but was recently shortlisted for the Premio Strega 2025<\/a>, Italy\u2019s most prestigious literary award. The novel has already won the Premio Strega Giovani<\/a>, awarded by a jury of readers aged 16 to 18.<\/p>\n

Also in April, Confalonieri presented a paper on the reception of Ariosto\u2019s and Tasso\u2019s poems in popular music at the annual conference<\/a> of the American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI) at Princeton University. The following day, before returning to the West Coast, he was invited to participate in a workshop on Tasso at Duke University in North Carolina, alongside colleagues from Duke, Wake Forest, NYU, Yale, and Bryn Mawr.<\/p>\n

After the end of classes in late May, Professor Confalonieri made one final trip dedicated to Tasso\u2014this time to Sorrento, Italy (Tasso\u2019s birthplace), where he presented a paper on the late 18th-century visual translation of Gerusalemme Liberata<\/em> at the conference \u201cThe Wonder of Italy: Torquato Tasso\u2019s Legacy in International Culture<\/a>\u201d<\/em>, organized by Georgetown University and the Sant\u2019Anna Institute.<\/p>\n

In addition to working on various essays and reviews scheduled for publication in the summer and fall, Professor Confalonieri also joined the organizing committee for the upcoming series \u201cEngaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Environment and Building Resilient Futures<\/a>,<\/em>\u201d hosted by the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. As part of this program, he will teach a first-year seminar in the fall titled To Call You \u2018Nature\u2019: Italian Literary Ecologies<\/em>, and in October he will host Martin Puchner<\/a> (Harvard University), author of Literature for a Changing Planet<\/a> (Princeton University Press, 2022), for a conversation open to the public. Also in the fall, in addition to teaching another Intermediate Italian course, he will help organize the annual meeting of the Renaissance Conference of Southern California<\/a> (RCSC), which will be held at Chapman on November 1 and will conclude with a film screening sponsored by the Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Corrado Confalonieri\u2019s 2025 began in Germany, where on January 14 he was invited to give a lecture on the concept of time in Renaissance epic poetry at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universit\u00e4t Erlangen-N\u00fcrnberg. The following day, he presented his book Torquato Tasso … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/pacchioni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}