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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251030T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251030T180000
DTSTAMP:20260508T212754
CREATED:20250912T182432Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251007T202019Z
UID:10000387-1761841800-1761847200@italianstudies.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Bramante’s Obsolescence: Drawing Architecture in Time
DESCRIPTION:Against dominant interpretations that equate Western classicism with permanence and durability\, the work of Donato Bramante—unanimously acknowledged as one of the founders of this tradition—points in a different direction. Seen through the eyes of his contemporaries and across a broader temporal frame\, his method demonstrates a consciously transformational approach to construction: one that values the potential of impermanence and exposes architecture to a constant process of mutation. Especially in his late projects\, which responded to the ever-changing ruined landscape of Rome\, time itself became a material of design. This lecture will explore Bramante’s shockingly open-ended approach\, focusing on drawings that responded to the transient nature of his architecture and the new notions of authorship these experiments produced. \nDario Donetti is a historian of Renaissance art and architecture\, whose research examines the interplay between drawing practice\, authorship\, and the materiality of the building site\, with a secondary interest in the twentieth-century avant-gardes. Trained at the Scuola Normale Superiore\, he has held positions at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz\, Columbia University\, the University of Chicago\, and Villa Medici. He is Associate Professor at the University of Verona and currently the Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow at the National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. \nImage: Domenico Aimo da Varignana\, Project for the Reconstruction of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican\, after Bramante and Peruzzi\, ca. 1520–30. New York\, The Pierpont Morgan Library\, Codex Mellon\, fol. 70v. \n 
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/bramantes-obsolescence-drawing-architecture-in-time/
LOCATION:016 Robertson Hall
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/144201v_0142-0143-scaled.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250925T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250925T180000
DTSTAMP:20260508T212754
CREATED:20250822T201630Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250822T201827Z
UID:10000383-1758817800-1758823200@italianstudies.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Pulcinella in Arcadia
DESCRIPTION:Pulcinella\, the Neapolitan clown of the commedia dell’arte tradition\, took to the streets in Rome in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was a star on popular stages\, and a Carnival emblem for all to emulate. He also\, in the early eighteenth century\, climbed the Gianicolo hill\, where a group of learned men had tried to set themselves apart from the city scene down below. This was the sede of the Arcadian Academy\, the classicizing institution that shunned all things baroque\, all things popular\, all things grotesque. \nMy talk centers on the appearance of Pulcinella—the baroque king of the grotesque\, the quintessentially popular figure—on the Arcadian stage. Carlo Sigismondo Capece\, an upstanding Arcadian\, wrote dozens of pulcinellate\, or Pulcinella plays. Capece’s Pulcinella\, as part of a Plautine lineage of food-obsessed parasites\, consistently fumbles foreign words and recasts them in culinary terms. I argue that Capece deploys the Neapolitan zanni as a marker of linguistic difference\, pointing to the misunderstandings and language barriers that\, in Arcadian terms\, defined the city and its vulgar populace. This talk is based on research from my recent monograph\, Pulcinella’s Brood. \n  \nKaren T. Raizen is an Assistant Professor of Italian and Music and Director of the Italian Program at Bard College. Her research focuses on Italian theater of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her first monograph\, Pulcinella’s Brood: Popular Culture in the Enlightenment (University of Toronto Press\, 2024)\, traces the transnational arc of the Neapolitan clown Pulcinella\, exploring how the figure engaged with questions that defined the Enlightenment in Europe. She has also edited a volume\, Pier Paolo Pasolini Framed and Unframed: A Thinker for the Twenty-First Century\, for Bloomsbury Press (2019). Her publications have appeared in I Tatti Studies\, Modern Language Notes\, Quaderni d’Italianistica\, Italica\, and Musical Quarterly. She also works as an editor and translator.
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/pulcinella-in-arcadia/
LOCATION:Corwin Hall 127
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/image-for-poster_Raizen.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250306T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250306T180000
DTSTAMP:20260508T212754
CREATED:20250220T213447Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250224T175127Z
UID:10000318-1741278600-1741284000@italianstudies.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:The Space Between: Women\, Wisdom\, and the Poetics of Spiritual Self-Fashioning in Early Modern Italy
DESCRIPTION:This talk emerges from my current book project on poetics of piety in early modern Italy\, a study of the relations between spiritual life and lyric expression in the long sixteenth century that uncovers and elucidates the subtle but diffuse presence of an incarnational poetics and an interstitial conception of identity at the heart of Italian devotional verse. In this talk\, I present the salient findings from this research through an examination of selected poems by three women writers: Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547)\, an influential\, reform-minded poet of religious verse who approached the Scriptures as spiritually efficacious devotional texts; Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653)\, poet\, philosopher and prolific author of devotional works for whom female saints and images of them represented instrumental means of spiritual transformation; and Semidea Poggi (1560s?–1637)\, canoness\, herbalist\, and one-time practitioner of magic whose sensually immersive devotional verses uniting the concrete and the conceptional blur the distinction between physical and spiritual\, real and imaginary\, and make mystery present. \n  \nSarah Rolfe Prodan is Assistant Professor of French and Italian and William H. & Frances Green Faculty Fellow in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. A scholar of early modern Italy\, her research centers on the lyric and on relations among cultural forms\, philosophy\, and religion in the period. Her publications include the award-winning monograph Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality\, Poetry and Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge University Press\, 2014) and the co-edited volume Friendship and Sociability in Premodern Europe: Contexts\, Concepts\, and Expressions (Toronto: CRRS\, 2014). Her current book project on poetics of piety in early modern Italy considers the ways in which male and female poets of devotional verse engaged the Word in text\, image\, and imagination in the long sixteenth century.
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/the-space-between-women-wisdom-and-the-poetics-of-spiritual-self-fashioning-in-early-modern-italy/
LOCATION:Green Hall 0-S-6
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/Sarah-Prodan-image-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250219T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250219T180000
DTSTAMP:20260508T212754
CREATED:20250129T203407Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T151359Z
UID:10000308-1739982600-1739988000@italianstudies.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:A Collective of One: Umberto Boccioni’s I/We and Photography before Futurism
DESCRIPTION:Sometime between 1905 and 1907\, the artist Umberto Boccioni stepped into a photographic cabinet to sit for a “multigraph”: a fivefold (self-)portrait created with the aid of an unseen mirror.  Appealing to the general public as the twentieth century progressed\, the format would also become a visual calling-card for several avant-gardists.  Yet Boccioni’s multigraph stands at odds with his subsequent artistic trajectory as the chief theorist of Italian Futurism; he would in fact eventually crusade against the inclusion of photography in the movement’s ever-expanding repertoire of media. \n  \nTo what extent may we read back into this image the questions that would preoccupy Boccioni and his peers in painting\, sculpture\, and other formats after 1910?  For\, the image anticipates various paradoxes central to Futurism’s theoretical enterprise: externalized multiplicity and singular insight; an air of scientism and its unlikely proximity to the occult; the cold objectification of the self and an investment in visionary subjectivity.   Taking Boccioni’s image as a touchstone\, this talk examines Futurism’s fraught attitudes toward positivism and its perceived opposites. \n  \nAra H. Merjian is Professor of Italian Studies at New York University\, where he is Director of Graduate Studies and an affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts\, the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies\, and Comparative Literature.  He is the author and editor of several books\, including Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche\, Paris Modernism (Yale University Press\, 2014; MIT Press 2027)\, Against the Avant-Garde: Pier Paolo Pasolini\, Contemporary Art and Neocapitalism (University of Chicago Press\, 2020)\, and Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Painting (Verso\, 2023).  He has just published two new volumes\, Fragments of Totality: Futurism\, Fascism\, and the Sculptural Avant-Garde (Yale University Press) and Futurism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press)\, and is finishing a volume due out in the fall: Beat\, Black\, Queer: Pasolini’s ‘Other America’\, to be published with Verso.  Before arriving at NYU\, he taught at Harvard\, Stanford\, and the San Quentin State Penitentiary College Education Program.
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/a-collective-of-one-umberto-boccionis-i-we-and-photography-before-futurism/
LOCATION:Louis A. Simpson International Building – A71
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/Boccioni-I-We.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241113T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241113T180000
DTSTAMP:20260508T212754
CREATED:20241023T135652Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241023T135652Z
UID:10000272-1731515400-1731520800@italianstudies.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:The Transnational Samurai: Nation-building and Community Searching in the Twentieth Century Italian Far-right
DESCRIPTION:This talk explores the origin and development of the Italian fascination with Japanese samurais in the aftermath of the 1904 Russo-Japanese War and the rise of a young\, nationalistic movement in Italy. Far from representing a simple\, exotic\, and monolithic image\, the samurai warrior inspired multiple adaptations ranging from the loyal soldier to the spiritual interpreter of an ancient ethic. However\, all these interpretations shared an attempt to translate bushidō (“the way of the warrior”) in light of the predominant foundational myth of Italian nationalism. \nThe talk will be followed by a conversation between Michele Monserrati and Federico Marcon\, Professor of East Asian Studies and History\, and Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. \n  \nMichele Monserrati is an Assistant Professor of Italian Studies and World Literatures at Smith College\, with varied and interrelated interests in diaspora\, mobility\, and environmental humanities. Through his research\, he examines the cultural formation of Italian spaces and communities beyond the peninsula to investigate how they redefine the place of Italian culture in the world. In his most recent book Searching for Japan: 20th Century Italy’s Fascination with Japanese Culture (Liverpool University Press\, 2020)\, Monserrati argues that a unique set of historical circumstances\, which projected both Italy and Japan as late-comers on the modern world stage\, allowed Italy to develop a “fascination” with a model of nation-building and empire-formation that\, like Italy itself\, was challenging the existing world order. \n  \nMonserrati is currently immersed in a new book project\, provisionally titled Familiar Grapes. Mapping Italian Migrants\, Winemaking\, and Cultural Landscapes\, the first monograph to examine how the cultural practice of winemaking and the representation of the landscapes of vines inscribe Italian migrants into a specific class and racial order. He has published articles on transnational relations between Italy and Japan\, Cold War literature\, and Italian colonialism in various peer-reviewed journals\, including “California Italian Studies\,” “Forum Italicum\,” “Italian Studies\,” and “Modern Italy.”
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/the-transnational-samurai-nation-building-and-community-searching-in-the-twentieth-century-italian-far-right/
LOCATION:Green Hall 0-S-9
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/harukichi-shimoi-with-a-piece-of-samurai_-002.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240424T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240424T180000
DTSTAMP:20260508T212754
CREATED:20240206T190747Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240415T193147Z
UID:10000147-1713976200-1713981600@italianstudies.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Dangerous Flight: Amerindian Featherwork\, Michelangelo\, and the Violence of Natural History
DESCRIPTION:In Michelangelo’s drawings for Tommaso de’ Cavalieri the motifs of wings and feathers have long been understood to serve metaphorical ends\, alluding simultaneously to Neoplatonic concepts of divine ascent and the dangerous allure of mortal desire.  In this paper\, I propose that this double-edged hermeneutic\, deeply informed by Dantean and Ovidian poetics of flight\, could have also structured the early modern viewing and interpretation of Amerindian featherwork.  Both types of objects—the drawings (and their many copies in a wide range of media) and featherwork from the Americas—were collected and circulated among the same elite circles of patrons.  Cavalieri himself possessed featherwork admired by the great Bolognese naturalist\, Ulisse Aldrovandi.  Characterized by brilliant colours and scintillating surfaces\, these imported objects enacted an almost otherworldly material transmutation that was particularly well-suited to those that portrayed Christian images.  Yet the peril of desire and physicality of violence aestheticized in Michelangelo’s works is made manifest in the very fabrication of these objects.  Crafted from the feathers of hummingbirds\, their manufacture came about from destruction\, just as the burgeoning pursuit of natural history was predicated upon similar processes of both literal and epistemological dismemberment. \n  \nJessica Maratsos is currently Assistant Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern Italian Studies at Cambridge University.  Before taking up the post in Cambridge\, she taught at a variety of institutions\, including the American University of Paris\, Columbia University\, and Harvard University.  She has published on early modern art\, religion\, and literature in numerous edited volumes and journals\, including the Sixteenth Century Journal\, Art History\, and The Art Bulletin.  Her first monograph\, Pontormo and the Art of Devotion in Renaissance Italy\, was published in 2021 with Cambridge University Press.
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/dangerous-flight-amerindian-featherwork-michelangelo-and-the-violence-of-natural-history/
LOCATION:Louis A. Simpson International Building – A71
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Princeton-Image-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240304T163000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240304T180000
DTSTAMP:20260508T212754
CREATED:20240215T214217Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240215T214217Z
UID:10000148-1709569800-1709575200@italianstudies.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:Italian Literature in the Nuclear Age (LECTURE CANCELLED)
DESCRIPTION:Lecture has been cancelled. \n            \n 
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/italian-literature-in-the-nuclear-age-lecture-cancelled/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20231115T163000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20231115T180000
DTSTAMP:20260508T212754
CREATED:20231026T191618Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231113T191826Z
UID:10000227-1700065800-1700071200@italianstudies.princeton.edu
SUMMARY:What is the Value of Literature in the Internet Age? Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium as a Guide to Meaningful Digital Communication
DESCRIPTION:In his Six Memos for the Next Millennium\, Italo Calvino offers a critical synthesis of his work\, a rich appraisal of the Western literary tradition\, and a forward-looking vision of the value of literature in the 21st century. In this presentation\, Dr. Luca Cottini investigates Calvino’s Lezioni americane as a prophetic description of the internet age\, and a complex reflection on literature as the ultimate value creator in digital communication. \nCalvino’s concepts anticipate the key features of social media (e.g.\, rapidity and multiplicity)\, visual branding (e.g.\, lightness and visibility)\, and content marketing (e.g.\, exactness and consistency). Calvino’s metaphors (e.g.\, the cloud\, the net\, and the chase) outline the core epistemology of the internet and a new ethics of complexity\, where literature and  storytelling act as creators and multipliers of meaning. Lastly\, Calvino’s idea of literature as an “open encyclopedia\,” and of writing as a dynamic vector connecting invisible points prefigure the polyhedral nature of digital communication and knowledge sharing. \nIn light of these considerations\, the reading of Calvino’s Lezioni aspires to provide a novel perspective on digital communication\, a diverse interdisciplinary approach to Italian Studies\, and a renewed reflection on the status of literature in contemporary academia. \n  \nLuca Cottini is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Villanova University\, and the creator of Italian Innovators\, a YouTube channel exploring Italy’s approach to innovation and entrepreneurship through profiles\, interviews\, and lessons (on fashion\, food\, technology\, sports\, music\, and engineering). \nTrained in Italy (University of Milan\, BA) and the United States (University of Notre Dame\, MA; Harvard University\, PhD)\, his research and courses touch upon Italian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries; the intersection of arts and business; and the cultural history of industry\, advertising\, and design in Italy. \nHis books include a monograph on 20th century writer Italo Calvino (I passaggi obbligati di Italo Calvino\, Longo 2017)\, an award-winning study on the origins of Italian design (The Art of Objects. The Birth of Italian Industrial Culture\, 1878-1928\, University of Toronto Press\, 2018)\, and a recent biography of chocolate storyteller and entrepreneur Michele Ferrero (Il fabbricante di cioccolato. Nel mondo di Michele Ferrero\, Piemme 2023). \nHis Italian Innovators project (YouTube\, Spotify\, LinkedIn\, and Instagram) bridges academic scholarship and storytelling\, creative and strategic thinking\, as well as Italian and American perspectives on the processes and values underlying meaningful innovation. The channel (bit.ly/italianinnovators) has become a virtual piazza for academics\, students\, designers\, and entrepreneurs across the world (more info at www.italianinnovators.com). His work has been featured in national Italian media (La Stampa\, Sole 24 ore\, Canale 5) and his expertise in content creation and digital communication made him a business mentor and a guest speaker at numerous academic and corporate venues.
URL:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/event/what-is-the-value-of-literature-in-the-internet-age-calvinos-six-memos-for-the-next-millennium-as-a-guide-to-meaningful-digital-communication/
LOCATION:Louis A. Simpson International Building – A71
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://italianstudies.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/10/Profilo-Luca.jpg
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