Arts - 3 Maggio 2017 Illuminating Seventeenth-Century Italy with Meredith Ray Perhaps the best-known figure of seventeenth-century Italy is Galileo Galilei. What is not as widely known, though, is that Galileo exchanged letters with natural philosopher and poet Margherita Sarrocchi. In Margherita Sarrocchi’s Letters to Galileo: Astronomy, Astrology, and Poetics in Seventeenth-Century Italy, Professor Meredith Ray of the University of Delaware presents for the first time […]
Arts - 1 Maggio 2017 Sandro Veronesi: New Yorkers are Today’s Romans Adapted from Sandro Veronesi’s book, the show "Non Dirlo", coming to New York this week, offers a new interpretation of the “Gospel According to Mark.” The author defines it as an action story and explains: “Mark has the hardest task, that is to talk to a population that is not spiritual at all, like the Romans.”
Arts - 19 Aprile 2017 Heather Webb explores personae in Dante’s Commedia Dante navigates the afterlife by speaking with the persons that populate it, his interactions gradually shaping his concept of humanity and personhood. Souls in Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise appear not as physical embodiments of the persons they were in life, but as the essence of those persons expressed in speech, gesture and interaction. Heather Webb […]
Arts - 11 Aprile 2017 Fabio Finotti and the Idea of Patria In "Italia. L'invenzione della patria," Fabio Finotti, Mariano DiVito chair in Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, explores centuries of literature and cultural output in the Italian peninsula, tracing how the meaning of the term patria has been changing
Arts - 7 Aprile 2017 Rhiannon Noel Welch’s Biopolitical Approach to Modern Italy Rhiannon Noel Welch’s new book, Vital Subjects: Race and Biopolitics in Italy, 1860-1920 (Liverpool University Press, 2016), aims to revise the general perception of Italy’s colonial past by showing how race and colonialism were essential components of the period between Unification and the end of World War I. In this interview with Amelia Linsky, Ph.D. student […]
Lifestyles - 24 Marzo 2017 Colto, or How an Aussie Woman Entrepreneur Made It in Italy Catriona Wallis moved from Australia to Italy when she was in her 30's. Today she is the CEO of Colto, the Milan-based startup which develops educational mobile games for preschoolers around the world.
Lifestyles - 21 Marzo 2017 130 Years of Piaggio: A History of Speed and Style The Piaggio group’s signature brand, Vespa, emerged from a moment of profound change as Italy transformed from a wartime to post-war economy. Given that the company is now a global entity, how can the lessons learned from its rich history help it to meet the challenges and opportunities of the current century of networked communications? […]
Arts - 14 Marzo 2017 Charles Maier’s Historical Approach to Political Boundaries In a wide-ranging meditation on the changing conceptualization of territory and borders throughout time, Charles Maier, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University, considers the birth of the frontier, the different spaces of empires and states, and Italy’s historical contribution to making the borders of the world today. An interview by Amelia Linsky, […]
Arts - 7 Febbraio 2017 Joseph Luzzi: A Cinema of Poetry In A Cinema of Poetry (2014), Bard College Professor Joseph Luzzi – a prize-winning literary critic and best-selling memoirist of the Italian-American experience – draws on his experiences as a teacher and his extensive knowledge of the history of poetry, rhetoric, and aesthetics to offer a fresh perspective on the Italian Art Film. Highlights include […]
Arts - 3 Gennaio 2017 David Young Kim’s Journey with Renaissance Artists What is the importance of places? Can they have an agency? The Travelling Artist in the Italian Renaissance reevaluates and reconfigures the importance and sense of settings in the works of art of the Renaissance. Throughout the book, Professor Kim develops a critical approach towards the idea of “influence” as a building block of art […]