International Conference
Underground Imaginaries 2025:
Spaces In Between
3-5 April 2025

Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici di Napoli

Parthenope University of Naples

https://www.gruppomargini.com/?page_id=267

Call for Papers

The Vertical Turn in the Humanities and Social Sciences has prompted an epistemological shift, advocating for the examination of spaces in terms of thickness and volume, as opposed to the horizontality typically depicted in most cartographies. In line with this paradigm, a critical understanding of underground infrastructure becomes essential. This conference builds on this shift to delve deeper into below-ground perspectives within literary, cultural and language studies.

A critical understanding of the underground examines how spaces are socially constructed, inhabited and aesthetically portrayed. This analytical endeavour entails engaging with the dual structures that shape the above-below relationship (for example, light-dark; good-bad; allowed-forbidden). Our conference aims to move beyond these dichotomies and adopt a dynamic framework in the analysis of literary and cultural works. In this context, we envision the underground as a constellation of interlinked realms.

From transitional mythical and metaphorical spaces to liminal rites bridging worlds, from present-day metro passages to meeting points between the living and the deceased, the conference will particularly focus on threshold spaces and narratives of descent, encounters, and metamorphosis. As Rachel Falconer writes in Hell in Contemporary Literature, “there are as many routes through hell, as there are minds to imagine them” (2019: 6). Hence, we seek to explore these access points, passages, gateways, liminal creatures, communication systems, networks and other epistemologies of transience, suspension and connection within the underground.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to literary and cultural studies in the following areas:

  • Spatial Humanities: perspectives on transitions, margins, borders, and thresholds in underground spaces.
  • Gender and Sexuality Studies: analyses of liminal spaces and dissident sexualities and their relation to the underground (sex parties, public sex, cruising, sex work, prostitution etc.).
  • Memory Studies and negotiations with the past in subterranean narratives.
  • Migration Studies:  hiding underground, trafficking, being undercover, isolation, fear, identity studies, trauma studies, in/visibility studies and in/visibilisation, secrecy, silence, precarity, slavery.
  • Mythical and Metaphorical approaches: liminal symbols and motifs of the underworld (katabasis, infernos, caves, labyrinths, cenotes).
  • Mobility Studies Focusing on tunnels, underground portals, lifts, stairs, escalators, excursions, rites of passage, transitions and borderlands.
  • Necropolitics: burial grounds, inhumation/exhumation, mass graves, mourning, subterranean genealogies, archives, ruins.
  • Night Studies: nocturnal regimes, twilights, liminal temporalities.
  • Urban Cultural Studies: passages, systems, underground urban architectures in cultural texts (sewers, bunkers, tunnels, catacombs, ghost metro stations, domestic undergrounds).

Please note that abstracts should be submitted with a short bionote to naplesunderground2025@gmail.com and must not exceed 300 words in length.

Deadlines

  • Deadline for Abstract Submission: 30/11/2024
  • Notification of Acceptance by the Organizing Committee: 10/12/2024
  • Registrations:
  • – Early-bird Fee: (10/12/2024-28/02/2025), 70 euros
  • – Regular Fee: (28/02/2025-28/03/2025), 100 euros
  • Preliminary Program: 28/02/2025
  • Final Program: 17/03/2025
  • Conference Dates: 3–5/04/2025
  • On-site registration is not available

Keynote Speakers

Iain Chambers

Writers and indipendent researcher, former Full Professor of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies (University of Naples “L’Orientale”)

Sandro Dionisio

Musician, Playwright, Screenplayer and Director, Professor (Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, IT):  “Bellezza e degrado nella città porosa”

Rita Lucarelli

Associate Professor of Egyptology (University of California “Berkeley”, USA): “Doorscapes Of The Netherworld: A Humanist Geographical Perspective Towards The Ancient Egyptian Underground Imaginaries”

Eleonora Rao

Associate Professor of English Literature (University of Salerno, IT): “Thinking about Liminal Space in Literary Studies”

Guests

  • Tata Barbalato (Artist, Scenographer, Costume Designer, Performer)
  • Luciano Chirico (Literary Editor, Music Producer, Event Curator)
  • Rachel Falconer (Digital Art Curator, Researcher, Writer)
  • Bruno Garofalo (Director, Scenographer, Costume Designer, Writer)
  • Tjuna Notarbartolo (Journalist, Writer, Translator, Literary Critic, Director of the Elsa Morante Literary Prize)
  • David Pike (Professor of Literature, American University Washington D.C.)
  • Daniele Sanzone (Writer, Singer of the Rock Band ‘‘A67’)

Scientific Committee

  • Raffaella Antinucci (CRILLS – Interdepartmental Research Centre for Languages and Cultures; Università degli Studi di Napoli Parthenope, IT)
  • Giuseppe Balirano (President of The Italian Association for the Study of English, AIA; L’Orientale – Università di Napoli, IT)
  • Linda Barone (Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università degli Studi di Salerno, IT)
  • Lucia Esposito (Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Straniere, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, IT)
  • Patricia García (Fringe Urban Narratives: Peripheries, Identities, Intersections; Universidad de Alcalá, ES)
  • Jean-Philippe Imbert (EROSS – Expressions Research Orientations: Sexuality Studies; School of Applied Language & Intercultural Studies, Dublin City University, IE)
  • Proshot Kalami (Mass Communications and Journalism, Norfolk State University, USA)
  • C. Bruna Mancini (Università della Calabria, IT)
  • Elisabetta Marino (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, IT)
  • Alessandra Ruggiero (Dipartimento di Scienze della comunicazione, Università di Teramo, IT)
  • Enrico Terrinoni (Università per Stranieri di Perugia, IT; Centro Interdisciplinare Beniamino Segre, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, IT)
  • Nicoletta Vallorani (Docucity – Documenting the Metropolis; Università degli Studi di Milano Statale, IT)

Organizing Committee

  • Raffaella Antinucci (Università degli Studi di Napoli Parthenope, IT)
  • Giuseppe Capalbo (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, IT)
  • Patricia García (Universidad de Alcalá, ES)
  • Jean-Philippe Imbert (Dublin City University, IE)
  • C. Bruna Mancini (Università della Calabria, IT)
  • Elisabetta Marino (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, IT)
  • Margherita Platania (Member of the Executive Board of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, IT)
  • Alessandra Ruggiero (Università di Teramo, IT)
  • Carla Tempestoso (Università della Calabria, IT)

Contact

naplesunderground2025@gmail.com

Venues

Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici di Napoli (IT)
Palazzo Serra di Cassano, Via Monte di Dio 14, 80132 – Napoli (I)
https://www.iisf.it

Parthenope University of Naples
Via Ammiraglio Ferdinando Acton, 38, 80133 Napoli NA (IT)
https://www.uniparthenope.it

Accommodation:

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