Members’ Events

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 1922/2022 – TOTAL MODERNISM: CONTINUITY, DISCONTINUITY, AND THE EXPERIMENTAL TURN Centro Studi “Arti della Modernità” 18-19-20 May 2022 – Torino (Italy) CALL FOR PAPERS The year 1922 signals neither the birth of modernism nor its comprehensive scope, but it can certainly point to a decisive divide marking ends and beginnings. Some key works of literary High Modernism were conceived, written, or completed in that year—T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duineser Elegien, Kafka’s The Castle, Proust’s Sodome et Gomorrhe, just to name the most obvious ones. On the theoretical side, Arnold Schönberg published his Theory of Harmony, Viktor Shklovsky expanded on his idea of defamiliarization (“art as device”) in the direction of a theory of prose, Clive Bell and Roger Fry elaborated on “significant form”. Just as importantly, the year 1922 saw the emergence of other crucial cultural productions that the canon of modernism has been slow—or reluctant—to incorporate, such as cinema, cabaret, dance, popular music. A Dialogue between High and Low? Recent scholarship has drawn attention to explicit connections between high-brow modernist masterpieces and a host of other “low-brow” cultural forms, as the new arts were deemed then, which demand their inclusion into the canon of modernism, just as Benjamin, Kracauer and others were soon to point out. The year 1922 seems to highlight a historical watershed where traditional binary oppositions of high and low, old and new, order and chaos appear to be disrupted by the formation of more complex hierarchies. How did “high culture” uptake the popular arts and what was the meaning and outcome of such cross-fertilization? On the other hand, in what ways and to what results did the popular arts absorb modernist experimentation? Are those transformations, connections, and turns still of some interest to us today? What differentiates the high and the low? How do we define them? If we contrast the 2010s artistic productions and those ground-breaking experiments, do we find continuities or discontinuities and in what sense? Thinking back to 1922 from today, can we still talk of experimental art? Can a past revolution be inherited and in what way? The Centro Studi Arti della Modernità (http://centroartidellamodernita.it/) is organizing an International Conference on 1922/2022 – Total Modernism: Continuity, Discontinuity, and the Experimental Turn to be held in Turin in May 2022. The conference will be held in person unless circumstances change. We will keep updating should problems arise for international travel. This conference seeks contributions addressing these decisive aspects of modernism in its golden year of 1922, a year in which, as Jean-Michel Rabaté has suggested, “one might be tempted to replace ‘high modernism’ with ‘total modernism’” or argue that the main problematic “object of high modernism is totality just before it turns into totalitarianism” (Rabaté 2015). It is this claim for high modernism as “total modernism”, and its reverberations today, that this conference is committed to examine, exploring the ways in which “one sees a metamorphosis of the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk into an artistic totality that combines all media (music, poetry, painting, staging, dancing, and film) and, moreover, superimposes the most experimental and the most popular” (Rabaté 2015). Academic Advisors: Alexander Etkind (European University, Florence), Marie-Laure Ryan (Independent Scholar), Jens Brockmeier (American University, Paris), Andrei Bronnikov (Independent Scholar), Roxana Preda (University of Edinburgh), Ann Banfield (University of California, Berkeley). Conveners: Franca Bruera (University of Turin), Giuliana Ferreccio (University of Turin), Roberto Gilodi (University of Turin), Luigi Marfè (University of Padova), Daniela Nelva (University of Turin), Massimiliano Tortora (University of Turin). Keynote Speakers: Jean-Michel Rabaté (University of Pennsylvania), Ann Banfield (University of California, Berkeley, possibly on zoom), Peter Nicholls (New York University), Thomas Macho (Humboldt, IFK Wien), Raffaele Donnarumma (University of Pisa), Hubert Roland (Université Catholique de Louvain), Sigrid Weigel (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin). The Conference Advisory Board will consider proposals for papers addressing, but not limited to, the following topics: • Form vs. Performance • Ends and Beginnings • The relation between words, things and ideas in literature and philosophy • Aesthetic autonomy / aesthetic totality • Citation, displacement, fragmentation • Plurilingual, Transnational modernism • Subjectivity and anti-subjectivism • Gesamtkunstwerk as the expression of an epoch • International Style: The Bauhaus, the Vhkutemas and others • Architecture: Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright • Classicism old and new • New music and the new visual arts • Photography and Cinema • Ballet, cabaret, popular music • Dada vs. Surrealism • Cosmopolitan diaspora • Conservative revolutions • East European Modernism • American vs. European Modernism • Expatriates in Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna • The city as total space Proposals of about 250 words may be submitted to convenors through centrostudiartimodernita@gmail.com, by 15 December 2021, together with a bio-bibliographical profile. Proposals will be read and evaluated by 15 January 2022. The time of delivery for each paper should be no more than 20 minutes. Registration fee for Participants: 70 euros; Graduate Students and PhDs: 40 euros. The conference languages will be English, French and Italian. A number of conference presentations will be selected for publication in Cosmo: Comparative Studies in Modernism (ISSN 2281-6658, http://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/COSMO) the digital international, peer-reviewed journal of the Centro Studi Arti della Modernità. Accepted contributions will be published in Cosmo’s June 2023 issue.

Call for Papers The multitalented woman of letters, writer of fiction, and theoretician Vernon Lee (Violet Paget, 1856-1935) very early –and deeply—marked the field of fantastic literature. Many of her works, like those gathered in the collection *Hauntings* or such as “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady”, make use of a background immersed in the supernatural, be it real or suggested, to deal with questions that are recurrent in her work. Art works (sculptures, portraits, music) or the *genius loci* (often the spirit of Renaissance or Eighteenth Century Italy, but also Greek and Roman Antiquity, or the great Jacobean houses in England), often provide in-between, liminal spaces that border on the present and the past, broken into by a fascination with the historic that disrupts all topographical and temporal landmarks. Readers familiar with Vernon Lee’s theoretical texts have identified narrative patterns such as the Apollonian being overwhelmed by the Dionysiac, or the frontier between past and present or between people being abolished. This conference hopes to ask, if we consider the fantastic as the irruption of the supernatural in everyday life, how can we then assess and understand Lee’s fantastic fiction when her own texts and theory suggest a complex, fundamentally psychological process, rather than supernatural phenomena as described in classic ghost stories? It is possible to argue that Lee’s chosen theoretical posture on the fantastic reveals itself when empathy is evoked by a work of art, a portrait, a natural place or a building which arouses a feeling of “hauntedness”. Yet at the core of so many ghost stories (some too, by Lee), there is the assumption that the powerful personalities of the past can be endowed with a supernatural existence being willed to do so by the dissatisfied living. So how should one interpret Lee’s fantastic texts? This conference would like to interrogate Lee’s position on, and place within fantastic literature. We would also welcome broader comparisons between Vernon Lee and other writers who shared similar geographical, historical or artistic predilections. Lee’s decadent and cruel celebration of the Renaissance may situate her within the “New Romance” movement whicb boomed in the late 19th century and is exemplified by another woman of letters, Marie Corelli. There may also be the inevitable parallels with Oscar Wilde, or resemblances drawn between Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft’s ancient drama having cast a curse on the initial protagonist’s descendants. Perhaps the resurgence and the revival of art works or of gods and goddesses from Antiquity may connect Vernon Lee with a literary galaxy gathering authors like Prosper Mérimée, Arthur Machen, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Wilhelm Jensen, Robert W. Chambers, Théophile Gautier and many others, while the fascination of Renaissance portraits or haunted portraits is reminiscent of Robert Browning, of Walter Pater’s meditations on Mona Lisa, not to mention, to different degrees, novelists like Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James and James Branch Cabell, all of whom endowed old portraits suggestive of some great tragedy with quasi supernatural powers. We invite papers in French or in English. Please send you 300-word abstract and short personal resume no later that 14 April 2022 to Pr. Marc ROLLAND garryowen@wanadoo.fr Pr Marc Rolland, Professor at the Université Littoral Côte d’Opale, recently published *Epouser la déesse, Essais sur la femme, le surnaturel et l’hyperbole*, éditions Shaker Verlag, 2021 <http://shaker.de/de/content/catalogue/index.asp?ID=8&ISBN=978-3-8440-7730-8> . We are delighted to announce that the annual event of the International Vernon Lee Society, co-organiser of the conference, is scheduled during this conference most aptly taking place in Vernon Lee’s own birthplace. Conference website: AAP: Vernon Lee et le fantastique, Boulogne-sur-Mer, 13-14 Octobre 2022  

Informal language learning inside and beyond the classroom: New perspectives Online conference (Zoom platform), 12 November 2021 Università di Pavia With the constant expansion of L2 learning affordances, traditional language learning shades into informal language acquisition and novel combinations of formal and informal learning emerge. This change in linguistic landscape dramatically affects English but also involves other L2s, calling for ‘a new model of what constitutes a linguistic environment for learning’ (Arnbjörnsdóttir, Ingvarsdóttir 2018). The conference will explore informal learning as it arises in a variety of settings, as those created in schools and universities through CLIL and EMI, and beyond when accessing traditional and new media in online and mobile environments. Conference website: https://studiumanistici.unipv.it/?pagina=p&titolo=ling-Attivita Conference attendance is free upon registration at https://forms.gle/ockq RVg5mb7sgQJj6 Deadline for registration: 31 October 2021 Scientific and organizing committee: Maria Pavesi*, Maicol Formentelli*, Elisa Ghia°, Fabrizio Maggi*, Cristina Mariotti* *Università di Pavia °Università per Stranieri di Siena Contact email: maicol.formentelli@unipv.it

ONLINE COLLOQUIUM ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS  Legal Communication on Covid-19   A Linguistic and Discursive Approach across Contexts and Media  Wednesday 1 December 2021  Department of Studies in Language Mediation and Intercultural Communication University of Milan  Members of the Milan Unit of the 4EU+ Alliance Minigrant Project “Transnational Legal  Communication on COVID-19: From Legislative to Popular Discourse” in the Department of  Studies in Language Mediation and Intercultural Communication are pleased to announce the  one-day colloquium to be held online on 1 December 2021.  The colloquium intends to explore the aspects of legal communication related to COVID-19  and its popularisation in the evolving stages of the pandemic and its aftermath.  Among the consequences of the crisis caused by the pandemic is the rethinking of current  global challenges ‒ public health, environmental sustainability, mobility, labour, education,  just to name a few ‒ with a better orchestrated approach, both at the national and European  level. Against this changing backdrop, political and institutional communication and the  media have been playing a key role in (dis)informing citizens of health risks and good  practices and promoting social debate to build new perspectives.  Understandably, a major area of analysis for language scholars is legal discourse. In each  individual EU country and transnationally, governments have been striving to respond to the  emergency by promulgating safety regulations and enacting the legislation needed to activate  new economic policies and boost the expected recovery of several sectors, deeply affected by  the pandemic.   This colloquium sets out to investigate the linguistic and discursive construction underlying  the implementation of legal measures and their dissemination to face the COVID-19 crisis,  with resulting changes. Besides the legal and medical domains, other possible areas of  analysis include, but are not limited to, institutional discourse within EU institutions and  media discourse, as both have contributed to the dissemination of legal regulations on a  national and global scale.  In particular, the colloquium aims to explore the perception of all these issues across  multiple cultural contexts, which are to be investigated in their linguistic and discursive  aspects and implications, as well as in the perspective of translation and interpreting.  Synchronic, diachronic, contrastive, interlinguistic and intercultural approaches are equally  welcome.  Conference Language: English  Dipartimento di Scienze della Mediazione Linguistica e di Studi Interculturali  Piazza Indro Montanelli, 1 – 20099 Sesto San Giovanni (MI) – Italy Tel.+39 02.503.21629 – Fax +39 02.503.21640 e-mail: smelsi@unimi.it    Keynote Speakers  Giuliana Elena GARZONE, Professor of English Linguistics and Translation, IULM International  University of Languages and Media, Milan.  Joanna OSIEJEWICZ, Associate Professor of Law and Linguistics, Principal Investigator of the  4EU+ minigrant, University of Warsaw.  Submission Guidelines  The submission deadline is 20 October 2021. Proposals of no more than 250 words should be jointly directed to mariacristina.paganoni@unimi.it and valentina.crestani@unimi.it.  For all submissions, please clearly indicate:  – Abstract title, author names, and full institutional affiliation  – Contact e-mail address and phone number for the responsible author  Decisions about acceptance will be communicated by 31 October 2021.  Oral presentations will be allocated 30 minutes (20 minutes for presentation + 10 minutes for  discussion).  Publication of selected papers in an international journal will follow.  Scientific Committee  Maria Cristina Paganoni (Chair), Bruno Arich-Gerz, Maria Vittoria Calvi, Paola Catenaccio,  Giuliana Garzone, Joanna Osiejewicz, Giuseppe Sergio  Organising Committee  Lisa Consonni, Valentina Crestani, Maria Cristina Paganoni Dipartimento di Scienze della Mediazione Linguistica e di Studi Interculturali  Piazza Indro Montanelli, 1 – 20099 Sesto San Giovanni (MI) – Italy Tel.+39 02.503.21629 – Fax +39 02.503.21640 e-mail: smelsi@unimi.it 

Sterne and the Grand Tour: Places, Postures, Portraits Fourth International Laurence Sterne Foundation Conference, Naples 28-30 October 2021 Sterne’s eccentric Grand Tour through Italy culminated in Naples, where he arrived ‘Shandaically’ enough just in time for the pre-Lenten festivities in February 1766. For the Fourth Conference in Naples the ILSF warmly welcomes proposals that focus on Sterne’s artful investment in all aspects related to the Grand Tour. Topics may include the following: The Grand Tour in the eighteenth century and Sterne’s narrative ‘detours’ Sterne in Italy between antique and modern arts Sterne and learned wit The metaphor of writing as travelling and Sterne’s travesties and postures Sterne’s authorial masks and the festive repertoire of the carnivalesque We also welcome proposals for themed panels. Abstracts (max 300 words) should be sent to Peter de Voogd (theshandean@fastmail.fm) and to Maria Laudando (cmlaudando@unior.it). The deadline is 31 July 2021. More info: http://shandean.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ILSF-Conference-2021.pdf ilsf-conferences

INTERNATIONAL ONLINE CONFERENCE VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY Co-organised by Raffaella Antinucci, Università Parthenope, Naples, and Adrian Grafe, Université d’Artois (Research Lab “Textes et Cultures”) 16th-17th December 2021 Art in general, and literature in particular, have long been used as means to represent and give visibility to dynamics of violence, hurting and endurance. Vulnerability and resilience are two strongly related and almost antonymic concepts whose first meanings originate in the physical world. If vulnerability indicates the quality of being easily physically hurt or attacked, the word resilience was first used in physics to describe the ability of a substance or body to recover its shape and size after being bent, stretched, or pressed. When transferred into the social sciences, vulnerability denotes the diminished capacity of an individual or group to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a traumatic situation, whereas resilience points to a human intrinsic quality or “inner strength” that varies according to each individual’s capacity to react in a positive way to the same dramatic event or conditions. Considering the dramatic social and epistemic changes, including several tragic events, that characterized nineteenth-century Britain, the conference wishes to explore the literary forms in which individual and collective responses to traumas and marginalisation were addressed. Taking into account the Darwinian paradigm but intending to broaden and go beyond it, the conference seeks to address the representation of modes of exposure and (apparent) powerlessness, and how these are overcome. The conference will examine literary responses in the nineteenth century to crisis, trial and torment, topoi that loom large, for example, in Joseph Campbell’s idea of the monomyth, or hero’s and heroine’s journey, although here we are also specifically concerned with the non-heroic and anti-heroic. The neuroscientist Boris Cyrulnik has, in Un merveilleux malheur, described resilience as related to the idea that a crisis that deals the human subject a serious psychological blow may divide him or her into two, with one part of the self suffering the blow while the other ensures the subject’s survival by focusing on possibilities for happiness, what Hardy in a much-quoted phrase called ‘the appetite for joy’. How does the ‘acceptance of the fallible self’ (Collins 144) lead to a superabundance of love and goodwill? In George MacDonald’s novel Adela Cathcart (1864), the heroine suffers from a mysterious illness to which storytelling is perceived as ‘a potential cure’, and the means “to another kind of life”’ (cf Dubois 2015). The conference seeks to go beyond purely individual vulnerability. It will therefore take into account how nineteenth-century literature, in the shape, for instance, of the invasion scare novel, dramatised what Stephen Serata has called “the nation’s vulnerability” (110). Sir George Chesney’s 1871 cautionary novel The Battle of Dorking (mentioned by Serata) is but one example. It also means to explore ways in which different literary genres can be perceived in the nineteenth century as more or less vulnerable: poetry, for example, due to the rise in novel-reading. Also in this respect, we will be glad to receive proposals exploring the conference topic in journals, apologies, confessions, and autobiographies. What is the relationship between the artist Benjamin Haydon’s writing his Journal, which ends on June 22 1846, and his suicide committed a few hours after the entry for the latter date. We are interested in literary depictions of the family as a site of vulnerability and resilience: the treatment and mistreatment of Pip and Joe in Great Expectations. Are children such as Pip or Jane Eyre depicted as mistreated as a manipulation of the reader on the author’s part, in order to arouse the former’s sympathy for the hero or heroine (cf Coveney). Among examples of prison literature, we would be pleased to welcome readings of Wilde’s De Profundis (written while he was in prison) and The Ballad of Reading Gaol (written after his time in prison and he had left England for France). Apart from the above examples, and among other possible topics, presentations may focus on: – Literature, storytelling, humour and altruism as mechanisms of resilience and survival; – Impact, positive or negative, of local communities on the individual; – Damage done to, and the survival of, children; – Resilience and social Darwinism; competition or adaptation? – The depiction of illness and care, the responsiveness or otherwise of patients to treatment, the nature and quality of medicine and the medical professions; – Post-feminist readings of care ethics in the literature of the period; – ‘broken and failing groups of organic beings’ (Darwin, Origin, as quoted by Beer, 42); – Gratitude, kindness and bravery as factors in the promotion of resilience and survival – or not? – Poetry as mourning (Tennyson) or – As response to, if not enactment of, spiritual disturbance and recovery (Hopkins); – Why do some characters overcome adversity and others do not? – The perception and depiction of gender in relation to vulnerability and resilience: does “the man”—rather than “the woman”—ever “pay”? – … SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY – Beer, Gillian (2009). Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. CUP. – Collins, Deborah L. (1990). Thomas Hardy and His God: A Liturgy of Unbelief. Macmillan. – Coveney, Peter (1967). The Image of Childhood. Penguin. – Cyrulnik, Boris (1999). Un merveilleux malheur. Paris: Odile Jacob. – Dubois, Martin (2015), ‘Sermon and Story in George MacDonald’, Victorian Literature and Culture 43, 577-587. – Serata, Stephen (1996). Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle: Identity and Empire. CUP. – Troisi, Alfonso (2001). “Gender differences in vulnerability to social stress: a Darwinian perspective”. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11438373 There are no fees to take part in, or attend, this online conference. Please send Adrian Grafe adrian.grafe@univ-artois.fr and Raffaella Antinucci raffaella.antinucci@uniparthenope.it 150-word proposals for 20’ presentations, along with a brief bio-biblio, by July 3rd 2021. We expect to publish a set of essays arising from the conference.

Segnaliamo il seguente evento: “Tertiary Teaching for the Multilingual University” Date: 11-12 June 2021 Institution: Free University of Bolzano, Faculty of Education (Bressanone) Description: The integration of content and language in higher education (ICLHE) has become central to the internationalisation of university curricula, yet quality in curriculum planning and delivery has sometimes been overlooked in the rush to internationalise. The conference examines models of innovation in tertiary teaching with a focus on content-and-language integrated learning, seeking to identify synergies between pedagogical research and didactic practices for EMI/multilingual higher education. Scientific Committee: Lynn Mastellotto, Renata Zanin, Liliana Dozza, Maria Cristina Gatti, Michele Cagol (Unibz); Amanda Murphy e Francesca Costa (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore); Elena Borsetto (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia). Registration: This will be an online event hosted on Zoom. There is no registration fee, but participants must register and will receive the Zoom link. Registration information available at this link: https://www.unibz.it/…/136690-tertiary-teaching-for-the… Conference website: https://iclhe2021.events.unibz.it/?page_id=100&lang=it

Care e cari, come molte e molti di voi sapranno, lo scorso 21 aprile è scomparsa la collega Lidia Curti. Pubblichiamo un pensiero speciale in suo ricordo di Laura Di Michele: Per Lidia Curti Con il cuore stretto e con immenso dolore affronto la scrittura di questo mio documento-pensiero di cui desidero rendere partecipi tutti coloro che, come me, hanno avuto il piacere e il privilegio di incontrare e conoscere Lidia Curti, docente e collega di anglistica all’Orientale di Napoli. Ogni volta, sia che si discutesse di questioni teoriche, letterarie e culturali, sia che si organizzassero lezioni di didattica frontale collettiva o attività di gruppi seminariali e sia che si esaminassero film (Lidia amava il cinema e andare al cinema; ha scritto stimolanti saggi sul cinema: Schermi indiani, linguaggi planetari: tra Oriente e Occidente, modernità e tradizione, avanguardia e popolare, 2008 con S. Poole) o si parlasse di questioni banali e quotidiane, ci si trovava davanti a qualche inattesa scoperta: il suo pensiero – attraverso l’analisi di testi letterari canonici o popolari, nei serrati dibattiti politici – invitava sapientemente i suoi interlocutori (colleghi e studenti) a raccogliere le sue sfide e a tracciare con lei percorsi di studio inesplorati. Di più, la passione che l’ha sempre animata fino agli ultimi giorni di vita era la molla della sua inesauribile curiosità intellettuale che la spronava ad andare oltre, a porsi per così dire accanto alle avanguardie, a essere ella stessa avanguardia e caposcuola, a interrogarsi in anticipo su teorie e metodologie analitiche ancora da fondare, su ambiti di ricerca scarsamente frequentati su territorio nazionale e nell’anglistica italiana. Fondamentali sono state le ripetute e fruttuose relazioni interuniversitarie con importanti centri di ricerca inglesi quali il Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies dell’Università di Birmingham: da qui, sul finire degli anni ’60, Lidia Curti aveva ‘importato’ nell’anglistica dell’Orientale di Napoli il campo variegato dei Cultural Studies con l’accento posto su classe, razza, genere, potere, media e linguaggi; lì Lidia Curti aveva portato con pieno successo il pensiero e gli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Si era trattato di un rinnovamento reciproco e costante durato per moltissimi anni e arricchito poi con collaborazioni e scambi scientifici con università americane e australiane. La spinta inesauribile al rinnovamento ha sempre guidato le sue scelte intellettuali: già nel 1984 aveva pubblicato un volume originale sulle avanguardie registiche e sulle rivisitazioni shakespeariane (Peter Brook e Shakespeare: alla ricerca di un’avanguardia nel teatro inglese) e nel 1994 la cura del volume dal suggestivo titolo di Amleto e i suoi fantasmi. Successivamente realizzerà, con l’entusiastica partecipazione delle studentesse e degli studenti dei suoi corsi universitari, numerosi video mettendo così in luce l’interesse teorico e la pratica analitica nell’interazione creativa fra la produzione cartacea (soprattutto letteraria e popolare) e quella dei media cinematografici, televisivi ed elettronici. Il superamento di barriere spaziali, temporali, etniche, di genere ha connotato il perseguimento di sconfinamenti nei molteplici campi del sapere: i suoi progetti di ricerca, come la sua attività didattica e i suoi impegni accademici e istituzionali (Pro-rettrice all’IUO, Presidente dell’AIA, Membro della ESSE) hanno conseguito tale fine, sia che riguardassero la revisione critica dei canonici generi letterari o il ripensamento instancabile delle mutevoli differenze di classe, razza, genere e identità (alla ricerca del rinnovamento dei linguaggi comunicativi attraverso tracce di percorsi interdisciplinari e transculturali e intrecci tra poetica e politica di arti performative, visuali e sonore), sia che scardinassero le tradizionali visioni del femminile nella contemporaneità. Basti qui solo ricordare alcuni suoi scritti seminali che testimoniano l’attenzione civile e politica con cui interrogano criticamente, mettendole in questione, attuali teorie psicoanalitiche, femministe/post-femministe, postmoderne e postcoloniali onde suggerire nuovi scenari critico-creativi e percorsi di pensiero alternativi che potessero far pre-vedere differenti ma interagenti possibilità espressive: La questione postcoloniale: cieli comuni, orizzonti divisi (1995, con I. Chambers), Female stories, female bodies (1998), La nuova Sharazade. Donne e multiculturalismo (2004, con S. Carotenuto et al.)), La voce dell’altra: scritture ibride tra femminismo e postcoloniale (2006), Ritorni critici: la sfida degli studi culturali e postcoloniali (2018, con I. Chambers e M. Quadraro) e il recente Femminismi futuri. Teorie/Poetiche/Fabulazioni (2019, conA.A. Ferrante e M. Vitale). Lidia Curti non ha mai preso per mano studentesse e studenti, colleghe e colleghi, compagne di attivismo femminista; al contrario, li ha gioiosamente scaraventati in un oceano turbolento nel quale teorie e pratiche artistiche, letterarie, tecnologiche e digitali interagiscono, si intrecciano e talvolta fluiscono le une nelle altre dando luogo a ibridate modalità di pensiero che esigono necessarie sperimentazioni conflittuali con le egemonie ancora vigenti dell’antropocene, del capitalocene e del piantagiocene. Non è un caso che gli scritti più recenti di Lidia Curti si muovano in dialogo appassionato e in divenire con le posizioni ecologiche della Donna Haraway di Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene e continuino a sorprendere, a spiazzare e, in ultima analisi, a gettare un altro guanto di sfida: superare i consueti confini della conoscenza, della narratività letteraria ormai classica, della fantasia e della fantascienza tradizionali, dell’attivismo politico di un tempo, della separazione: andare oltre e attraversare le barriere – facendo ricorso alle teorie della intersezionalità di genere, alle indagini sulle migrazioni femminili, ai disastri ambientali, alle geografie globali e locali della disuguaglianza – è una delle ultime riflessioni critiche svolte da Lidia Curti. Pur straziati dalla sua scomparsa, siamo confortati dal pensiero che Lidia Curti resterà nelle nostre ‘storie’ presenti e future per riscrivere “il senso del presente, disturbando il mondo in cui viviamo” (Femminismi futuri, p. 10). Laura Di Michele

5th International Edition   Translation Symposium  Audiovisual Translation and Computer-Mediated Communication: Fostering Access to Digital Mediascapes   7-8 October 2021  Call for papers  Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic and in the wake of the decision of the Rector of the University of Palermo to cancel conferences and cultural events to be held at the institution, we have had to take the difficult decision to postpone the symposium to 7-8 October 2021. Stay connected for further news.  Organisers  Department of Humanities – University of Palermo  PhD in Studi Umanistici – Department of Humanities – University of Palermo  Department of Political Sciences and International Relations (DEMS) – University of Palermo Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures – University of Bergamo Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS), University College London (UCL)  Postgraduate course in Subtitling for the Deaf and Audio Description for the Blind (SOSAC-PALERMO)  Location  University of Palermo – Department of Humanities  Complesso Monumentale Sant’Antonino/Palazzo Chiaramonte Steri  Piazzetta Sant’Antonino, 1 – Palermo  Confirmed Speakers  Patricia Bou-Franch (University of València); Paola Catenaccio (University of Milano “Statale”); Larissa  D’Angelo (University of Bergamo); Jorge Díaz Cintas (University College London); Elena Di Giovanni  (University of Macerata); Eleonora Federici (University of Ferrara); Gian Maria Greco (University of  Warsaw); Iris Guske (Kempten School of Translation & Interpreting); Anna Jankowska (University of  Antwerp); Maria Olalla Luque Colmenero (University of Granada); Irene Ranzato (University of Rome  “Sapienza”), Maria Grazia Sindoni (University of Messina); Nuria Sanmartín Rincart (Universidad de  Valencia).  With the participation of Gabriele Uzzo (PhD student, University of Palermo, Accessibility Manager,  SudTitles), Maila Enea (Hogarth), Maria Luisa Pensabene (Audiodescriber, and Contract Lecturer,  University of Palermo), Silvia Torta (Project Manager, Transperfect). Organising Committee  Jorge Díaz Cintas (University College London), Stefania Maci (University of Bergamo), Giulia Adriana  Pennisi (University of Palermo), Alessandra Rizzo (University of Palermo), Cinzia Spinzi (University of  Bergamo), Marianna Lya Zummo (University of Palermo).  Scientific Committee  Rocío Baños, University College London, Lindsay Bywood, University of Westminster, Floriana Di Gesù,  University of Palermo, Frederic Chaume, Universitat Jaume I, Jorge Díaz Cintas, University College London,  Sabine Hoffmann, University of Palermo, Arista Kuo, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Stefania  Maci, University of Bergamo, Serenella Massidda, University of Roehampton, Josélia Neves, Bin Khalifa  University, Qatar, Jan Pedersen, University of Stockholm, Giulia Adriana Pennisi, University of Palermo, Nina  Reviers, University of Antwerp, Alessandra Rizzo, University of Palermo, Pablo Romero-Fresco, University of  Vigo, Oleg Rumyantsev, University of Palermo, Maria Grazia Sciortino, University of Palermo, Cinzia Spinzi,  University of Bergamo, Agnieszka Szarkowska, University of Warsaw, Iván Villanueva, Universidad Peruana de  Ciencias Aplicadas, Juan Zhang, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China, Antonino Velez, University of  Palermo, Marianna Lya Zummo, University of Palermo.  Synopsis  Research on (audiovisual) translation, computer-mediated communication, technology and accessibility  has gained momentum in recent years (Díaz Cintas & Massidda 2020). Accessibility, understood as the  set of procedures, mechanisms and practices aimed at the provision of inclusive services addressed to a  general public, has grown as a methodological and theoretical framework in academia. For many, it should  be entrenched in society as a human right (Rizzo 2019; Greco 2018), since its ultimate goal is to facilitate  universal access to knowledge, thus breaking not only linguistic and cultural barriers but also sensory  ones (Di Giovanni 2018).  Against the backdrop of digital mediascapes, accessibility has become an instrument of mediation and  communication across a variety of discursive perspectives (Catenaccio 2018; Federici 2019), and its  function is guaranteed and strengthened by the vast array of audiovisual translation modes practised in  the industry as well as by the proliferation of visual and linguistic performative narratives on the web  (Bou-Franch 2019; Sindoni 2013). In the digital space (i.e. websites, blogs, web collectives, social  networks), accessibility guarantees the provision of some measures that make discourse more accessible  for all users (Luque, Soler, 2019). These rapid and encompassing developments are increasingly affecting  education and translation training (Spinzi 2019).  The combination of two domains, namely, audiovisual translation and computer-mediated  communication, to secure accessible digital platforms, entails both usability and inclusion, specifically  conceived for the design, creation and development of (audio)visual digital spaces that are addressed to  all citizens and make knowledge universally accessible. Such an approach has opened up new horizons  of global interaction, which cannot but involve interlingual activities. Among them, practices like amateur  translation, fandubbing and cybersubtitling (Díaz Cintas 2018a) have become crucial to the construction  of digital networks for the spread of computer-mediated knowledge (Zummo 2018; Díaz Cintas 2018b).  In broader terms, the promotion of access services to information in digital settings recognises the need  for adapting, simplifying, reinforcing, manipulating and/or translating written and spoken messages in  order to make them accessible to anyone, thus, including people with different (temporary or contingent)  cognitive abilities, speakers of other languages, sensory-impaired persons, and regular citizens. In light of  recent scholarly research in audiovisual translation and thanks to the “affordabilities of information and  communication technologies and their alleged democratising power” (Díaz Cintas 2018a: 127), the  symposium aims to explore the links between new forms of translation and the language of the multiple  digital discourse types inhabiting the cyberspace (Maci 2013). Encouraging knowledge dissemination  while at the same time challenging conventional media, the event is open to students, academics, teachers,  and professionals interested in the role and potential of access services, of which interlingual translation  is a component, in the promotion and propagation of digital discourses.  Call for Papers  We welcome contributions that reflect on the intersections between digital mediascapes and audiovisual translation, including accessibility to the media.  Send your abstracts (300 words) to: sosac@unipa.it  Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1st June 2021  Notification of acceptance: 1st July 2021  Registration fee: 60 euros.  Publication: a selection of papers will be published in a special issue of the peer reviewed and indexed  journal Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts (John Benjamins).   Link to the website:   https://www.unipa.it/dipartimenti/scienzeumanistiche/5th-International-Edition-Translation Symposium-Audiovisual-Translation-and-Computer-Mediated-Communication-Fostering-Access-to Digital-Mediascapes–00001/  References  Catenaccio, P. 2018. “Web-mediated stakeholder communication in the biotech industry: the discursive  construction of dialogic illusion”. Altre Modernità, pp. 48-63.  Díaz Cintas, J. 2018a. “Subtitling’s a carnival’: New practices in cyberspace”. Journal of