Ohio State’s Department of French and Italian will host the annual conference of the American Association for Italian Studies and Canadian Society for Italian Studies Thursday, April 20 to Saturday, April 22. This is the largest meeting of Italianists in the world, and about 350 delegates will be in attendance, presenting papers on the full sweep of Italian culture from the medieval period to the present.
Over 100 panels will take place at the Ohio Union. The conference also features special events all over campus, several of which are free and open to the public, including:
FRIDAY APRIL 21
Film screening and audience discussion, sponsored by the Queer Studies Caucus
On the Other Side of the Mirror (Cecilia Grasso, 2015) focuses on the stories and experiences of a group of drag kings in Italy. The screening will be followed by an audience discussion.
1:00-2:30 p.m. | Wexner Center Film/Video Theater
Film screening and discussion with the director
Blaxploitalian: 100 Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema (Fred Kuwornu, 2016) is a documentary that uncovers the careers of a population of entertainers seldom heard from before -- black actors in Italian cinema. Blaxploitalian unveils the historic struggles faced by Afro-Italian and African diasporic actors, which are correlated with stories of actors who work to find respectable and significant roles in contemporary films. Followed by a discussion with the director, Shelleen Greene, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Kwaku Korang, Ohio State.
2:45-4:15 p.m. | Wexner Center Film/Video Theater
Plenary address
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, New York University, “Leaps of Faith: On Intuition and Interdisciplinarity in Italian Studies,”
4:30-5:30 p.m. | Wexner Center, Film/Video Theater
FRIDAY APRIL 21 AND SATURDAY APRIL 22
Mario Badagliacca, photography installation and conversation with the photographer
“Italy is Out”
11 a.m.-5 p.m. | Hopkins Hall Gallery
SATURDAY APRIL 22
Rare Books Exhibit, Thompson Library
Exhibit of select manuscripts and publications from the Italian collection of Ohio State’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, from Medieval to Modern.
9:30 a.m.-1 p.m. | Thompson Library (Jack and Jan Creighton Special Collections Reading Room - room 105)
For full details about the conference, visit 2017 Annual Conference
2017 AAIS / CSIS Joint Conference flyer [pdf]
Photo credit: Mario Badagliacca, photographer, from the series “Grooving Lampedusa.”
