University of Virginia, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Enrico Cesaretti, Mellon Book Talk, "Elemental Narratives: Reading Environmental Entanglements in Modern Italy"

April 15, 2022


 

Enrico Cesaretti is a Professor of Italian at UVA, and a Mellon Humanities Fellow for 2016-17. He holds a Laurea in Modern Languages and Literatures (English and German) from the University of Pisa (Italy), a M.A. from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. from Yale University. His articles appeared in Italian Studies, Italica, Annali d’Italianistica, Modern Language Notes, Comparative Literature, Romance Studies, Ecozon@ and Symposium, among others. His most recent research has been focused on the fields of the Environmental Humanities and ecocriticism. He is the author of four books: Castelli di carta: retorica della dimora tra Scapigliatura e Surrealismo (Longo, 2001),  Fictions of Appetite: Alimentary Discourses in Italian Modernist Literature (Peter Lang, 2013), Landscapes, Natures, Ecologies. Italy and the Environmental Humanities (co-edited with Serenella Iovino and Elena Past, University of Virginia Press, Series “Under the Sign of Nature”, 2018), and Elemental Narratives. Reading Environmental Entanglements in Modern Italy (Penn State University Press, 2020). This latest book explores the narrative eloquence and agency of some of the materials (i.e. concrete, steel, marble, petroleum, asbestos) that have contributed to make (and, simultaneously, “un-make”) modern Italy.

 

Respondent: Monica Seger’s research and teaching address twentieth and twenty-first century Italian literature, film and media; the environmental humanities; and gender studies. At William & Mary she serves as the Program Director for Italian Studies and is affiliate faculty in the programs of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies; Film and Media Studies; and Environmental Science and Policy. She completed her B.A. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her M.A. and Ph.D. (2010) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Monica is the author of Landscapes in Between: Environmental Change in Modern Italian Literature and Film (Toronto UP, 2015). She is currently working on a new monograph considering narrative expressions of toxic embodiment in contemporary Italy.

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Homer Statue
Virtual
10:00 am - 11:00 am