This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
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08 Jun 1998 13:48:53 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 13:48:50 -0400
From: Sante Matteo <matteos@muohio.edu>
Subject: Africa/Italy symposium
To: chriscd@jhu.edu
Dear Professor Chase-Dunn,
I thought you might be interested in the following interdisciplinary
symposium on Africa and Italy which we are organizing for this fall, Nov.
6-7. I hope you will consider participating, and would appreciate it if
you could forward this message to colleagues and acquaintances who might be
interested.
The symposium is shaping up to be an exciting and fruitful encounter among
some very prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines. Pap Khouma,
the Senegalese Italian author of IO, VENDITORE DI ELEFANTI (Garzanti,
1990/94), will be here. One of Italy's leading experts on African studies,
Gian Paolo Calchi Novati, professor of political science at Pavia, author
of many books on Africa, and past director of the Institute for African
Studies, will speak. Two of his internationally renowned American
colleagues, the historian Harold Marcus and the geographer Assefa Mehretu,
both of Michigan State University, will also participate, addressing past
and future relations between Italy and Ethiopia. Esther Sellassie Antohin,
the great-granddaughter of Emperor Haile Sellassie, will present a paper
with her husband, Anatoly Antohin, both of the University of Alaska,
Fairbanks. The archaelogist Reuben Bullard will talk about the cultural
presence of Rome in the territory of ancient Carthage.
Among Italianists we have commitments from Graziella Parati, of Dartmouth,
Peter Carravetta, Queens, and Karen Pinkus, USC, to mention only a few.
Tom Conley, of Harvard, will talk about the representations of Italy and
Africa in the cartography of the Middle Ages and the Age of Exploration.
I intend to publish the proceedings both in English and in Italian. ISIAO,
the Italian Institute for Studies on Africa and the Far East, has indicated
an interest in publishing the volume in Italy.
Here is the original announcement and call for papers. The deadline for
submissions can be postponed to the end of June.
AFRICA/ITALY
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
Nov. 6-7, 1998
MIAMI UNIVERSITY, OXFORD, OHIO
Over the past two decades Italy, previously known as a country of massive
emigration, has instead become the destination of a great number of
immigrants from African countries. Some estimates put the influx of
African immigrants to Italy over the past decade at more than one million,
giving a new face to Italian society and adding intriguing new dimensions
to Italian culture. This interdisciplinary symposium will explore past,
present, and future relations between Italian and African cultures from
various perspectives: geographical, historical, political, economic,
sociological, and cultural, including the arts, music, literature, and cinema.
Much of the history and culture of the Italian peninsula--and by extension
all of Europe--has been shaped by its contacts with African cultures: from
the Punic wars between Rome and Carthage in classical times, to the
Crusades on the threshold of the Renaissance, to the colonial wars of the
Fascist regime. The current renewed contact between Africans and Italians,
with the flow of migrants going in a historically new direction, presents a
new set of issues, problems, and opportunities which have important
implications not only for the future of Italian society but for
intercultural and interracial relations throughout the world.
By considering a broad historical and multi-disciplinary context, the
symposium will attempt to perceive and understand the diverse dimensions
and opportunities inherent in this new encounter between Africa and Italy:
whether it will give birth to another racially, culturally, and
economically divided and unequal society, or if it may not instead prove to
be the first step in a process of cross-cultural fertilization which might
generate a new Renaissance.
CALL FOR PAPERS: Send inquiries and proposals--title and 250-word
abstract by June 15, 1998, to either:
Sante Matteo
Department of French and Italian
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
tel. (513)529-5932; fax 513-529-1807
e-mail: matteos@muohio.edu
Stefano Bellucci
Department of Political Science
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
tel. (513)529-5193; fax 513-529-1709
e-mail: bellucs1@muohio.edu
Miami, a state-assisted university of approximately 16,000 students, has
its main campus in the small city of Oxford, which is located in the
south-west corner of Ohio near the Indiana border, c. 30 miles north of
Cincinnati and c. 40 miles south-west of Dayton, a little over an hour's
drive from either city's airport.
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