MOVING BORDERS: THE AESTHETICS OF MIGRATION

Call for Papers: Imaginary Europe _13 September 2012

2012-02-13T18:22:00.003Z

A call for papers for those interested in the construction of 'imaginary versions of Europe'. Deadline for submitting an abstract is the 12th of March 2012.
Find all details here.

MIGRATIONS_exhibition at the Tate Britain

2012-02-13T18:17:00.003Z

This ia a terrific exhibition. I went with my fourth year students and we were all impressed by the wide range of items displayed from 1500 to the present day.
Please go if you can. The exhibition remains open till 12 August 2012.

UCL Urban Migration Film Festival_UCL Archeology 15 February 2012

2012-02-13T18:06:00.003Z

This is a promising film festival on Urban Migration. It is organized by the UCL Department of Anthropology. I'm planning to go, and can't wait to watch some of these films. Please note a registration is required.

Call for Papers: special issue on Gender, Religion and Migration

2012-02-13T18:03:00.003Z

An interesting CALL FOR PAPER on the interconnection of migration, religion and gender.

Please find all detais here.

Deadline for sending an abstract is Monday 27 February 2012.

A New Italian Political Cinema?_Manchester 27-28 January 2012

2012-01-08T20:20:00.004Z

Dear friends,
I have been invited to Manchester to chair and introduce a panel within a conference called 'A New Italian Political Cinema?", that will take place on the 27th and 28th of January 2012. You can find al details here

The panel is titled 'Sguardi diversi sul dramma della migrazione'. Find below an abstract of my introductory paper.

L’ACCENTO MANCATO.
Il cinema della migrazione in Italia

Nell’ultimo decennio, l’etichetta di ‘cinema italiano della migrazione’ è stata adoperata per indicare una produzione cinematografica che volge lo sguardo a questioni legate all’arrivo in Italia - almeno dagli anni Ottanta in poi - di un numero sempre crescente di ‘ospiti’, ‘stranieri’, ‘immigrati’, ‘extracomunitari’, ‘clandestini’, ecc.
Da Amelio in poi, passando per Placido, Garrone, Mazzacurati, Comencini, Munzi fino ad arrivare all’ultimo Crialese, la questione degli immigrati in Italia è stata affrontata in modo più o meno ‘cronicistico’, con l’intento di offrire uno sguardo più ‘intimo’ sui soggetti migranti, la cui rappresentazione sarebbe altrimenti limitata a quella della sola TV e della stampa, mezzi quest’ultimi che fanno spesso da eco ad un discorso politico mirato a strumentalizzare la questione dell’immigrazione in Italia.
Per quanto lo sforzo di gran parte di questi registi italiani sia apprezzabile, anche semplicemente per aver contribuito a risvegliare l’attenzione del cinema sui soggetti migranti in Italia, resta il fatto che per la maggior parte dei casi si tratta di tentativi fini a se stessi che limitano lo sguardo ad aspetti poco innovativi, soprattutto riguardo ai modi di produzione. Siamo lontani, in Italia, dal cinema ‘accentato’ di cui parla Hamid Naficy, dove l'accento emana dalla dislocazione (displacement) del regista e dai modi di produzione ‘interstiziali’. Pochi e timidi tentativi (Theo Eshetu, Hedy Krissane, Mohamed Zineddaine), suggeriscono che un cinema accentato sarà forse possibile anche in Italia.

Looking forward to this event!

London World Film Festival - 8-10 November 2011

2011-10-31T09:50:00.004Z

Dear all,
this year I have been involved in the organization of the exhiting London World Film Festival (8-10 November 2011). The theme of this 5th edition is 'Glocal Communities', and for the occasion we have invited two Italian directors Sergio Basso (director of 'Giallo a Milano'), e Agostino Ferrente (director of 'L'Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio').

The 8th of November, the screenings fo the two films will be followed by a round table, with the directors, that I will chair.
I am looking forward to this!

Please find details of the whole programme here.

ALL WELCOME - FREE EVENT

Mitchell's event in Podcast

2011-10-31T09:48:00.003Z

Dear all,
the event 'Migration Law and the Image' with prof. WJT Micthell that I have organized in June 2011 is now available in UCL iTunes:

ENJOY IT!

Politics of Visibility Mediating the global, local and the in-between

2011-09-29T23:19:00.002+01:00

A one day conference to be held on the 4th of November 2011 at the Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, in London.
Find details here.

Being In-Human: The Critical Theory and Law of Human Rights

2011-09-29T23:14:00.001+01:00

A very exciting conference with Slavoj Zizek and Paul Gilroy among others will take place in London from Thursday 17 to Saturday 19 November 2011. Find all details here.

Podcast of lecture in Princeton

2011-04-22T22:43:00.006+01:00

Dear all,
for those of you who are interested in my lecture at the Symposium in Princeton last March, here is the podcast

W.J.T. MITCHELL Migration, Law and the Image. Beyond the Veil of Ignorance 16 June 2011

2011-04-15T15:15:00.004+01:00

it's my pleasure to announce an upcoming event that I have organized at UCL on the 16th of June 2011.
Prof. W.J.T. Mitchell (University of Chicago) will give a lecture on
"Migration, Law and the Image. Beyond the Veil of Ignorance".
There will be two respondents: Prof. Parvati Nair (Queen Mary Hispanic
Cultural Studies) and Dr Ingrid Boccardi (UCL Laws).

Please find all details here. The event is free but a registration is required.

For any further information please contact me

Hope to see you there!

Conference: The Diasporic Family in Cinema: SOAS (University of London) 21 May 2011

2011-04-12T09:18:00.005+01:00

Very interesting upcoming conference at SOAS, (University of London) the 21th of May 2011.

I have already registered. I am very much looking forward to listening to the very interesting papers and to joining the screening of 'When we Leave' by Feo Aladag who will be present for a discussion afterward.

All details about the programme, the venue and the registration are available here

Summer School Global Migration and Development_Utrecht 4-15 july 2011

2011-02-19T20:01:00.001Z

International Development Studies of the Department of Human Geography and Planning at Utrecht University, the Netherlands is offering a 2-week summer school programme on Global Migration and Development, at the advanced bachelor level.
The course will take place from 4 July to 15 July 2011.

For more information and application procedures, please visit the website:

CFP Cultural Encounters_Exeter 21-22 May 2011

2011-02-19T19:56:00.003Z

Call for Papers

Cultural Encounters: Researching Ethnicities, Identities, and Politics in a Globalised World

Host institution: Exeter Centre for Ethno‐Political Studies, University of Exeter

Dates: Saturday 21st –Sunday 22nd May 2011

The Exeter Centre for Ethno‐Political Studies (EXCEPS) is pleased to announce its inaugural postgraduate conference. We aim to bring together high‐quality postgraduates from the UK and abroad, working in the field of ethno‐politics. This event will allow young researchers to discuss questions of methodology, approach and general research ideas and issues that arise in the field.

Breaking from traditional conference formats, the conference will function more in terms of a large‐scale workshop. Students will be given the chance to present their work and engage in a group discussion, exchanging ideas about research in ethno‐politics. The overall hope is to form a research community at the postgraduate level to enhance networking and collaboration across universities and disciplines.

In EXCEPS, we aim to undertake and promote advanced empirical and theoretical research by integrating methodologies and approaches from a wide range of disciplines within our activities. We seek to problematise notions of ethnicity and identity, and explore how and why political and social life is affected by agendas and aspirations defined by 'ethnicity' or the sense of belonging to a particular community.
Students working at the postgraduate level in a field related to ethnicity, broadly defined, are invited to submit an abstract of their research. Prospective sub‐themes might include, but are not limited to:

• Migration and Diaspora
• Belonging and Otherness
• Conflicts and Regulation
• Ethnopolitics and International Law
• Terrorism and Mobilisation
• Gender and Ethnonationalism
• Culture and Memory

The conference will emphasise active involvement in an interactive, informal setting, focusing on discussion of methodology and challenges in ethno‐political research in a cross‐disciplinary context. A presentation might consist of a thesis chapter, a research proposal or a subtheme of the dissertation. For interested delegates, there is the possibility to submit their paper to the EXCEPS Working Paper series for consideration.

Please send your abstract of about 250 words along with relevant information about place of study and degree to Christine Difato at cad209@ex.ac.uk by 25 March 2011. To facilitate a worthwhile discussion, only a limited number of places are available.

Any further questions can be addressed to Christine Difato (cad209@ex.ac.uk) or Anaïd Flesken (af299@exeter.ac.uk)

For more information about our activities, see the EXCEPS web site and the PGR Network Ethnicity blog.

Symposium in Princeton: "Across the Borders of Desire: Italy as a Land of Departure and Destination"_31 March-1 April 2011

2011-02-08T22:35:00.004Z

Dear all,
I'd like to draw you attention to this Symposium that will take place at the Princeton University in March around the topic of "Across the Borders of Desire: Italy as a Land of Departure and Destination".
I have been invited to give a talk. I am very excited about it. The other guest speaker will be Julio Monteriro Martins
You can find more details about the call for paper (deadline 15 of February) and the rationale here.
More details about the programme will be available soon.

MIGRANT CINEMA AND WRITING IN POST-COLONIAL ITALY: Warwick 24 Feb., 25 Feb., 2 Mar. 2011

2011-01-30T00:01:00.005Z

The Department of Italian at Warwick is pleased to announce a series of three events on Migrant Cinema and Writing in Post-colonial Italy. These events focus on different aspects of Italian contemporary literature and culture such as migration,post-coloniality, orality, diaspora, ethnicity, multiculturalism, nationhood and subalternity. Writers Ribka Sibhatu and Kaha Mohamed Aden will present at the University of Warwick their literary work as well as the documentaries, in which they tell of the legacy of Italian colonialism and their migratory experience to Italy, respectively from Eritrea and Somalia. The discussion of social and historical themes and questions in post-colonial Italian literature, is helpful in order to determine how the amnesia over the colonial past influences the mis-representation of immigrants to Italy.

Thursday 24th February 2011
Research Symposium: A Post-colonial Italian Discourse?

Organized by the Italian Department in collaboration with the Social Theory Centre, University of Warwick

Ramphal Building - Gillian Rose Room - R3.25
17.30 – 19.00 A Post-colonial Italian Discourse?

Ribka Sibhatu

Respondents:
Neil Lazarus (University of Warwick)
Jennifer Burns (University of Warwick)

********************
Friday 25th February 2011
Contemporary Rome: Engaging with the Past, Projecting the Future

Department of Italian Studies, University of Warwick
Humanities Building - Room H545

15.00 – 16.00 Film Screening: Simone Brioni’s Aulò (ITA, 2011, 40’)
(Ribka Sibhatu, an Italian writer of Eritrean origins who lives in Rome, tells her story of migration and discusses the history of Italian colonialism. The film is in Italian, without English subtitles.)
16.00 – 16.30 Post-colonial Rome
Discussion with Ribka Sibhatu
16.30 – 17.00 Coffee Break
17.00 – 18.00 Il museo diffuso di Testaccio e il progetto Porticus Aemilia.
Renato Sebastiani, Alessia Contino, Boudewijn Kaiser, Krien
Clevis, Gert-Jan Burgers (Royal Netherlands Institute at Rome)
18.00 – 19.00 Film Screenings: The Postmodern Palimpsest. A series of short documentaries shot in Rome, created by Masters students at the Manchester School of Architecture. This event precedes the conference ‘The Post-modern Palimpsest: Narrating
Contemporary Rome’, which will take place at the University of Warwick the following day.

************************
Wednesday 2nd March 2011

Challenging Official Historiography: Oral History and Migrant Writing in Italy

Organized by the Italian Department in collaboration with the IAS (Institute of Advanced Studies)

IAS Seminar Room- Milburn House
14.00 – 15.00 Orality and Literacy in the Narratives of Some Italian Migrant Writers.
Kombola Ramadhani Moussa (University of Reading)
15.00 – 16.00 Oral History and Migrant Writing in Italy Videoconference with Alessandro Portelli (Università La Sapienza, Roma)
16.00 – 16.30 Coffee Break
16.30 – 17.30 Film Screening: Simone Brioni’s La quarta via (ITA, 2009, 40’)
(Kaha Mohamed Aden narrates her memories of Mogadishu and reconstructs its story in Pavia, where she currently lives. The film has English subtitles.)Introduced by Elizabeth Ramirez Soto (Department of Film Studies, University of Warwick)
17.30 – 19.30 Fra-intendimenti. Kaha Mohamed Aden presents her collection of short stories Fra-intendimenti (Roma, Nottetempo, 2010) Respondent: Federico Faloppa (University of Reading)

This event is preceded by the interdisciplinary seminar '1968 and the Value of Oral History', which will take place on Wednesday 23 February 2011, 10 am- 6pm. For any questions please contact the organiser Simone Brioni: s.brioni@warwick.ac.uk
Generously supported by the IALT.

CFP: IMAGES / Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters (Istanbul, 1-4 June 2011)

2011-01-29T23:52:00.003Z

Call for Papers
IMAGES; Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters

A 4-days international and interdisciplinary conference
Kadir Has University Cibali Campus, Istanbul
1-4 June, 2011 (90% confirmed)

The conference IMAGES Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters will be co-organized as a public 4-days international and interdisciplinary conference by the University of Innsbruck research platform CEnT – Cultural Encounters and Transfer and Kadir Has University (Istanbul) in cooperation with CINEJ, the refereed online journal for film and photography. The conference will be supported by the Austrian Culture Forum Istanbul.

The conference will bring together senior scholars with PhD students, and postdoctoral academics, without following the classical keynote speaker pattern but rather inviting all speakers either to present their research findings in 20-30 minute (paper) presentations plus 10 minutes for discussion or in 120-150 minute panels (4-5 panellists).
There will be no parallel sessions. All sessions will be plenary sessions.
There will also be room provided for presentations of creative works (artistic student works) focussing on the conference topic. The conference language is English.

Conference coordinators are:
Assoc. Prof. (Privatdozentin) Dr. Veronika Bernard (University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck/ Austria) and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Serhan Oksay (Kadir Has University, Istanbul/ Turkey), Dr. Vedat Akman (Kadir Has University, Istanbul/ Turkey)

The official conference blog (under construction)
The official conference e-mail address is: images-1@gmx.at
Deadline for paper and panel proposals is: 1 March, 2011
Deadline for artistic student works proposals is: 1 March, 2011
Paper and panel proposals have to include a 150 words abstract and a 150 words Bio.
Artistic student works proposals have to include a 150 words abstract and a 50 words
Bio.

Please, send your proposals to the official conference e-mail address: images-1@gmx.at

Proposers will be informed about acceptance of their proposal within 1 week after
receipt.

The conference IMAGES; Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters is is designed to be an
interdisciplinary project on cultural encounters, poverty and migration.
Sessions may focus on the following issues but are also open to further thematic fields deriving from paper proposals received:

- ethnicity and the national issue in pre- and post-colonial films
- gender, age, and ethnicity in (mass)entertainment films
- the image of the outsider and the outcast
- the image of mainstream society
- the enemy vs. the friend in secret agent and action films produced during and
after the cold war period
- the idea of co-existence in block buster animation films
- the identity issue in films by directors/ authors of migrant background
- prize-winning films and their cultural messages
- ethnicity, gender, age and the idea of co-existence in
advertising/ promotion clips

Book Presentation: SCREENING STRANGERS / UCL 2 February 2011

2011-01-29T23:45:00.003Z

Dear all,

it's my pleasure to invite you to the presentation of the book “Screening
Strangers: Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema”, by
prof. Yosefa Loshitzky (East London University).
The presentation will take place at the UCL Italian Department the 2nd of
February at 5pm. Prof. David Forgacs will chair the session.
The event is part of the research seminars organized by the UCL Italian
Department. All welcome!
For further information please contact me: f.mazzara@ucl.ac.uk. Find all
details below.

************************************************************************
“Screening Strangers: Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European
Cinema”

Chair: Prof. David Forgacs

Wednesday, 2 February 2011
5.00 - 7.00pm
Italian Seminar Room, Foster Court 351

Yosefa Loshitzky challenges the utopian notion of a post-national "New
Europe" by focusing on the waves of migrants and refugees that some view
as a potential threat to European identity, a concern heightened by the
rhetoric of the war on terror, the London Underground bombings, and the
riots in Paris's banlieues. Opening a cinematic window onto this struggle,
Loshitzky determines patterns in the representation and negotiation of
European identity in several European films from the late 20th and early
21st centuries, including Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged, Stephen Frears’s
Dirty Pretty Things, Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, and Michael
Winterbottom's In This World, Code 46, and The Road to Guantanamo.

Find details of the book here

For information about the all series of research seminars organized by the
UCL Italian Department/SELCS:

Book: IMAGES OF ILLEGALIZED IMMIGRATION

2011-01-24T13:12:00.003Z

New book on "Images of Illegalized Immigration: Towards a Critical Iconology of Politics", edited by Christine Bischoff, Francesca Falk, Sylvia Kafehsy (Transcript: 2010)

Illegalized immigration is a highly iconic topic. The public perception of the current regime for mobility is profoundly shaped by visual and verbal images. As the issue of illegalized immigration is gaining increasing political momentum, the authors feel it is a well-warranted undertaking to analyze the role of images in the creation of illegalization. Their aim is to trace the visual processes that produce these very categories.
The authors aim to map out an iconography of illegalized immigration in relation to political, ethical, and aesthetic discourses. They discuss the need to project new images as well as the dangers of giving persons without legal papers an individual face. Illegalization is produced by law, but naturalized through the everyday use of images. The production of law, on the other hand, is also driven by both mental and materialized images. A critical iconology may help us to see these mechanisms.

More details here.

Blog: Tracing Mobility

2011-01-24T13:08:00.002Z

I'd like to bring your attention to this very interesting blog on Cartography and Migration in networked space.

TRACING MOBILITY

Tracing Mobility is a project that sets out to examine the shifting terrain of global versus individual mobility and how the hand in hand development with networked infrastructure is transforming our conceptions of time, space and distance...

CFP_Within and Without: Representing Diasporas in Europe: Cardiff, 13 May 2011

2011-01-19T13:28:00.002Z

Within and Without: Representing Diasporas in Europe
School of European Studies, University of Cardiff
May 13th 2011

Europe is a diasporic continent, with Belgian, British, Dutch, French, German, Irish, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish populations scattered across the globe. Yet it is also home to diasporic communities based in Europe, coming from both within and outside of the continent. The aim of this symposium is to explore the way in which diasporas in Europe are depicted in literature, film and the press, exploring the ways in which a sense of cultural and geographical dislocation inform concepts of identity, otherness and (un)belonging in the host nation. The symposium will examine the intersections between cultural, religious and pan-European identities within the diasporic community, in the destination culture and in contact zones.
Contributors are invited to address European diasporas within Europe (such as the Italian communities in Britain) and/or diasporas from outside the continent (such as the Turkish communities in Germany).

Topics may include (but are not restricted to):
- Explorations of ethnic identity in the literatures of the diaspora, and the host nation
- Depictions of 'home' in diasporic cultural production
- The shaping of cultural memory in the diaspora
- Press coverage of the diasporic culture in the host nation
- Comparison of integration of European populations within European and non-European diasporas (e.g. Italians in Germany and the U.S)
- Ghettoization and blending
- Iconography of the diaspora
- The construction of space (rural and urban, private and public, blurred boundaries)
- The diasporic gaze
- Orientalism in one continent
- Theoretical approaches to diasporic writing

The one-day symposium will take place on Friday May 13th 2011 at the School of European Studies, University of Cardiff.
There will be a fee of 15GBP, which includes lunch, tea and coffee and a wine reception.
Abstracts of 300 words, and a brief biography, should be sent to:
Dr Liz Wren-Owens (Wren-OwensEA@cardiff.ac.uk) by January 31st 2011.

Call for paper: Displaced Women (Glasgow 29 March 2012)

2011-01-17T11:35:00.003Z

Displaced Women:
Multilingual Narratives of Migration in Europe

Organised by Dr. Lucia Aiello, Dr. Joy Charnley, Dr. Mariangela Palladino

29 March 2012
Glasgow Women’s Library
5 Berkeley Street, Glasgow, G3 7BW
t: 0141 248 9969 e: info@womenslibrary.org.uk

This interdisciplinary conference will provide a forum for discussion of the issues facing women who have moved from one culture to another and have as a result adopted in their daily lives and for their creative work a language other than their ‘mother tongue’. We will look at the creative, linguistic, economic and psychological effects of this displacement. The critical examination of women’s narratives in Europe (fiction, poetry, diaries, memoirs, pamphlets), from a literary perspective will be complemented by sessions looking at these issues from a historical, political and sociological perspective. The broad nature of this conference provides an excellent opportunity for exchange between researchers in different disciplines who do not always have the chance to come together (literature, cultural studies, social sciences, history etc). In addition, the chosen venue is doubly significant with regards to both women and migration: Glasgow, city of emigration and immigration and the Glasgow Women’s Library, focus in Scotland for much important work on feminism, and women’s history and creativity.

Themes to be covered include the following:

Migrant women: narratives and experiences, multilingual narratives of containment and human resistance; articulating the ‘state of exception’ in a ‘foreign’ tongue; narratives of ‘Eco-Diaspora’ and spaces of environmental crisis;

Multilingual literature, Translation issues in multilingual works, translating cultures; Linguistic ownership; Language and the country of sanctuary; seeking refuge in an-‘other’ language; Translating practices in legal narratives; human dispersal and
the linguistic experience;

Migration; nationality and citizenship; migration policy: past, present and future; speaking from ‘humanitarian corridors’; encampment, removal, deportation, detention; human waste and landscapes of waste: a female perspective.

Abstracts in English of no more than 300 words should be sent by 29 APRIL 2011 to
Lucia Aiello (L.Aiello@sheffield.ac.uk), Joy Charnley (j.charnley@phonecoop.coop) and Mariangela Palladino (p.mariangela@googlemail.com). Papers should be 20 minutes in length and accessible to a multidisciplinary audience. Proposals for thematic workshops are also welcome. The publication of a selection of papers following the conference is planned.

UCL Italian research seminars_Spring term 2011

2011-01-15T22:18:00.006Z

Dear all,

please find here all details about the series of research seminars I have organized at UCL for the coming months.

All Welcome!
Federica

ANTHROPOLOGY OF FOOD, Journal issue on "Migration, food practices and social relations" (7:2010)

2011-01-15T21:59:00.004Z

Dear all,
have a look at the last online issue of Anthropology of Food, on the topic "Migration, food practices and social relations: when continuity is not reproduction and discontinuity is not rupture", edited by Jean-Pierre Hassoun and F.Xavier Medina and myself Chantal Crenn.

Conference_The Others in Europe and Beyond_Brussels 28-29 April 2011

2011-01-15T21:47:00.004Z

Interdisciplinary International Conference

Migration, Ethnicisation and the Challenge of Diversity: The“Others” in Europe and Beyond

Université Libre de Bruxelles, 28-29 April 2011

In contemporary Europe, the social tensions and political debates produced by immigration are increasingly linked to issues of belonging and identity. The representation of the foreigner is no longer solely defined by his or her place on the labour market or in the social hierarchy. In light of EU enlargement and due to immigration flows, European societies are increasingly questioning their “cultural and ethnic identity”. As a consequence, boundaries between “insiders” and “outsiders” are being redefined. The “others” in Europe are no longer merely those who do not have state citizenship of one of the member states of the Union. In the new European migration context, “otherness” increasingly refers to ethno-cultural minority groups, regardless of their EU citizenship status.
This conference aims to address the construction of identity classifications underlying new forms of inclusion and exclusion that are to be found in contemporary Europe, and beyond. Its scope covers practices of categorization and of resistance, both by majority and minority groups. Anthropologists, social psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and law scholars will meet to discuss the categorization of identity groups through legal and social norms, public policies, institutional practices, social interactions and representations, as well as actors’ mobilizations.

For all details click here.

London Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference (31 Aug.-2 Sept 2011)_Call for Paper for session on "Returning Migration"

2011-01-15T21:33:00.007Z

(Re-)Imagining ‘Return Migration’: Language, concepts and contexts

London 31 August-2 September 2011

Session organisers: Anastasia Christou (Sussex) and Madeleine Hatfield (RHUL and RGS-IBG).
Sponsored by the Population Geography Research Group of the RGS-IBG.

Return migration has increasingly become the subject of research that seeks to go beyond previously taken-for-granted assertions of such mobilities as straight forward due to the assumed familiarity of the destination. This research has addressed the experience of moving to somewhere one has lived before or to where one is thought to belong under a number of sub-headings including not just return migration but repatriation, reflux or cyclical migration, diasporic or ancestral return and homecomings. It has studied migrants returning after a short time and after generations; as children, adults and households; together and apart; from higher to lower and lower to higher income countries; painfully, hopefully and forcefully.
This growing body of research, then, also has the potential to allow us to (re-)imagine and (re-)think what ‘return migration’ is or could be; and to (re-)consider how the words we use are not just terminology but active constructs that affect the ways in which return migration is experienced, understood and imagined. We therefore invite researchers of return migration in different contextual and disciplinary settings to showcase their research and present on the conceptualisation, application and documentation of return migration as broadly defined.
Please submit proposed paper abstracts (c. 250 words) for consideration of inclusion in the session to organisers Anastasia Christou (A.Christou@sussex.ac.uk) and Madeleine Hatfield (madeleine.e.hatfield@gmail.com) by 4 February 2011.

For more general information about the Conference call for paper click here

CRONEM 7th Annual Conference_Call for Paper

2011-01-15T21:29:00.005Z

Global Migration and Multiculturalism: Religion, Society, Policy and Politics

28 - 29 June 2011, University of Surrey

Deadline for Call for Paper: 15 February 2011

Find all information here

Summer School on Black Europe_Amsterdam 12-30 June 2011

2011-01-15T21:21:00.005Z

Dear all
The National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its
Legacy (NiNsee) and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam are pleased to announce the fourth annual Summer School on Black Europe entitled:

Black Europe: Exploring Dimensions of Citizenship, Race and Ethnic Relations.

June 12th-30th 2011, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

The Summer School on Black Europe emerged out of dialogue and concern of various scholars working in the field of race and ethnic relations in Europe. The program is now in its fourth year and is currently located at the National Institute for the study of Dutch slavery and its legacy (NiNsee).

To find all information click here

Migration week at UCL_6-9 APRIL 2011

2011-01-04T23:05:00.002Z

A large interdisciplinary conference on migration will take place at UCL from 6th - 9th April 2011.
This academic conference will be embedded in a week long event - "UCL Migration Week", organised by CReAM and UCL Grand Challenges Programme. This week will feature a series of events related to migration, such as Exhibitions, Lectures, Discussions and Film screenings. In addition there will be a Policy Podium, where high level practitioners, politicians and policy media representatives will discuss migration related issues.

More details about the Programme will be posted later.

The call for paper is now closed.

New Approaches to Italian Multilingual Fiction_ 21 January 2011

2011-01-04T22:57:00.004Z

A very interesting and promising workshop on the topic "Multilingual Writing" has been organized in Leeds by Gigliola Sulis. The workshop will take place the 21st of January 2011.
If you want to know more about the programme you can click here

Leggere Il Mondo e il testo_Bologna 14-15 October 2010

2010-10-13T10:38:00.006+01:00

In order to celebrate the 20th anniversary of "Migrant Literature" in Italy, a two days event has been organized in Bologna by Prof. Pezzarossa and few more people from different backgrounds and places (Graziella Parati, Roberto De Robertis, Marco Purura, Serge Vanvolsem, Lucia Quaquarelli, and myself).
I'm looking forward to meeting all these very interesting scholars and many writers and share with them these two intense days of discussions and debates.
I'll have the honour to introduce and converse with the exciting and brilliant writer Amara Lakhous, with whom we will discuss his last novel "Divorzio all'Islamica a Viale Marconi".

You can find all the information about Programme, venue, etc., here

See you in Bologna!
f.

ISO "Narrating Migration" Workshop - Prato 17th-18th September 2010

2010-08-20T12:06:00.003+01:00

NARRATING MIGRATION
1st workshop of the Leverhulme Trust International Network:

DESTINATION ITALY:
REPRESENTING MIGRATION IN CONTEMPORARY MEDIA AND NARRATIVE

Monash Centre, Prato (Italy) - 17th-18th September 2010

Please click here for info

For any further information, please contact: emma.bond@pmb.ox.ac.uk

CROSSINGS: THE NEXUS OF MIGRATION AND CULTURE_Conference Queen Mary (London) 1-2 July 2010

2010-05-27T22:18:00.010+01:00

CROSSINGS: THE NEXUS OF MIGRATION AND CULTURE
July 1st and 2nd 2010
Laws G.4, Law Building,
Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road,
London E1 4NS

Conference Organizers:

Professor Parvati Nai (Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration) and Dr. Omar García-Obregón (Reader in Poetics of Exile, Censorship and Cultural Resistance - School of Languages, Linguistics and Film).

N.B.: This conference is free to all those who wish to attend. To reserve a place, please contact Queen Mary?s Events Office (events@qmul.ac.uk).
Refreshments and meals will be provided to speakers only. Others attending the conference must make their own arrangements. However numerous options for reasonably priced meals and refreshments are available on campus and nearby.

This two-day conference celebrates the launch of Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture (Intellect Publishers) based at the Centre for the Study of Migration. The conference will cover key thematic and theoretical areas that emerge from the nexus of migration and culture, when examined from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives. Speakers will interrogate questions of cultural migrancy, as well as of cultural identity and representation in the context of migration.
Areas of theoretical enquiry will include borders, diaspora, cultural difference and cultural memory, transnational connections and hybridity from disciplines as diverse as Law, Medicine, Politics, English, Development Studies, Museum Studies, Film Studies, Gender Studies and Anthropology. The conference will further count on the
participation of those working creatively in the culture industry on aspects of migration, so as to foment dialogue between the latter and the academy.

Keynote speakers are Professor Robin Cohen (Professor of Development Studies and Director, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford), Dr. Anne Kershen (Deputy-Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration, Queen Mary) and Professor Yosefa Loshitzky (Professor of Film and Media at the University of East London).

Invited artists include the poets Choman Hardi, John Siddique and others, as well as the photographer/artist/curator Shahidul Alam, founder/director of the Drik picture agency and of Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography, Dhaka, Bangladesh, as well as of Chobi Mela, the festival of photography in South Asia. Shahidul Alam
will show Under the Shade of the Banyan Tree, a short film that he made on migration and will offer a talk on his work on ?Migrant Lives.? The conference will end with a Poetry Fest, where the invited poets will offer readings and discussions of their work.
--
For further details please contact:

Parvati Nair (p.nair@qmul.ac.uk)
Professor of Hispanic Cultural Studies,
Chair of Hispanic Studies,
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film
and Director, Centre for the Study of Migration,
Queen Mary, University of London,
Mile End Road,
London E1 4NS

Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 8317

Film "Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio"

2010-05-09T09:30:00.007+01:00

The 14th of May in Italy the film "Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio" will be released.
The film is a free adaptation of the novel by Amara Lakhous (that has the same title). The novel has been a best seller in Italy. It has been published 14 times so far and translated in German, Dutch, English and French. To know more about the novel you can read these interviews with the author:

Suzanne Ruta, ‘Humor is an instrument of combat: a conversation with Amara Lakhous’

Suzanne Ruta, ‘Scheherazade, C’est Moi? An Interview with Amara Lakhous’

Airos Soria Letizia, “Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio. Interview with Amara Lakhous”.

To know more about the author clik here.

The film director is Isotta Toso. To know more about the film and see the trailer clik here.

***PLEASE FEEL FREE TO POST YOUR COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG ABOUT THIS FILM ADAPTATION IF AND WHEN YOU'LL BE ABLE TO SEE IT. I ADVICE ALL TO READ THE NOVEL. IT IS AN INTERESTING GAZE ON ITALIAN MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY TODAY SEEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF AN ALGERIAN. NOTHING BETTER THAN THAT! THANKS AMARA!***

UCL Global Migration Symposia Series

2010-05-09T09:22:00.001+01:00

7 June 2010

Mitko Panov (filmmaker)
Film screening “The War is Over” (2009) and conversation with director Mitko Panov

Followed by a Q&A with director Mitko Panov, script consultant Gareth Jones and film critic Nevena Dakovic.

The event is co-hosted by the UCL Mellon Programme and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

Time: 7-10.30pm
Venue: The Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ

About the event: This film by award-winning director, producer and screenwriter Mitko Panov is a fictionalised account of a family exiled to Switzerland during the Kosovo crisis. It is an intimate narrative that explores the experience of forced migration: the fraught decision to leave; the process of integration and adaptation to a new country; the impact on the family; and always, the yearning for homeland. Join us at the Frontline Club, a media club and venue championing independent journalism, for the screening, a panel discussion and a Q&A with Panov, film professionals and critics.

About the director: Mitko Panov was born in Macedonia and now lives and works in Switzerland. He studied Directing at the Polish National School for Film, TV and Theatre in Lodz. He has received a number of international awards for his films including the 1991 Cannes Golden Palm for best short for his reconstruction of the Warsaw ghetto in WITH RAISED HANDS, a special jury award at the Clermont Ferrand film festival 2000, and a Best Balkan Film Award at the Drama Short-Film Festival in Greece. Panov has taught at the New York University Graduate Film Department, the German State School for Film and TV in Munich, and the University of Texas at Austin-RTF. He is a founding member of the New York Film Academy, and Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Sundance Institute Fellow. The War is Over is his feature fiction debut.

Book your place: A limited number of free tickets are available for UCL students and staff. Please email intercultural-interaction@ucl.ac.uk for details. Public booking (£8 early birds, £10 standard) commences in May from The Frontline Club.

UCL Global Migration Symposia Series

2010-05-09T09:17:00.002+01:00

13 May 2010

Prof. Elspeth Guild (University of Nijmegen; Partner, Kingsley Napley)
Examining the Relationship between Migration and Security

Discussant: Anneliese Baldaccini, Executive Officer Amnesty International EU

Co-hosted by the UCL Centre for Law and Governance in Europe

Accredited with 1.5 CPD hours
(Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board)

Time: 5.30-7pm; followed by a reception

Venue: Roberts G08 Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre,
Roberts Building, Torrington PLace, London WC1E 7JE

Abstract: Migration and security have a troubled relationship both in law and politics in Europe today. As the UK General Election looms, the debate in the UK around migration - both within the EU and from outside it - seems destined to attract much attention. In this presentation I will examine the multiple meanings of migration in the UK and EU: what does it mean to be a citizen, a foreigner or a migrant, where and why? In this inquiry the question of security becomes central: what security concerns are revealed by the way in which individuals are categorised and to what ends?

About the speaker: Elspeth Guild is an internationally acknowledged expert in the field of European immigration law. She is Professor of European Migration Law at the University of Nijmegen, a Partner at Kingsley Napley and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies. She is also a visiting professor at the LSE in London and at the College of Europe, Bruges. She previously acted as Special Advisor to the House of Lords Inquiry into Economic Migration in the EU, and is involved in training judges in EU law. She is frequently requested to make submissions to parliamentary committees on the subject and she acts as an expert to international organisations such as the European Commission, UNHCR, and the Council of Europe. Her most recent monograph is Security and Migration in the 21st Century (Polity, 2009).

About the discussant: Anneliese Baldaccini is Executive Officer Asylum and Immigration at Amnesty International EU in Brussels. She was formerly a committee specialist for the House of Lords European Union Committee and JUSTICE’s human rights legal officer

Please book your place here.

Translation Research Summer School - UCL - June 2010

2010-04-09T10:52:00.002+01:00

Translation Research Summer School (TRSS), June 2010

We invite applications for the TRANSLATION RESEARCH SUMMER SCHOOL (TRSS) 2010, to be
held in London in June 2010. This annual two-week course offers intensive research training in translation and intercultural studies for prospective researchers in the field. For more information, please see below and visit the TRSS website. The deadline for applications is 30 April 2010.

Date and Venue: 14-25 June 2010, Centre for Intercultural Studies, University College London (UCL)

2010 Teaching Staff:
Mona Baker (University of Manchester)
Morven Beaton-Thome (University of Manchester)
Charlotte Bosseaux (University of Edinburgh)
Geraldine Brodie (University College London)
Jorge Díaz-Cintas (Imperial College)
Theo Hermans (University College London)
Moira Inghilleri (University College London)
Hephzibah Israel (London)
Jeremy Munday (University of Leeds)
Nana Sato-Rossberg (Ritsumeikan Univeristy, Kyoto)
Karen Seago (City University, London)
Christopher Stone (University College London)
Sebnem Susam-Sarajeva (University of Edinburgh)
Yau Wai-ping (Hong Kong Baptist University)

Invited speaker: Dilek Dizdar (University of Mainz ; Bogaziçi University, Istanbul)

Syllabus: The syllabus consists of four modules of four sessions each, plus a public lecture and private seminar by the invited speaker. In addition, students attend small-group tutorials and present their own work. Modules: Research Design and Dynamics; Theoretical Approaches; Research Methods; 2010 specialist module: Translation and Values.

Eligibility: The Summer School is open to suitably qualified students from across the world. Candidates should normally hold the degree of Master of Arts or equivalent in a relevant subject (typically a humanities subject involving cross-cultural studies), should be proficient in English and should either have started or be actively considering research in translation and/or intercultural
studies.

Application deadline: 30 April 2010

Tuition fee: 975 GBP for sponsored students; 680 GBP for self-funded students

Contact: Dorota Goluch, d.goluch.09@ucl.ac.uk

University College London (UCL) is located in the Bloomsbury area of central London, a few minutes' walk from the British Museum and the British Library.

TRSS (UK) is a joint initiative of three British universities: the Centre for Intercultural Studies at University College London (UCL), the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester, and the Translation Studies Graduate Programme in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh. TRSS (UK) works closely with TRSS (HK), which is based at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Mellon Post-Doctoral fellowship (University College London)

2010-03-06T21:26:00.002Z

Research Fellow | UCL Mellon Programme | Translation as
dissemination: museums, objects, audiences

The UCL Mellon Programme is seeking to appoint a postdoctoral
Research Fellow from September 2010, to investigate the theme
Translation as dissemination: museums, objects, audiences.

Applicants will have recently completed a PhD in a discipline
related to the Fellowship and ideally will have acquired some
teaching experience related to their research interests.

The appointment will be full time on UCL Grade 7. The salary
range will be GBP31,778-GBP38,441 per annum, inclusive of London
Allowance.

For further details about the vacancy and how to apply online
please see here, and search on Reference Number: 1130479.

Closing date : 19th April 2010.
Latest time for the submission of applications is 12 noon.
Interview date: Friday 21st May 2010.

University College London Taking Action for Equality.

ESF-LiU Conference on 'Home, Migration and the City: New Narratives, New Methodologies', Linköping, Sweden_6-10 August 2010

2010-03-06T21:15:00.004Z

- Call for Applications -

There has been a recent surge of scholarship from human geography, sociology, history, architecture, and cultural studies that focuses on migration as a social, political, cultural and material process. This area of research on migration examines migrants' transnational spatial practices, social and political identities and relationships with the state. Central to this research has been a recognition that at the heart of migration lies a fundamental transformation in spaces and places that are linked to the social and cultural meanings of home and belonging.

Migration brings about a material change in the places and locations through which notions of identity, individual expressions and belonging are transformed. Through the movement of people, for instance, cities, homes and localities become re-narrated through migrants' stories, photographs, music, artwork and films. Cities in particular, as places of origin and (re)settlement become key sites of migrants' experiences of 'home'(s). The experience of Europe over the past fifty years is a good example; urban spaces have increasingly become contested locations where the spatial and material nature of identities are negotiated - Muslim/Christian, European/non-European, first/second generation of migrants. Much migration research, moreover, connects home and nation by investigating migrants' connections with past, present or imagined 'homelands'. Home can now also be described as translocal, transnational and diasporic - shaped by consumption, remittances and social networks. The domestic spaces inhabited by migrants are especially important for their roles in constructing attitudes and behaviours towards 'others' when strangers share living spaces in the city. Home can even be redefined through its 'socio-technical' differences across national spaces. This conference offers an opportunity to bring these social, spatial, material and technological facets of migration together - to consider migrants' identities and experiences of homes and cities, and the material, aural and visual landscapes of mobility and movement.

This conference takes 'narratives' - broadly defined as stories, diaries, myths, photographs, music, films, media images and representations of movement - as the analytical starting point for new research on migration. Narratives have several dimensions. Firstly, migrant narratives need to be understood as inherently spatial. As is widely acknowledged, migrants' stories of movement are often stories of different places at different moments, and thus are essentially 'spatial stories'.
Secondly, this spatiality of migration narratives is multi-scalar; it can relate to belonging on a national, political scale, represent locality dynamics, more small-scale, personal experiences of migration, or even the material narratives of migration, such as stories of significant objects and material culture. The political element of the larger scale narratives is especially important; it is these that foster the exclusion and inclusion of migrants in societies. Thirdly, the performative element of migrants' narratives is very strong; not all narratives are textual but instead are enacted through music, theatre, film, food, or dance.
Finally, such narratives can also be highly visual, corporeal, and embodied, whether through media representations, artwork, or architecture. Such a broad conceptualisation of migrant narratives demands new interdisciplinary theories and methodologies to understand the interconnected landscapes of home, migration and the city.

Invited Speakers will include (list to be completed):

* Dr. Zuzana Burikova
Slovak Academy of Sciences, SK

* Prof. Iain Chambers
University of Naples "L'Orientale", IT

* Prof. Adrian Favell
Aarhus University, DK

* Prof. Tovi Fenster
Tel Aviv University, IL

* Dr. Mirjana Lozanovska
Deakin University, AU

* Prof. Ulrike Meinhof
University of Southampton, UK

* Dr. Nirmal Puwar
Goldsmiths College, UK

* Prof. Zlatko Skrbis
University of Queensland, AU

Full conference programme, including list of invited speakers, and application form accessible online.

Closing date for applications: 16 April 2010.

ESF Contact Alessandra Piccolotto: apiccolotto@esf.org

This conference is organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF), in partnership with the Linköping University.

1st UCL Global Migration Symposium_ "Globalisation and Cosmopolitan Citizenship: Migrating Bodies, Practices and Ideas".

2010-03-03T22:02:00.005Z

**** 1st UCL Global Migration Symposium ****

Professor Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College, US)
"Globalisation and Cosmopolitan Citizenship: Migrating Bodies, Practices and Ideas".

Chair: Dr Claire Dwyer (Migration Research Unit, UCL Geography)
Discussant: Professor John Eade, Director of CRONEM, University of Roehampton and Visiting Professor in the Migration Research Unit.

10 March 2010
5.30-7pm
Roberts Lecture Theatre 106
Roberts Building Torrington Place, London WC1E 7JE

All are welcome, but places are limited. Please reserve your place here.

The event is followed by a drinks reception in the Roberts Building Foyer.

**********

Cosmopolitanism today is no longer the exclusive province of elites. Labour migrants, sojourners, religious believers, and refugees are also open to the world, although they interact with it differently than their professional counterparts. In fact, in today's world, cosmopolitanism is a necessity not a choice. What are the rights and responsibilities of global citizenship?
How can we begin to imagine a community that extends beyond national borders and where do the elements come from with which to create it?

Peggy Levitt is a Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College and a Research Fellow at The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University where she co-directs The Transnational Studies Initiative. Her books include "God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape" (New Press 2007), "The Transnational Studies Reader" (Routledge 2007), "The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation" (Russell Sage 2002), and "The Transnational Villagers" (UC Press, 2001).

The series is sponsored by UCL Research Challenges and the UCL Grand Challenge of Intercultural Interaction.

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP_Wired Up Program

2010-03-03T21:41:00.004Z

Job description

We are currently looking for a postdoctoral researcher to participate in the Wired Up program. Wired Up is an international, interdisciplinary collaborative project between the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Social Sciences.
The project is funded by Utrecht University, through the prestigious High Potential Programme. Wired Up researches how new digital media practices, in particular the Internet, impact on the lives, identities, learning and socialization of migrant youth.

For more information about Wired Up visit the website.

Additional information about the project and this position can be obtained by sending an email to Sandra Ponzanesi, e-mail: s.ponzanesi@uu.nl or by phone 31 (0) 30 253 7844.
The Postdoc will be hosted at the Research Institute for History and Culture. More information can be found at the website of the OGC.

More information about the Gender Graduate Programme where the postdoc will be integrated can be found here.

How to apply:
Applications (by e-mail) should be accompanied by:
* a covering letter in English that sets out the candidate's motivation for applying for the position, stating qualifications and suitability and how these could contribute to the project and his/her ideas how to strengthen the team (about 100 words); * a curriculum vitae in English and, a list of publications; * a copy of your doctoral degree and a list of your MA or RMA marks; * a sample of 2 relevant publications (in English); * contact details of two referees (names, affiliations, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses).

Interested candidates should send their application by March 7, 2010 at the latest. E-mail applications should be sent in pdf or doc format to the Personnel Department, attn. Ms. Ingrid Wagenaar: humanitiesjobs.gw@uu.nl, and should specify your name and vacancy number 681006 in the message as well as in the topic, include a list of attachments in the message, and specify your name in every attachment.

Conference_LONDON THE PROMISED LAND REVISITED

2010-03-03T21:25:00.003Z

LONDON THE PROMISED LAND REVISITED:
A CONFERENCE IN CELEBRATION OF 15 YEARS OF THE CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF MIGRATION AND ITS DIVERSITY

15th May 2010 - 9.30 am - 4 pm
Queen Mary University of London

CHAIR: ANNE KERSHEN (FOUNDER OF THE CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF MIGRATION)

SPEAKERS:
Caroline Bowden (QMUL) - English Nuns and London in the 17th century; exile or
establishment?
John Eade (Roehampton) - Keeping up with multicultural diversity in the global
city; the implications for research and policy making.
Nicholas Evans (Hull) - Protecting Fortress Britain? Maritime solutions to alien
immigration - past and present.
Cathy McIlwaine (QMUL) - Legal Latins: negotiating migrant irregularity among Latin
American migrants in London.
Parvathi Raman (UCL) - Tales from the Boundary - cricket and national identity in
the South Asian Diaspora.
Bronwen Walter (Anglia Ruskin) - Irish/Jewish diasporic intersections in the East
End: paradoxes and shared locations.
John Wood (OU) - Crime, the Courts and Ethnicity in 18th and early 19th century
London: Blacks as victims and offenders.

Registration:
Advance:£20 (£30 on the day): Concessions - students and senior citizens: £15
advance (£20 on the day)

To register and for further details contact:
Louise Mead, Senior Events Officer
Department of Corporate Affairs
Queen Mary, University of London
Tel: 020 7882 5148
fax: 020 7882 3706
email: louise.mead@qmul.ac.uk

Call for Paper: Travelling Languages: Culture, Communication and Translation in a Mobile World

2010-03-03T21:02:00.005Z

Travelling Languages:
Culture, Communication and Translation in a Mobile World

10th Annual Conference of the International Association of Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC) in Association with the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University.

3 - 5 December 2010, Leeds, United Kingdom

organised by Jane Wilkinson (University of Leeds) and Mike Robinson (Leeds Metropolitan University).

The world is ever ‘on the move’. The opportunities and challenges of both real and virtual travel are very much at the heart of the emergent interdisciplinary field of ‘mobilities’, which deals with the movement of peoples, objects, capital, information and cultures across an increasingly globalised and apparently borderless world. In the practices, processes and performances of moving – whether for voluntary leisure, forced migration or economic pragmatism – we are faced with the negotiation and re-negotiation of identities and meaning relating to places and pasts.

Within the increasing complexities of global flows and encounters, intercultural skills and competencies are being challenged and re-imagined. The vital role of languages and the intricacies of intercultural dialogue have largely remained implicit in the discourses surrounding mobilities. This Conference seeks to interrogate the role of intercultural communication and of languages in the inevitable moments of encounter which arise from all forms of ‘motion’.

This international and interdisciplinary event is the 10th anniversary conference of the International Association of Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC) and is being organised in association with the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change. Through this event we aim to bring together many of the sub-themes of previous IALIC conferences and to focus upon the issues of culture, communication and translation in a mobile world, including: languages and intercultural communication in local and global education, tourism, hospitality, migration, translation, real and virtual border-crossings.

CALL FOR PAPERS
We are pleased to receive 20 –minute research papers or descriptions of pedagogical practice which address or go beyond the following themes:

* Moving languages - continuities and change;
* Real and virtual border crossings;
* Tourist encounters and communicating with the ‘other’;
* Tourism’s role in inter-cultural dialogue;
* The languages of diasporas and diasporic languages;
* Dealing with dialects and the evolution/dissolution of communities;
* Hospitality and languages of welcome;
* Learning the languages of migration;
* Lingusitic boundaries and socio-cultural inclusions and exclusions;
* ‘Located’ and ‘dislocated’ languages and identities;
* Practices and performances of translation.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words including title and full contact details as an electronic file to Jane Wilkinson at IALIC2010@leeds.ac.uk. You may submit your abstract as soon as possible but no later than 1st June 2010.

Please send any queries to us at IALIC2010@leeds.ac.uk

For more details clik here

Call for Paper_The Concept of Mixed Migration | Geneva, 8-9 April 2010

2009-12-01T18:31:00.003Z

Call for Papers for an international conference on:

"The Concept of Mixed Migration: Reflecting on Today’s Migratory Policies, Movements and Paradigms Shifts"

Geneva, 8-9 April 2010

All information here

Lettere A Colori: Descrizioni di dipinti nella corrispondenza di Dante Gabriel Rossetti

2009-11-25T11:04:00.007Z

Even if not specifically connected to the topic of this blog, I want to outline my recent publication on NINES (a peer-reviewed online forum on Nineetenth Century) founded by Jerome McGann.

My work is Lettere A Colori: Descrizioni di dipinti nella corrispondenza di Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Give a look if you are curious, it deals with Dante Gabriel Rossetti's letters that describe paintings . If you want to know more read the introductory essay I wrote. The exhibition concerns some of Rossetti's letters that I have translated because extraordinarily related to his and others' paintings. Technically they are called ekphraseis (from the Greek word).

This work is part of my PhD research that is going to be published soon with Bonanno Editore. Enjoy!

Call for article_journal Studies in Travel Writing

2009-11-25T11:01:00.003Z

In 2012 the Journal Studies in Travel Writing will publish a special
issue on travel writing and Italy, edited by Sharon Ouditt (Nottingham
Trent University) and Loredana Polezzi (Warwick University).

Essays, of around 7,000-10,000 words, may focus on any aspect of the
construction or refraction of Italy through travel writing in any
period, although we particularly welcome papers that (i) focus on
significant trends or transitions (e.g. with reference to related areas
such as visual culture) in travel writing about Italy; (ii) are
concerned with contemporary images of Italy, including those produced by
immigration, return migration or long-term settlement; and/or (iii)
display an engagement with the ideologies and methodologies that impact
on the discussions central to travel writing.

The timetable is as follows: Abstracts of around 500 words by 1 February
2010; essays to be commissioned by 1 April 2010; commissioned essays due
to editors by 1 December 2010; referees' reports by 1 April 2011; final
copy to editors by 1 August 2011.

Please send abstracts to both sharon.ouditt@ntu.ac.uk and
L.Polezzi@warwick.ac.uk

Feminist Media Studies Journal_December 2009

2009-11-25T09:30:00.005Z

Feminist Media Studies--Volume 9:4 (December 2009)

Special Issue: Transcultural Mediations and Transnational Politics of Difference
Guest Editors: Aniko Imre, Katarzyna Marciniak, and Aine O'Healy

***This special issue of "Feminist Media Studies" might be of interest to some of the blog's readers***

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

GUEST EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
Transcultural Mediations and Transnational Politics of Difference
Anikó Imre, Katarzyna Marciniak, and Áine O’Healy

Feminist Media Studies 9:4 (2009): 385-390

ARTICLES
Gender and Quality Television: A Transcultural Feminist Project
Anikó Imre

Feminist Media Studies 9:4 (2009): 391-407

Buying Up Baby: Modern Feminine Subjectivity, Assertions of “Choice,” and the
Repudiation of Reproductive Justice in Postfeminist Unwanted Pregnancy Films
Pamela Thoma

Feminist Media Studies 9:4 (2009): 409-425

Jennifer Fox’s Transcultural Talking Cure: Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman (2007)
Angelica Fenner

Feminist Media Studies 9:4 (2009): 427-445

Tracing Women’s Routes in a Transnational Scenario: the Video-Cartographies of
Ursula Biemann
Federica Timeto

Feminist Media Studies 9:4 (2009): 447-460

East/West Encounters: “Indian” Identity and Transnational Feminism in Manushi
Anita Anantharam

Feminist Media Studies 9:4 (2009): 461-476

Rumors from around the Bloc: Gossip, Rhizomatic Media, and the Plotki Femzine
Red Chidgey, Jenny Gunnarson Payne, and Elke Zobl

Feminist Media Studies 9:4 (2009): 477-491

Conference_ Tales of Transit (Belgium 10-12 June 2010)

2009-10-23T18:05:00.005+01:00

Another interesting international conference on the topic of migration called "Tales of Transit: Narrative Migrant Spaces in Transatlantic Perspective, 1830-1954" will take place in Antwerp (Belgium) in June 2010. A very informative website is already available.
A call for paper is open!

Conference_Language, Space and Otherness in Italy since 1861, Rome 24-25 June 2010

2009-10-22T21:34:00.006+01:00

I am glad to announce an interesting conference that will take place in Rome the 24th and 25th of June 2010 at the British School. The organizer is prof. David Forgacs and confirmed speakers include John Agnew, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Charles Burdett, Derek Duncan, John Foot, Mia Fuller, Robert Gordon, and Alessandro Portelli.

"The aim of the conference is to identify and investigate the main rhetorical strategies and devices used in Italy since Unification to define ‘others’ and those used to resist such definitions. How have different types of discourse and media produced certain ‘marked’ categories of people – for example the poor, sexual deviants, prostitutes, colonized subjects, gypsies, illegal immigrants, persons with disability or with mental illness? What happens when some of these people react with their own discourses, counter-definitions and actions?
How do definitions of difference and otherness work across space, for instance by drawing boundaries or constructing oppositions: core/periphery, metropolitan centre/colony, straight/bent, inside/outside, high/low, clean/dirty? Why have maps, borders and coastline acquired such strong significance at certain historical moments? Participants are invited to examine these processes in written and printed texts, oral life stories, songs, photographs, radio and moving image media".

*****

At this confrence, I will also present a paper on "Redefing Italian Spaces: Piazza Vittorio and Transcultural Aesthetics". An abstract follows:

In 2002 the Italian musician Mario Tronco and the film director Agostino Ferrente decided to create an orchestra in the multicultural area of Rome, known as the Esquilino quarter. This project came out of their desire to put together the multi-ethnical variety of musicians who were dwelling in that part of Rome. The result was truly extraordinary: a large group, constituted by almost twenty musicians from many different countries, formed the so-called “Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio” and was directed by Mario Tronco. The Orchestra is now internationally known and is currently on tour all over the world. In 2006 Agostino Ferrente made a documentary about the Orchestra telling the story of its constitution. This film received many awards and has been screened all over the world.
The same year, 2006, saw the publication of a novel by the “Italophone” Algerian writer Amara Lakhous entitled Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a P.zza Vittorio (“Clash of civilizations for an elevator in Piazza Vittorio”), which is again a story about the multicultural reality of Piazza Vittorio, an example, in fact, of the transformation of the Italian society and of the importance that Italian migrant literature is gradually gaining. Lakhous’ book reflects ironically and provocatively on the stereotypes and common places related to the idea of “otherness” within an Italian context.
Starting from these musical, cinematic and narrative examples, this paper aims at analysing how immigration in Italy is beginning to produce cultural performances that enter the larger context of popular culture, and to what extend these performances, as forms of aesthetic and cultural contributions, have been able to redefine Italian spaces.

Book_Visions of Struggle in Women’s Filmmaking in the Mediterranean

2009-10-22T21:03:00.012+01:00

Another interesting book on migration and cinema will be published by Palgrave next February 2010. The editor is Flavia Laviosa. The preface is by Laura Mulvey.
Looking forward to getting a copy!

"Focusing on countries in the Mediterranean rim, as the unifying geo-cultural location for a contemporary discussion on women’s human, civil and social rights, this book elaborates a trans-cultural definition of being a woman in struggle. This provocative collection situates feminist arguments on questions of women’s identity, roles, psychology and sexuality. Such issues are examined through the films of women directors from Mediterranean countries, whose cinema is relevant to the discourse of women’s studies. Although their methodologies are diverse, these artists are united in their use of cinema as a means of
intervention, taking on the role as outspoken and leading advocates for women’s problems. Their cinematic art reproduces and structures the discourses of realism, recreating prototypical characters and figurations and magnifying the complex and unambiguous truths about women’s political, class, war and gender struggles. Contributors examine
representations of women’s unresolved issues and violated rights in films that are expressions of cultural challenges and socio-political commitment for Mediterranean women’s collective experience of struggle".


This book is the result of a symposium that took place at the Davis Museum
and Cultural Center November 2-3 2007.

Book_Translated People, Translated Texts Language and Migration in Contemporary African Literature

2009-10-22T20:54:00.005+01:00

A new book on the relationship between translation and migration has been recently published by St. Jerome publishing house. The title is "Translated People, Translated Texts Language and Migration in Contemporary African Literature". The author is Tina Steiner.

"Translated People, Translated Texts makes a significant contribution to our understanding of migration as a common condition of the postcolonial world and offers a welcome insight into particular travellers and their unique translations".

All information here.

Call for Paper: The Mediterranean in Italian Culture_Conference 3-4 May 2010

2009-10-22T20:44:00.005+01:00

Dear all,

a very interesting conference will be held in Venice and Udine on May 3 and 4, 2010. The topic is the Mediterranean and its cultural implications in the Italian horizon. More information about the call for paper here.

Call for article_Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture

2009-10-22T20:35:00.006+01:00

Dear all,
a new journal has just been created. The title is very pomising "Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture". This journal "situates itself at the interface of Migration Studies and Cultural Studies".
There is a call for article for its first issue. The deadline is 1st of December 2009.
I'm planning to send an abstract for an article on film and migration. I'm sure this post might be of interest to the readers of this blog.
You can find all the information about it here.

From Albanophobia to (Roma)Rumanophobia_Dr Nicola Mai at UCL 18 March 2009

2009-03-13T17:02:00.007Z

Dear all,
it is my plesure to invite you to a seminar by Dr Nicola Mai, organized by the UCL Mellon Proramme.

Dr Nicola Mai will talk about: "From Albanophobia to (Roma)Rumanophobia: new and old moral panics, social transformations and the re-configuration of Italian national identity".

The seminar will take place at Roberts Building, Room 212, Malet Place, UCL, Gower Street, London, WC1, Wednesday 18 March 2009, 5pm.

I'll chair the session.
You are all welcome and the event is free!

All my Best
Federica

Corazones de Mujer: Screening and Interview with Director and Actress, UCL 13 March 2009

2009-03-12T17:10:00.014Z

The presentation went very well! There were many people and Davide Sordella gave very interesting answers to the many questions of the audience!
The interview will be available in a future editorial project that will include also the interviews with the other directors who have been involved in the project "Perfoming Gender".

Unfortunately the actress Ghizlane Waldi couldn't come.

The DVD of "Corazones de Mujer" will be available to buy this month.

****************************************************************************************

UCL Mellon Programme: Performing Gender, Transpositions and Translations of Identities presents:

13 March 2009, 6pm

A screening of "Corazones de mujer" | A film by “Kiff Kosoof” (Pablo
Benedetti and Davide Sordella) with Ghizlane Waldi and Aziz Ahmeri (with English sub-titles).

Introduced by Dr Federica Mazzara.
***This screening will be followed by a discussion with one of the directors, Davide Sordella, and the lead actress, Ghizlane Waldi***

All are welcome | Admission is free

Venue: Malet Place Engineering Building, Room 1.03, UCL, Gower Street, London, WC1 (campus maps)

Full details of this series. Download the series poster (PDF format). Full details of the event.

Synopsis:
Once upon a time there was a transvestite tailor who made the best Arab clothing in the entire city: his name was Shakira (Aziz Ahmeri) and he wa to make the wedding gown for a young woman who was soon to be married: Zina (Ghizlane Waldi). The problem was that Zina had already lost her virginity and this is forbidden in the Arab world. In order to return to “kilometer zero,” the two decide to drive an old Alfa Romeo sports car from Torino all the way to Morocco and… this is the beginning of a voyage that will save her life.

Directors' Biographies:
DAVIDE SORDELLA: Studied in London at the London International Film School, directed by Mike Leigh. From 1996 to 2000 he worked in Latin America for various international agencies and organizations directing documentaries. From 2000 to 2002 he directed numerous shorts in various countries (UK, Israel, Nepal, etc.). His first feature film, “Fratelli di Sangue,” was presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2006. “Corazones de Mujer” is his second film. He is now working in Japan on his third film, “Sleeping Doll,” an international co-production.

PABLO BENEDETTI: He studied at the London International Film School, directed by Mike Leigh, where he developed skills in the art of film making, and specialized in directing. In 2003 he began an intense experience with Lindsay Kemp. In 2004, during a long tour in Spain and Italy he made Gota Roja, a portrait of this extraordinary artist. The next year, 2005, he directed Bluemist, about the competitive apnea world champion, Gianluca Genoni. He then began collaborating with his former classmate, Davide Sordella, making the film Corazones de Mujer.

Workshop_Migrating Italy_Oxford 27 February 2009

2009-01-29T09:21:00.006Z

Dear all,
the 27th of February a very interersting interdisciplinary workshop on "Media and Narrative Represenattions of Immigration in italy", will take place in Oxford.
On that occasion I will present a paper "Writing the Mediterranean: Amara Lakhous and the Translation of Cultures".
There'll be speakers from all over UK and they will present interesting papers on various aspects of immigration in Italy, with a special concern to the media and narrative representations.
For further details and for dowloading the programme click here.

Abstract of my paper:
WRITING THE MEDITERRANEAN: AMARA LAKHOUS AND THE TRANSLATION OF CULTURES

This paper aims at investigating the possibility of talking about a ‘Mediterranean alternative’ in a cultural and literary horizon. In particular, it will analyse the Italian case, whose Mediterranean heredity has recently been rediscovered through the contributions of those writers who, coming from other Mediterranean countries, are challenging the borders of a Westernized and controversial reality, such as the Italian one. Amara Lakhous, a contemporary Algerian-Italian writer, living in Italy and writing in Italian, is a good example of this attempt. His writing is, in fact, transgressing the bounded Italian national culture, by challenging its monolithic view and by offering a new transcultural gaze into the Italian whole way of life.

Amara Lakhous in London_13 February 2009

2009-01-27T15:28:00.006Z

Dear all,
it is my pleasure to invite you to the presentation of the algerian-Italian writer,
Amara Lakhous's book "Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio"
(Clash of Civilization over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio), that I have organized
for the UCL Mellon Programme. It will take place at the UCL,
Friday 13 February 2009, 17.30 (Pearson LT, main campus).
For all details click on the image or visit the Mellon Programme website.
The event is free and you are all welcome.

                        
           ***THE AUTHOR WILL BE PRESENT***

THE EVENT WILL BE CONDUCTED IN ITALIAN.


Looking forward to seeing you there!

Best Regards
Federica

CALL FOR PAPER_ITALIAN CULTURAL STUDIES

2009-01-13T15:05:00.004Z

***ITALIAN CULTURAL STUDIES***
May 6-7-8, 2010 Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

ORGANIZED BY DARTMOUTH COLLEGE (Graziella Parati) AND THE UNIVERSITY OF BARI (Patrizia Calefato.)

This interdisciplinary conference will focus on the state of the field of Cultural Studies in Italian Studies. We invite presentations on Cultural Studies as practiced in Italian Studies, and on topics focusing on Italy and Cultural Studies in all fields. We invite submissions from colleagues in: anthropology, art history, economics, geography, history, literary studies, Mediterranean studies, religion, semiotics, sociology, visual studies, the sciences etc.
Presentations will last 20 minutes. Participants will bring a final, longer version of their presentation for publication (Please follow the Chicago Style Manual for the publishable essay). Final essays will be refereed and those recommended for publication by independent readers will become part of the volume: Italian Cultural Studies (2010).
All presentations and final essays must be in English (Please let us know if you need to contact translators.)
No registration fees.

Please send a one page abstract with title of presentation by October 31 2009 to both: graziella.parati@dartmouth.edu and p.calefato@lingue.uniba.it

ITALIAN CINEMA OF MIGRATION January-March 2009

2008-12-08T17:21:00.007Z

A new film screenings series I have organized on Italian migration - both out of Italy and into Italy - will start in January 2009 and it will run till March 2009.
The purpose is to show how the depiction of migrants has changed (?) in Italian cinema and how stereotypes and prejudies towards the "other" has been represented by Italian film-makers or foreign film-makers who have produced "Italian" films. I will introduce every film. Each screening will be followed by a discussion.
You can find all details about venue, time and films to be screened by clicking the poster above. All films have English subtitles.
Looking forward to seeing you there!

Come un uomo sulla terra/Like a man on earth

2008-12-08T17:04:00.006Z

Since 2003 Italy and Europe have asked Libya to stop the African migrants. What are the Libyan police really doing? What do thousands of African men and women suffer? And why does everybody pretend they do not know about it? The documentary "Come un uomo sulla terra" by Riccardo Biadene, Andrea Segre, Dagmawi Yimer tries to provide answers to these questions.
Despite the indifference of Italian government and media towards the problem, "Come un uomo sulla terra" is being screened in many Italian cities.
You can sign a petition on-line to "bring to a halt the violence against thousands of human beings arrested and deported by the Libyan police, to prevent their migration to Europe". For further information about the documentary and for signing the petition click here.

Interview with Cristina Ali-Farah

2008-11-11T10:50:00.007Z

This is Cristina Ali-Farah, an Italian-Somalian writer. I will interview her on Friday 14 November on the occasion of the Conference "Into Italy Out of Italy. The Language and Culture of Migrants", that will take place at the Italian Cultural Institute in London, from 14 to 15 November.

For all details and for downloading the programme click here.

INTO ITALY OUT OF ITALY: THE LANGUAGE AND CULTURE OF MIGRANTS. Conference 14-15 November 2008

2008-08-01T12:54:00.017+01:00

It is a great pleasure for me to be part of the Organizing Committee of this conference that will take place at the London Italian Institute of Culture from the 14th to the 15th of November 2008, and which has been put together by Dr Adam Ledgeway (University of Cambridge) and Prof. Laura Lepschy (UCL, Honorary Professor).

The aim of the conference, as the two organizers state, is to bring together, for the first time, two different but related strands of research surrounding the language and culture of migration within the Italian context. The first concerns the mass emigration of circa 26 million Italians (Haller 1997) out of Italy during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century to such countries as the UK, Germany, USA, Canada, Latin America and Australia. The second involves the more recent phenomenon of immigration into Italy from, for example, former eastern European communist states and North Africa. In both cases, there arise significant questions about the cultural and, in particular, linguistic integration of such immigrant communities in their host country. Key in this respect is the issue of national identity, which, especially in subsequent generations, is increasingly defined by linguistic competence in the migrant language (characterised by growing attrition and hybridism; Gonzo & Saltarelli 1989) and that of the host country (characterised by ever greater competence). This leads to complex and often unstable and shifting concepts of native language or mother tongue, which can vary greatly across the different generations of the migrant community. The proposed conference will therefore examine these issues from two distinct but complementary perspectives, bringing together leading (socio)linguists in the field and a number of scholars working on migrant Italian literatures. The former will provide both general overviews and in-depth case studies of the structural and social development of Italian varieties spoken in representative immigrant Italian communities around the world, whereas the latter will introduce and explore issues and themes that specifically characterise Italian migrant literature and film (e.g. national and linguistic identity, cultural conflict, integration), as well as presenting detailed studies of some of the most influential literary figures in the field. Particularly important in this respect are the parallels that can be drawn from a historical perspective between the use of Italian as a literary language in previous centuries by authors whose mother tongue was one of the many dialects of Italy (the so-called Questione della lingua) and the use of Italian by modern migrant writers, both in and out of Italy, for whom (standard) Italian might not be their mother language.
To reinforce this integrated approach to the study of the language and culture of migration, which, to date, has been characterised by little, if any, collaboration between linguistic and literary scholars, the conference will include not only a number of individual conference papers, but also a series of roundtable discussions involving both groups of scholars and a number of scholar-led interviews with a selection of modern migrant authors, including T. Lamri (Algeria, now in Ravenna), C. Ali-Faah (Somalia, now in Rome) and G. Pressburger (Hungary, now in Trieste), as well an interview with the film director Marco Tullio Giordana. Given the themes of the conference and its integration into the events of the annual ‘Settimana della lingua italiana’, which aims to raise the profile of Italian language and culture among the general public, it is envisaged that the conference will be of interest not only to researchers, postgraduates and teachers of Italian at all levels, but also to the general public and, in particular, the large Italian immigrant community in the UK. Both the conference presentations and the roundtable discussions will be based on the expertise and research of the various contributors, whereas the interviews with migrant authors will offer the possibility to explore and test directly new ideas and hypotheses about recent linguistic and literary developments in a number of migrant communities in and out of Italy. From this synergy we trust that new insights, reflections and stimuli for further original projects will emerge.

Further information about the conference will appear in due course. For any informal inquiries, please contact Dr Adam Ledgeway

PROGRAMME

Papers

Camilla Bettoni (University of Verona) Tra lingua, dialetto e inglese: mezzo secolo di emigrazione italiana in Australia
Jenny Burns (University of Warwick) Into and out of Italian: the mobility of language(s) in immigration literature in Italian
Kathy Burrell (De Montfort University) 'We are Italians but we don't have nothing in common': social ties and cultural identities in a small Italian community
Antonio d'Alfonso (Montreal) Born Italian in Montreal
Fabrizio De Donno (RHUL) Dismatriati: orfani d'Africa e cultura migrante in Italia
Fabiana di Brazzà (University of Udine) Voci dall'Italia del Nord-Est: scrittura narrativa di immigrati
Derek Duncan (University of Bristol) Language and migration in Italian cinema
Francesco Goglia (University of Exeter) The Igbo-Nigerian community in Italy: languages and cultures in contact
Herman Haller (CUNY) Italian immigrant speech in the years of mass migration: Language at play in Eduardo Migliaccio's 'Macchiette'
Carla Marcato (University of Udine) Plurilinguismo vecchio e nuovo nell'Italia del Nord-Est
Laura Pariani (Milan)Il linguaggio degli italiani del Rio de La Plata e l'influenza di tale lingua composita sulla letteratura
Domenico Pietropaolo (University of Toronto) Italiese: Language loyalty and the culture of immigration
Loredana Polezzi (University of Warwick) Polylingualism and self-translation in Pietro di Donato's 'Christ in Concrete' and Giose Rimanelli's 'Familia'
Arturo Tosi (RHUL) The language of Italians in Britain
Stefania Tufi (University of Liverpool) Degrees of visibility of immigrant communities in the linguistic landscape of Genoa and Cagliari
Nigel Vincent (University of Manchester) Tra fiorentino e milanese: la Divina Commedia nelle versioni di Carlo Porta.

Interviews

Cristina Ali-Farah interviewed by Federica Mazzara (UCL)
Marco Tullio Giordana interviewed by Guido Bonsaver (University of Oxford)
Tahar Lamri interviewed by Marta Niccolai (UCL)
Enrico Palandri interviewed by Monica Francioso (University of Dublin)
Giorgio Pressburger interviewed by Emma Bond (University of Oxford)

Organizing Committee:
Adam Ledgeway (University of Cambridge) & Anna Laura Lepschy (Universities of UCL & Cambridge), with the collaboration of Pierluigi Barrotta (Italian Cultural Institute, London), Guido Bonsaver (University of Oxford), Lorenzo Losi (Ente Nazionale Acli Istruzione Professionale), Carla Marcato (University of Udine), Federica Mazzara (UCL), Domenico Pietropaolo (University of Toronto), Naomi Segal (Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies), Nigel Vincent (University of Manchester).

NOTHING IS MISSING. An Exhibition at UCL by Mieke Bal 20-21 September 2008

2008-08-01T11:20:00.015+01:00

Some pictures from the Mieke Bal's exhibition!

Dear All,
It is a very great pleasure to announce an important event I am organizing for the UCL Mellon Programme. It is a video installation on migration by the cultural theorist and artist Mieke Bal called "Nothing is Missing".
The exhibition will take place at the UCL Haldane Room (North Cloister) and it will last two days, from the 20th to the 21st of Semptember 2008.
The 21st of September it will be included in the London Open House Festival. Many thanks to the UCL SLade School of Fine Arts for providing me with the audio-visual equipment.

Saturday 20 September Mieke Bal will inaugurate the exhibition with a lecture that will take place at the UCL Old Refactory at 12pm introduced by the UCL Vice-Provost Michael Worton and chaired by myself.
For further details click on the image.

Festival of Mediterrenean Literature 11-14 September 2008

2008-08-01T10:37:00.011+01:00

This is a Literature Festival in Italy (Lucera, FG), promoted by the cultural association “Mediterraneo è Cultura”, where I have been invited as moderator of an Algerian writer, Amara Lakhous. Lakhous lives in Italy and writes in Italian and he is the author of a very interesting book "Scontro di civiltà per un ascensoore a Piazza Vittorio", recently available in English translation. The Festival is focused on Mediterranean cultures and the theme this year is “Conflicts”. It is going to be a very exciting experience. Looking forward to writing about that.

Corazones de Mujer

2008-06-07T00:02:00.008+01:00

Despite the Spanish title, "Corazones de Mujer" is a recent film that apparently inaugurates a new season of Italian cinema, by looking at other cultures with interested eyes. The movie is directed by two young Italians, Davide Sordella and Pablo Benedetti who preferred to be called with an arabic collective name, "K. Koosof", that in Arabic language means "eclipse". The film, which has been presented at the last Berlin Cinema festival, tells the story of a Moroccan tailor, who is transvestite, and a promised bride, who is not longer a virgin, an unforgivable sin for the Arabic culture. The two characters, played by the amateur Moroccan actors Aziz Ahmeri and Ghizlane Waldi, live in Turin (Italy) and to sort out the problem, they decide to undertake a trip by car from Turin to Morocco.
The film, a road movie, is the story of the reconciliation of the two characters with their own country of origin, but also an analysis of the concept of individual freedom.
The film will be screened in the Italian cinemas from the 20th of June. I'm really looking forward to seeing it. I like the hybridisation contained in it. The title is Spanish, the Italian directors use an Arabic name, the charcters are Moroccan, live in Italy and speak half Italian and half Arabic, even their gender identity is ambiguous and misleading...
This film promises to be an attempt to "move the borders" of traditional cinematic schemes. To watch it will be my first priority next time I go to Italy.

Italy condemned for 'racism wave'

2008-05-28T19:08:00.012+01:00

This is the title of an article published today on the BBC Online Newspaper.
The situation in Italy is really tense, since the victory of the right wing government last month. The immigration measures adopted in Italy these days have been criticized by all the European countries; they simply go againsts basic human rights! Especially the Roma communities in Italy are blamed by the locals for all sorts of crimes, and people have totally lost their mind, pursuing xenophobic reactions against immigrants.
Personally, I'm really worried about this situation. Italy, being also my country, has too easily forgotten the time when Italians were living and experiencing exactly the same discriminations that immigrants are experiencing today in Italy.
Migration, in fact, has always been a central issue of Italian history. Italy has witnessed different kinds of diaspora due to different economical crisis. There have been overseas emigrations of Italians to North America and Australia since at least the second half of the 19th century, in a special way after the unification; internal migrations in particular of Southern Italians to the more promising North and migration to European countries, especially after the Second World War, indeed a very active phenomenon still today.
Despite this experience, Italy has today great difficulties in dealing with the reverse phenomenon of immigration. The way Italians and the Italian government are dealing with immigration today is, in fact, a symptom of a intolerant attitude towards people coming from beyond Italian borders, who are especially identified with illegal and criminal individuals. The legislative discourse, and not only that, is usually informed by a rhetoric that associates the immigrants with concepts of regression and political danger to be fought.
I like what Donna Gabaccia writes in her book, "Italy's many Diaspora": «For a country with a long history of sending emigrants abroad, Italy experienced considerable distress in welcoming migrants onto its national territory…a nation accustomed to thinking of its migrants as subject to racist and capitalist oppression abroad suddenly looked into the mirror to see itself as the oppressor» (p. 172).
Italian cultural memory is too short! It is easy to condemn from the perspective of an "host" country, people arriving "illegallly", and generally label all of them as criminals and dangerous people. It is easy and completely wrong!
Italians, I beleive, need a huge mirror to question their cultural memory.

Migration, Reception and Return

2008-05-15T15:38:00.008+01:00

Next week I'll be in Sicily to present a paper at the AAIS♥AATI Convention in Taormina (22-25 May), "Alla scoperta della Sicilia/Discovering Sicily".
The panel is very interesting and is chaired by my friend and colleague Dr Lanfranco Aceti (Birckbeck College). The topic is once again migration, but this time I'm more emotionally involved, since I'm goin to talk about the image of Sicilians as "Others", that is about the time when Southern Italians were mistreated and identified as "criminals" by the destination coutries of their migrations.
I'll make a comparison between the rhetorical xenophobic discourse used to identify Southern Italians and the similar discourse used today in Italy to define the new migrants coming to the "Bel paese", and mistreated in the same way.

Below a description of the panel by Lanfranco, and the abstracts of teh two papers it includes:

Migration, Reception and Return: Sicily Between Provincialism and Globalization

What is the portrayed image of Sicily beyond the borders of its insularity? Is there a tradition of constant internationalization through the process of migration and change or is the process of perceived change, as in the words of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, nothing other than a disguise to hide a visual and poetic aesthetic of eternal return?
This panel, through interdisciplinary cinematic, literary and curatorial analyses, will discuss the tensions that characterize the cultural representations of Sicily both at home and abroad. Suspended between internationalized artistic practices and the representations of a land of provincialisms, the authors’ journeys migrate between personalized aesthetics, diverse audiences’ receptions and globalized regional stereotypes.
The papers will discuss these issues in a comparative interdisciplinary framework and will propose case studies that have characterized aesthetic processes of globalized migrations and returns to insularity.

Dr Federica Mazzara UCL Mellon Research Fellow
Sicilians as Other: Cinematic and Literary Represenations of Migration

This paper aims at analysing the cinematic and literary representation of important migratory periods of Italian history focusing on Sicily and its regional and international representations of cultural conflicts in the portrait of identities.
The migratory streams that have marked Sicilian culture starting from the Nineteenth Century, and still continuing today, have been objects of aesthetical transpositions that this paper will analyze. The paper will discuss the cultural practices of migration in a regional and globalized context. As Gian Antonio Stella documents in the novel “L’Orda. Quando gli albanesi eravamo noi” [“The Horde. When we were like the Albanians”] (2002), there was a time when Southern Italians, and Sicilians especially, were the ‘Others’. They were like all the immigrants that today seek a new life in the ‘host’ Italian country. Gianni Amelio’s film “Lamerica” (1994) represents this tragic tension through an historical comparison: the historical migration of the Sicilians to the United Stated and the present migration of the Albanians to Sicily. These are two different times, two different countries, but representative of the same destiny: that of being and remaining ‘Others’. The paper investigates the concept of alterity as part of Sicilian memory and oblivion.

John Francescutti, Curator Contemporary and Digital Art
Curatorial Stereotypes of Sicily: The Obligation to Be Civilized

The work of the curator is embroiled in something more than a cultural diatribe on representation of identity and can fluctuate between the total rejection or total acceptance of stereotypes.
MoMA’s exhibit of The Sopranos and the complex sentiment that stirred in the Italian community in the US gave relevance to the complexities of cultural representations. The process of integration and assimilation that was proposed and imposed on Italian migrants in the US and the UK, particularly Sicilians, is clearly vocalized in Mario Monicelli’s Girl with a Gun when Assunta Patanè, played by Monica Vitti, is accused of being a savage by an ‘Anglosaxon civilized educator’.
Trapped between a ‘savage cultural representation of identity’ and the ‘obligation to become civilized’ the cultural complexities of Sicilian identity seem to disappear. The paper will argue the necessity and the challenges of a curatorial experience able to provide an understanding of the complexities of Sicilian reality not limited to the representations of Mafia.

ROCCO E I SUOI FRATELLI. Saturday 31 May 2008, 2pm

2008-05-12T13:05:00.006+01:00

Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers: in Italian with English subtitles) closes the first part of the film series Migrations, Emigrations, Immigrations: Italy Between Past Memories and Contemporary Realitiesand. The film stars Alain Delon in this powerful portrayal of an Italian mother and her five sons that migrate from the South of Italy to the North in search of a better life.

Tickets (£3) available to purchase on-line (guarantees a seat) and at the door on the day. Reservations recommended!
For contact and info: Dr Lanfranco Aceti (L.Aceti@bbk.ac.uk) Even Curator: John Francescutti.
Venue: The Birkbeck Cinema, Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD.

PANE E CIOCCOLATA. Saturday 17 May 2008, 2pm

2008-05-12T12:59:00.005+01:00

Pane e Cioccolata (Bread and Chocolate: in Italian with English subtitles) is the tragicomic story of an Italian emigrant in Switzerland that lives in a chicken coop. This is the second screening of the new Film Series on Migration, titled Migrations, Emigrations, Immigrations: Italy Between Past Memories and Contemporary Realities organized by Dr Landranco Aceti with the participation of Dr Federica Mazzara (UCL Mellon Programme).

NUOVOMONDO. Saturday 10 May 2008, 2pm

2008-05-12T12:47:00.009+01:00

Nuovomondo, the story of an Italian family emigrating to the United States of America begins the new Italian film screenings on Italian migration titled Migrations, Emigrations, Immigrations: Italy Between Past Memories and Contemporary Realities.
Tickets (£3) available to purchase on-line (guarantees a seat) and at the door on the day.
Further information: L.Aceti@bbk.ac.uk. Event curator John Francescutti.
Venue: The Birkbeck Cinema, Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD.

FILM CLUB ON ITALIAN MIGRATION

2008-05-12T12:31:00.013+01:00

Hi everybody,
I have been recently involved in a new Italian Film Screening Series organized by Dr Lanfranco Aceti (Birckbek College) and entitled Migration, Emigration, Immigration. Italy Between Past memories and Contemporary Realities.
My partecipation in that is related to my interest on the topic of Italian migration. The film series revolves in fact on the issues of Italian Migration, Emigration, Immigration.
The first three screenings have been planned: "Nuovomondo" (Saturday 10 May), "Pane e Cioccolata" (Saturday 17 May) and "Rocco e i suoi fratelli" (Saturday 31 May). English subtitles are provided. The screenings start at 2pm. and they take place at the beautiful Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD.
Tickets (£3) available to purchase on-line (guarantees a seat) and at the door on the day.
For contact and info: Dr Lanfranco Aceti (L.Aceti@bbk.ac.uk). Event curator: John Francescutti.

This programme is in collaboration with and supported by the ICI - Italian Cultural Institute and the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise.

Piazza Vittorio: An example of Cultural Transformation in Italy

2008-04-19T15:31:00.003+01:00

Hi all,
this is the title of a paper I'm giving at a conference in London, on Friday 25 April.

Abstract:
In 2002 the Italian musician Mario Tronco and the film director Agostino Ferrente decided to create an orchestra in the multicultural area of Rome, known as the Esquilino quarter. This project came out of their desire to put together the multi-ethnical variety of musicians that were dwelling in that part of Rome. The result was truly amazing: an enormous group, directed by Mario Tronco, constituted by almost twenty musicians coming from many different countries, formed the so-called “Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio” (“The Orchestra of Vittorio Square”). The Orchestra is now internationally known and is currently on tour all over the world. In 2006 Agostino Ferrente made a documentary about the Orchestra telling the story of its constitution. This film received many awards and has been screened all over the world (also in London on the occasion of the latest Italian Film Festival). The same year, 2006, saw the publication of a novel by the Italophone Algerian writer Amara Lakhous called “Scontro di civiltà a P.zza Vittorio (“Clash of civilizations for an elevator in Piazza Vittorio”), which is again a story about the multicultural reality of Rome, an example in fact of the transformation of the Italian society and of the importance that Italian migrant literature is gradually gaining.
Starting from these musical, cinematic and narrative examples, this paper aims at analysing how migration in Italy is beginning to produce cultural performances that enter the larger context of popular culture. In other words, this paper will try to analyse the importance of what Mieke Bal has defined as “migratory aesthetics” - in this case of Italy.
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I feel a lttle bit nervous about this, considering it is the first time I present on these issues. I know I still need to do a lot of work on it, but I hope this will be a good starting point to pursue my research. By the way, for those who haven't seen yet the film-documentary, L'orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, by Agostino Ferrente, I highly recommend you to do so. It's a brilliant document that looks at migration as a valuable source of cultural practices.

UCL "TOWN MEETING" ON MIGRATION

2008-04-18T11:41:00.001+01:00

Dear UCL Fellows,
did you know about this? The UCL Department of Geography (in association with UCL Grand Challenges) is holding a 'town meeting' on 30 April 2008 to bring together those across UCL interested in migration, diaspora, ethnicity and intercultural studies.
Well I think that is exactly the kind of thing we want to be part of if we like the idea of a muldisciplinary approach to migration. Well done UCL Geography Department!
I'm definitely going (actually I had a ticket to Sicily the 29th of April but I've moved it!).
I don't know if the event is only open to UCL Staff, but for all kind of information the person to contact is Sue Parkes, Office of the UCL Vice-Provost (Research).

Date: Wednesday 30 April 2008, 3-6pm (followed by drinks)
Location: G06, Sir Ambrose Fleming Lecture Theatre, Roberts Building

Migratory Aesthetics

2008-04-18T11:34:00.002+01:00

Dear all,
I would like to recommend a book recently published by Rodopy on "migratory aesthetics", a concept coined by Mieke Bal. You can read in detail about the book and order it online.
The book is edited by Sam Durrant and Catherine Lord.

Graziella Parati and Loredana Polezzi: Identities on the Plural_UCL 24 APRIL 2008

2008-04-12T12:56:00.003+01:00

Identities in the Plural:
Voicing Difference in Contemporary Italy
Thursday 24 April 2008, 3-6pm

It is my pleasure to present another event organized by th UCL Mellon Programme in collaboration with the UCL Department of Italian and UCL Centre for Intercultural Studies.
This event presents a lecture by Graziella Parati (Dartmouth College) "Literary and Cultural Alliances in Migration" and a lecture by Loredana Polezzi (University of Warwick) "Multiplying Italian Voices".
Dr Federica Mazzara (UCL) will chair the session.
For abstracts, poster and further details: UCL Mellon Seminars 2007-2008
For further information, please contact me, Federica Mazzara (f.mazzara@ucl.ac.uk).
You are all welcome. Looking forward to seeing you there.
Federica
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Some information about the speakers:
Graziella Parati is Professor at Dartmouth College. She teaches 19th and 20th Italian culture in the department of French and Italian. Her books include "Public History, Private Stories: Italian Women's Autobiography" (1996) devoted to gender studies in Italian culture, and the interdisciplinary book entitled "Migration Italy: The Art of Talking Back in a Destination Culture" (University of Toronto Press, 2005), which is devoted to migration studies and contemporary Italian multiculturalism. She has also edited the following volumes:
"Mediterranean Crossroads: Migration Literature in Italy, Italian Cultural Studies" (co-edited with Ben Lawton), and "Italian Feminist Theory and Practice: Equality and Sexual Difference" (co-edited with Rebecca West).
Loredana Polezzi is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. She is the author of "Translating Travel: Contemporary Italian Travel Writing in English Translation" (Aldershot & Brookfield: Ashgate, 2001) and is currently working on a monograph devoted to representations of Africa produced by Italian travellers during the colonial and post-colonial period. She is co- editor, with Jennifer Burns, of "Borderlines: Migrazioni e identità nel Novecento" (Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Editore, 2003) and, with Charlotte Ross, of "In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy" (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson, 2007).

UCL Research Day: Moving Borders 31 March 2008

2008-04-12T11:55:00.001+01:00

The UCL Mellon Research Day that was held the 31th of March at UCL was really successful.
Izzy, Meena, Monia, Daniele, Sanaz and Alpesh, whom I'd like to thank again, did a very good job, and the same I should say about the other participants who made especially the round table a very interesting moment of discussion and confrontation.
Many issues have been discussed and raised, and all have been approached in a very interdisciplinary way. This made the day a very special moment for everybody to realize how possible and great it is to cross and "move" disciplinary boundaries and to build up a common platform of analysis and research.
I hope there'll be many other occasions for us to meet again and talk about how migration and related issues can be analysed in terms of cultural practices, as we did the 31st of March.
Thanks everybody and hope to see you soon!!!
Federica

UCL Research Day

2008-03-29T20:23:00.001Z

Moving Borders: The Aesthetics of Migration

A Postgraduate Research Day at UCL
Monday, 31 March 2008, 9.45am-4pm

I should probably say something about the idea behind this event, that goes back to many months ago, when I started my Post-doctoral fellowship here at UCL and started noticing how many people, PhD students in particular, were actually interested and involved in research on migration. I decided then it would be interesting to bring together some of them, those at least I had the chance to get in touch with, for a work-shop, a research day where we could have the opportunity to share our researches and interests in migration and related issues. My priority was to involve people from different perspectives and disciplines, who were especially interested in the aesthetic dimension of migration, that is the cultural effect that the social phenomenon of migration can bring into a “host” culture. The idea of talking about an aesthetics of migration comes from the recent notion of “migratory aesthetics”, coined by the cultural theorist Mieke Bal, which is also the title of a large international project that brings together a group of British ad Dutch scholars, and that has already produced meetings, exhibitions and a collection of essays just published. The concept of “migratory aesthetics” refers, in Bal’s words, to “the current cultural and aesthetic moment in view of the merging of cultures”, in other words to the cultural inspiration that migration can produce. All this made me think about the possibility of bringing together interesting scholars who in very different ways are working on projects aimed at “moving” the borders of cultural and social constraints. The papers to be presented here will in fact consider a wide range of cultural practices, such as literature, film, performance and, of course, a range of spaces in which migration has produced cultural “clashes”, such as cities, museums, squares, bars, clubs and virtual spaces, such as the Internet.

For further information see UCL Mellon Programme Seminars Series website.