The Department of French & Italian Languages and Literatures will hold a conference on Thursday, October 29 and Friday, October 30, 2015: “History and its Discontents: Commemoration in Italy and the Francophone World.” On this occasion we will welcome an exciting slate of visitors to campus to reflect on the dates, places, discourses, and mechanisms of commemoration in the French, Francophone, and Italian cultures; distinguished scholars from a range of institutions and specializing in a stimulating array of topics and periods will be joined in conversation by our Pitt faculty colleagues in French & Italian and beyond. Martin Munro (Florida State University, French) will deliver the keynote address, with Vivian Curran (Pitt, School of Law), Massimo Riva (Brown, Italian Studies), Debarati Sanyal (Berkeley, French), Carol Symes (Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, French/History/Theater), and Laura Wittman (Stanford, French & Italian) presenting their work in plenary sessions. Finally, Ruth Ben-Ghiat (NYU, Italian/History) has agreed to present her new book Fascist Italy’s Empire Cinema in a special session. We hope through this conference to make visible the importance of humanistic inquiry in our understanding, commemoration, and narrativization of the natural and historical events that shape our world.

This event is also sponsored by the European Union Center of Excellence, the Department of French and Italian, and a grant from the Dietrich School Faculty Research and Scholarship Program. For more information, visit the conference webpage here, or contact Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski at renatebk80@gmail.com.