University of Connecticut

Department of Modern and Classical Languages

Second Annual

Robert Dombroski Italian Conference

Shifting Souths:

New Perspectives in Italian Cultures

September 17-18, 2005

University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

In the era of globalization, the concepts of South and Southerness have undergone fundamental changes, thereby begging the reassessment of old, often vexing questions. The negotiation of local, regional identities alongside the creation of supranational and transnational communities and organizations (i.e. the European Union, the Global Market, the Internet) forces us to rethink the many ontologies of the South inherited from a rich Italian literary, historiographic and cinematic tradition: from the scuola siciliana and Boccaccio to Vico, Cuoco, Croce, Verga, Pirandello, Lussu, Gentile, Gramsci, Carlo Levi, Sciascia, Consolo, Lina Wertmüller, Amelio, Salvatores and many others.

The South conveys the sense of destruction and petrification

associated with the notion of chaos

often evoked to describe its essence, its intangible reality

Robert Dombroski