European and/or EU Studies Curriculum between Internal and External drivers

The main objective of this paper is to determine whether the particularity of courses in European Studies can still be characterized as ‘traditional,’ or whether such courses remain disjointed, seated in various disciplines. We surveyed the field of EU Studies/European Studies from two perspectives: as a ‘Disciplinary Framework’ of Political Science and as an ‘Interdisciplinary Framework.’ We argued that the process of specialization of such academic fields as European Studies and International Studies was triggered by a number of stimuli, both internal and external. We conclude by taking into account a third perspective, approaching EU Studies/European Studies as a ‘Multidisciplinary Framework.’ We argue that interdisciplinarity is the new orientation in drafting academic curricula

«Pietre che cantano». Passeggiata veneziana sulle orme di Gaspara Stampa

The text restores as far as possible the experience of the Venetian walk in the footsteps of Gaspara Stampa. In the course of which an attempt has been made to recompose the life of the poetess by visiting the salient places (or what remains of them) of her biography, and understanding the spaces she inhabited and travelled as forms of her feeling, capable of preserving and restoring her memory. By linking each stage to some of her texts, a parallel reading path was also created, so that the poet herself could give voice, step by step, to her relationship with the city, with the men she loved, with her friends and family affections: lending herself to a sort of auto/biographical experiment illustrated, in real time, by the buildings, landscape and atmospheres.Il testo restituisce per quanto possibile l’esperienza della passeggiata veneziana sulle tracce di Gaspara Stampa. Nel corso della quale si è tentato di ricomporre la vita della poetessa visitando i luoghi salienti (o quel che ne resta) della sua biografia, e intendendo gli spazi da lei abitati e percorsi come forme del suo sentire, in grado di custodire e restituire la sua memoria. Vincolando ogni tappa ad alcuni dei suoi testi, si è peraltro realizzato un parallelo percorso di lettura, atto a far sì che la poetessa stessa desse voce, via via, al suo rapporto con la città, con gli uomini amati, con le amiche, gli amici e gli affetti familiari: prestandosi a una sorta di esperimento auto/biografico illustrato, in tempo reale, dagli edifici, i paesaggi e le atmosfere della città

"Le invereconde": riflessioni sulla vergogna nella poesia del Rinascimento

The essay explores the work in prose and verse of the Renaissance women poets named “honest courtisans”, in search of their own interpretation of shame between life and literature, starting from the surprising, very humble presence of this word and experience in their pages. This is a data wich imposed to look into the ancient and medieval tradition of female shame, asking in wich way theese women could find a personal way of thinking this emotion, and to live it freely, among a number of heavy and oppressive principles and norms of moral living coined for them by men during the course of centuries. While the essay assumes that the answer is related to the project of their human and female achievement, and deeply connected with their wish to find fulfillment in their intellectual life. A project, and a wish, strong enough to upset ethical, social and literary issues of the XVI century.Il saggio esplora le opere in prosa e in versi delle poetesse rinascimentali denominate ‘cortigiane oneste’, alla ricerca della loro interpretazione della ‘vergogna’ tra vita e letteratura: si prende le mosse dalla presenza della parola ‘vergogna’, sorprendentemente scarsissima,  e della sua esperienza, nella loro scrittura. Questo dato di fatto impone di guardare a ritroso alla tradizione antica e medievale della vergogna femminile, e di chiedersi in che misura queste donne trovarono una via personale di pensare questa emozione e di viverla liberamente  pur all’interno di numerosi principi cogenti e di norme oppressive della vita morale , loro imposte, lungo i secoli, dagli uomini. L’assunto del saggio è che la risposta data da queste donne si collegata al progetto di realizzarsi come donne e come esseri umani, ed è profondamente connessa con il loro desiderio di trovare completezza nella loro vita intellettuale. Un progetto, e un desiderio, forti abbastanza per irrompere nelle questioni etiche, sociali e letterarie del XVI secolo

The blur of modernity: essentialism, affect and everyday life in Tokyo

This thesis explores the constitutive role that cultural essentialism plays in the everyday life of Japanese urban modernity. Starting from the ethnographic observation that essentialised ideas of “Japan” and “the Japanese” are not only fruit of an orientalising anthropological gaze but also a prime indigenous concern, I aim to place my analysis as a “third way” between those ethnographies that employ essentialism as method and those who handle it as an object of critique. The experiment is to re-frame essentialism as the ethnographic object under scrutiny - as a living and breathing presence in the lives of people in Tokyo The main argument guiding the thesis is that looking at essentialised social categories one does find its essentialised version – e.g. family structure understood as timeless and constitutively Japanese – but also, together with it, what is understood as its negative – e.g. a fluid changing family structure moving with history, migration to the urban centres, Westernisation and the life of the city. One does find strong binaries – e.g. old and new, Japanese and foreign, traditional and modern – and yet it is not through one of its extremes that essentialised social forms are lived and understood, but in between them. While this may appear paradoxical, in the thesis I show that it is through a dynamic of “blurring” of the terms of the opposition - in the ephemeral moments (sometimes transfixed in stone) when the two terms overlap and become undistinguishable - that the engagement with these forms is most strongly felt. This blurring carries a strong affective and aesthetic charge and can thus be in turn essentialised as something constitutively “Japanese”. Based on two years of fieldwork in eastern Tokyo the thesis aims to understand this indigenous logic in its own right, seeking to find it in different fragments of metropolitan life

Gaspara Stampa o dell’emozione di sentirsi viventi. In forma di introduzione

At the opening of her collection of rhymes, Gaspara Stampa, following in the footsteps of Petrarch's model-book, symbolically fixes the day of her falling in love, a decisive event for her existence as lover and poet. However, while Petrarch had chosen Good Friday, a day of death and universal mourning, for his own occasion, Gaspara Stampa shifts the fateful date to Christmas Day, placing his own love under the banner of joy and exultation. This is a very significant shift, and one full of consequences, of the axis of the lyric tradition, as well as a surprising anticipation of the contemporary reflection on “birth plots” that some contemporary thinkers, in counterpoint to the canon of Western philosophy, are pursuing.In apertura della sua raccolta di rime Gaspara Stampa, sulle orme del libro-modello di Petrarca, provvede a fissare simbolicamente il giorno del suo innamoramento, evento decisivo per la sua esistenza di amante e di poeta. Tuttavia, se Petrarca aveva eletto per la propria occasione un Venerdì Santo, giorno di morte e di lutto universale, la Stampa sposta invece la data fatidica al giorno di Natale, collocando il proprio amore all’insegna della letizia e dell’esultanza. Si tratta di uno spostamento assai significativo, e denso di conseguenze, dell’asse della tradizione lirica, nonché di una sorprendente anticipazione della riflessione contemporanea in materia di “trame di nascita” che alcune pensatrici contemporanee, in controcanto rispetto al canone della filosofia occidentale, stanno portando avanti

Returning and Sharing Memories”. Genesi e sviluppo di un progetto per l’uso del “passato comune” italo-etiope (1935-1941)

Abstract. This paper introduces a pilot project aiming at returning Ethiopian people the historical memories about the Italian ephemeral “Empire” in the Horn of Africa (1935-1941). The “conquerors” took away a lot of historical documents and images, taking advantage of their technological superiority. For instance, unlike Ethiopians, many Italian soldiers had cameras, which were popular and affordable back then. Thanks to technology now we can duplicate documents – producing exact copies of originals – without displacing them or changing ownership.Our starting point is to duplicate the visual memories collected in Modena and donate them to Addis Ababa University, making them available to researchers and students. Our aim is approaching colonialist studies in a different way, sharing the historical memories with the former enemies, encouraging a joint study of Ethiopia and Italy’s common past. Our hope is to create a lean working method that can be used by others, able to stimulate similar initiatives not only from private people but also from the Italian public archives and institutionsItalian colonialism; photographic sources; Ethiopia; Modena