http://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/centre-study-contemporary-womens-writing

Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing, London (2026)

23/07/2026

Complex Worlding in Contemporary Women’s Writing, Art, and Activism: Plurality, Coloniality, Planetarity

Seminar 1
Body: Gender, Colonial, and Intersectional Violences
Tues 15 Sept, 18:00-19:30 BST (UK time)
Online

Speakers:
Ragini Chakraborty (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): “Why does the body matter?”: Understanding Feminist Selfhood and Resistance in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand
Caterina Begliorgio (University of Trento): Inhabiting the Thin Places: complex relationalities and ecologies of resistance in contemporary Irish women’s writings
Laura Kennedy (University College Cork): Dubbing the Mother(’s) Tongue in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions

Full details & registration
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/complex-worlding-contemporary-womens-writing-art-activism-plurality-coloniality-planetarity

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Seminar 2
Territory: Extractivist and Post-Extractivist Ecologies
Tues 22 Sept, 18:00-19:30 BST (UK time)
Online

Speakers:
Jacopo Turini (Trinity College Dublin): Extracting the South: Geological Imagination and Extractivism in Claudia Durastanti's Missitalia
Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim (Kadir Has University): Arboreal Memory: Archives of Post-Extractivist Ecologies in African Literature and Arts
Ana Marina Gamba (KU Leuven): Fraught Bodily-Territorial Connections: Contamination, Dispossession and Estrangement in Contemporary Latin American Artistic Productions

Full details & registration
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/complex-worlding-contemporary-womens-writing-art-activism-plurality-coloniality-planetarity-0

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Seminar 3
Voice: Feminist, Communal, and Nonhuman Poetics
Tues 29 Sept, 18:00-19:30 BST (UK time)
Online

Speakers:
Florencia Garramuño (Universidad de San Andrés): Feathers that Matter: Non-human Life and Contemporary Art
Pinar Türer (University of Amsterdam): “Listen to me, listen to the silence:” Intimacy, Knowledge and Kaleidoscopic Opacity in Clarice Lispector’s Água Viva
Monique Roelofs (University of Amsterdam): title tbc

Full details & registration
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/complex-worlding-contemporary-womens-writing-art-activism-plurality-coloniality-planetarity-1

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Seminar 4
Media: Aesthetic, Material, and Intermedial Practices
Tues 6 Oct, 18:00-19:30 BST (UK time)
Online

Speakers
Brenda Mondragón-Toledo (Trinity College Dublin): Textile-Making Practices as Counter-Pedagogies of Cruelty: Care and Knowledge Production in Digital Ethnography
Paula Bertúa (Universidad de Buenos Aires): Medial Innervations: Dream, Technique, and Planetary Imagery in Contemporary Latin American Art
Leonora Masini (University College Cork): Relational Time in Postcolonial Italian Cultural Production

Full details & registration
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/complex-worlding-contemporary-womens-writing-art-activism-plurality-coloniality-planetarity-2

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Seminar 5
Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning Otherwise
Tues 13 Oct, 18:00-19:30 BST (UK time)
Online

Speakers:
Céire Broderick (University College Cork): Finding the cracks and lowercase hope: decolonial feminist pedagogical approaches
Mathilde Lyons (University of St. Andrew’s): Anti-Blackness in Italy Past and Present
Sandrine Ndahiro (Maynooth University): Centralizing Black and Irish voices: Decolonial Approaches to Teaching Race, Inequality, and Social Justice

Full details & registration
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/complex-worlding-contemporary-womens-writing-art-activism-plurality-coloniality-planetarity-3

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Series Outline

Organisers
Dr Sofía Forchieri
Dr Noreen Kane

“Complex worlding,” as Donna Haraway defines it, is a form of storytelling that patterns “possible worlds” (2016, 31). Complex worlding enhances collective understanding of the connectedness between different beings, histories, and violences, and it reveals alternative forms of inhabiting Earth. This proposed seminar series discusses the various complex worlds that germinate in the work of contemporary women writers and, more broadly, cultural producers and educators, across different contexts and linguistic areas. With a specific interest in decolonial feminisms, we are interested in exploring aesthetic approaches which propose and enact new ways of thinking about plurality, coloniality, and planetarity. By choosing these three conceptual focal points, we broach questions that have yet to be asked in the context of the CCWW’s seminar series. How are contemporary women writers articulating plurality—of thought, of perception, and “of selves” (Lugones 2003, 93)? How are they contesting coloniality as it impacts bodies and territories (Oyěwùmí 1997, Lugones 2010, Cabnal 2010)? How are they engaging with questions of agency and responsibility in the context of increasingly complex “ecologies of violence” (Knittel 2023)? Can literature offer ways of imagining more-than-human climate witnessing (Craps 2025)? In sum, how are contemporary women writers reimagining the human as planetary creature or subject rather than global agent or entity (Spivak 2015, 292).

We approach these questions through five seminars organised around 5 keywords: body, territory, voice, media, and pedagogy. Our seminars bring together scholars working in Francophone, Indian, Irish, Italian, Latin American, and Turkish contexts. In addition to aiming for cultural and linguistic diversity, we make efforts to ensure a wide range of career stages among our speakers. This seminar series hopes to offer a generative and collegial space to explore decolonial feminist world-making practices that can offer imaginative and affective resources in a present of “polycrisis” (Kaiser et al 2025).

Works Cited:
Cabnal, Lorena. “Acercamiento a la construcción de la propuesta de pensamiento epistémico de las mujeres indígenas feministas comunitarias de Abya Yala.” Feminismos diversos: El feminismo comunitario, edited by ACSUR, 2010, pp. 11–25. https://elizabethruano.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Cabnal-2010-Propuesta-de-Pensamiento-Epistemico-Mujeres-Indigenas.pdf.
Craps, Stef, et al. “Introduction – Climate Witnessing: Memory, Mediation and the More-than-Human.” Memory Studies Review, vol. 2, no. 2, 2025, pp. 103–25.
Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Lugones, Marìa. “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” Hypatia, vol. 25, no. 4, 2010, pp. 742–59.
Lugones, María. Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003.
Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́. The Invention of Women. University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Planetarity.” Paragraph, vol. 38, no. 2, July 2015, pp. 290–292.

Céire Broderick (University College Cork): Finding the cracks and lowercase hope: decolonial feminist pedagogical approaches Mathilde Lyons (University of St. Andrew’s): Anti-Blackness in Italy Past and Present Sandrine Ndahiro (Maynooth University): Centralizing Black and Irish voices: Decolonia...

01/07/2026

Reading communities for children and young adults in the digital era
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/reading-communities-children-young-adults-digital-era

18 September 2026
3:30pm - 5:30pm*
Online Workshop

Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing

This online workshop is the third event in the CCWW series The Business of Women’s Writing and Reading Communities Today.

2026 is the National Year of Reading, a UK-wide campaign encouraging everyone to rediscover the joy of reading. Recent reports by New HarperCollins and the Reading Agency paint a bleak picture of reading among children and young adults in the UK today, showing that daily reading for pleasure among 5-to-17-year-olds fell from 39% in 2012 to 25% in 2025 and that, among young people aged 16-24, a quarter have never been regular readers and 44% are considered ‘lapsed readers’.

Against this backdrop, our online workshop will explore successful projects promoting reading among children and young adults, with the aim of better understanding:

• how ‘consuming’ literature has changed in the past decade, with new trends such as BookTok and Wattpad promoting new reading and creative writing habits
• how to get children involved with reading from an early age and keep the practice alive through pre-adolescence, when research shows children tend to lose the habit of reading for pleasure
• what reading and writing can do for children and young people of displaced communities
• how we can all contribute to improving the current situation by engaging in meaningful, open, and co-creative dialogues with children and young adults.

Our speakers will not only present their projects but will also set the audience creative tasks that will help them develop their own reading communities. The event will conclude with a Q&A session.

Our speakers include:

Dr Christelle Grouzis-Demory has coordinated the students’ Choix Goncourt in Spain and the UK. She will engage in conversation with students from UK universities participating in the Choix Goncourt UK project, focusing on the challenges of adapting a highly prestigious literary French prize to non-French young European readers and the difficulties and rewards experienced by the project’s young beneficiaries.

Ruxandra Gîdei is a programme coordinator at the European Cultural Foundation and the book influencer behind the channel 4fără15, one of the largest online communities of readers on Romanian social media, with over 100,000 followers across Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube.

Helen Patuck is a writer, illustrator, and creative facilitator, and ILCS Creative Practitioner in Residence. As Director of Kitabna – Our Book CIC, she collaborates with ‘displaced and multilingual communities across Europe, the Middle East, and the UK to nurture voice, belonging, and cultural exchange’. Her books and creative writing toolkit are used by institutions such as Save the Children and UNICEF in their work with displaced and refugee children.

The coordinator of Storytime at Bath Central Library, a community project organised by Bath & North-East Somerset Libraries, aimed at children aged 0-5 years.

The workshop is open to all and free of charge. To register please visit the event page: https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/reading-communities-children-young-adults-digital-era and click on the 'Book Now' button at the top of the page.
The online joining link will be sent to you automatically. Please check your spam/junk folders as it can sometimes be found there.

Organizers: Dr Sandra Daroczi (Bath), Dr Adalgisa Giorgio (Bath & CCWW), Prof. Claire Williams (Oxford)

The workshop is supported by the Coffin Trust Fund.

*The exact time is to be confirmed. Once confirmed it will be updated on the event page – please check there.

You may also be interested in this linked CfP and subsequent event:

CfP: The Business of Women’s Writing: Circulation, Translation, Criticism
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/cfp-business-womens-writing-circulation-translation-criticism
CfP deadline: 1 September 2026
Conference: 26-27 November 2026
Location: Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU

Twelve years since the Year of Reading Women, seven since Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood won the Booker Prize, and six and four years, respectively, since Annie Ernaux and Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature, are more women writers getting translated, published, circulated, reviewed...

23/06/2026

Call for Papers: The Business of Women’s Writing: Circulation, Translation, Criticism

CfP deadline: 1 September 2026
Conference: 26-27 November 2026
Location: Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU

Organizers: Dr Sandra Daroczi (Bath), Dr Adalgisa Giorgio (Bath & CCWW), Prof. Claire Williams (Oxford)

Twelve years since the Year of Reading Women, seven since Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood won the Booker Prize, and six and four years, respectively, since Annie Ernaux and Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature, are more women writers getting translated, published, circulated, reviewed, read in the UK? Are they winning prizes, and, if they win them, does it make a difference? How are they being read and discussed, and by whom? In 2026, the National Year of Reading, this in-person conference will bring together academics, writers, translators, and practitioners from the publishing industry, in order to discuss the ‘business’ of contemporary women’s writing.

The conference will include:

Author Reading: French author Marie Darrieussecq and Portuguese author Susana Moreira Marques

Keynote Speakers: Emma Lowe (Director of the London Book Fair) and Prof. Helen Vassallo (University of Exeter)

This event is the fourth and last in a year-long project exploring this topic. The project launched on 12-13 March at another two-day conference, entitled How are Books Born? The Business of Producing and Promoting Women's Writing, which investigated the book’s journey from idea to global shelf with the participation of academics, established and aspiring authors, translators, publishers, literary agents, and scouts. The March conference was followed by an online workshop for adult reading communities in the digital era in April 2026,* and will be complemented by another online workshop about children and young adult reading communities on 18 September 2026 and the conference on 26-27 November.

The November conference builds upon the previous events and aims to discuss a number of related questions, while also keeping a focus on the circulation of books after publication:

• The publishing industry (in any country)
• Grants and other forms of support for women writers
• Diversity and gender dynamics in publishing and marketing
• Literary translation of women, by women
• Feminist translation
• Women writing in regional languages
• Canon formation
• Women writers on modern languages curricula at schools and universities
• Women’s writing and policy
• The promotion of women’s writing in the press and on social media
• Literary festivals and prizes
• Building reading communities and promoting the reading of women’s works, including in translation, among different generations

We invite 200-word proposals for individual papers of 20 minutes, in English, from researchers, academics, and practitioners (publishers, publishers specialising in translations, translators, editors, reviewers, distributors, marketing specialists, etc.).

Please send your proposal, and a 100-word bio by 1 September 2026 to this address: [email protected]

You will be notified of acceptance by 15 September 2026.

We welcome expressions of interest at any stage. If you would like to discuss whether your topic aligns with the conference, please feel free to contact the organisers at the same address: [email protected]

The author-reading event is supported by the Cassal and Coffin Trust Funds.

* Details and recordings of the March and April events can be found on the CCWW website:
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/past-events
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/research-centres/centre-study-contemporary-womens-writing-ccww/ccww-videos-podcasts

Listen again to our acclaimed seminar series, public talks and conferences from a wide range of general and specialised subjects within CCWW.

17/06/2026

Grupo de Lectura Mujeres escritoras
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/grupo-de-lectura-mujeres-escritoras-13

29 June 2026
6:00-8:00pm
Online reading group

This reading group is held in Spanish and looks at Spanish and Latin-American Contemporary Women Writers. The Group has been meeting since 2009 when it started as part of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW) Spanish Seminars at the University of London. Texts to be discussed by Lectoras together with the students.

Monday 29th June 2026 - 18hrs (6pm UK time)
Carmen González Bosch (Spain) will introduce "Entre Visillos" by Carmen Martín Gaite (Salamanca, Spain - 1925-2000).

Available on both paper and digital formats.

If you are interested in attending please email Ana Gordon at [email protected] in order to gain online access to this reading group.

Upcoming sessions - all take place at 18hrs (6pm UK time):
Monday 20th July 2026:
Verónica Álvarez Córdova will introduce "El Ruido de las Tabas en el Silencio del Miedo' by Carmen Mallarée (Chile).
Monday 28th September 2026:
Enrique Zattara (London; Editor of "El ojo de la cultrura") will introduce "Desierto Sonoro" by Valeria Luiselli (México DF - 1983).
Monday 26th October 2026:
Ana Gordon (London) will introduce "El Buen Mal" by Samanta Schweblin (Argentina - 1978).

All available on both paper and digital formats.

This reading group is held in Spanish and looks at Spanish and Latin-American Contemporary Women Writers. The Group has been meeting since 2009 when it started as part of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW) Spanish Seminars at the University of London. Texts to be discuss...

19/05/2026

Grupo de Lectura Mujeres escritoras
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/grupo-de-lectura-mujeres-escritoras-12

1 June 2026
6:00-8:00pm
Online reading group

This reading group is held in Spanish and looks at Spanish and Latin-American Contemporary Women Writers. The Group has been meeting since 2009 when it started as part of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW) Spanish Seminars at the University of London. Texts to be discussed by Lectoras together with the students.

Monday 1st June 2026
Marisa Pinkney (UK) will introduce "Sólo Un Día Más" by Susana Fortes (Pontevedra, Spain - 1959).

Available on both paper and digital formats.

If you are interested in attending please email Ana Gordon at [email protected] in order to gain online access to this reading group.

Upcoming session – takes place at 18hrs (6pm UK time):
Monday 29th June 2026
Carmen González Bosch (Spain) will introduce "Entre Visillos" by Carmen Martín Gaite (Salamanca, Spain - 1925-2000).

Available on both paper and digital formats.

This reading group is held in Spanish and looks at Spanish and Latin-American Contemporary Women Writers. The Group has been meeting since 2009 when it started as part of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW) Spanish Seminars at the University of London. Texts to be discuss...

01/05/2026

If you were unable to attend the CCWW conference "The business of producing and promoting women’s writing. How are books born? From idea to the global shelf" (Senate House, London, 12-13 March 2026), you can get an idea of what was said and how it went by reading the informative, insightful, and thought-provoking blog "How are books born?" written by Nisan İğdem, a PhD student at King's College London: https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/centre-study-contemporary-womens-writing-ccww/blogs/how-are-books-born
We will also let you have the link to the podcast of the full conference as soon as it is available.

Dates for your diary

Associated forthcoming events, part of the series "The Business of Women’s Writing and Reading Communities Today":
Reading communities for children and young adults in the digital era. Online workshop: 18 September 2026
The Business of Women’s Writing: Circulation, Translation, Criticism. In-person conference, Senate House, London: 26-27 November 2026.

Nisan İğdem reflects on the conference 'The Business of Producing and Promoting Women’s Writing: How Are Books Born? From Idea to the Global Shelf', organised by the CCWW in March 2026

17/04/2026

Grupo de Lectura Mujeres escritoras
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/grupo-de-lectura-mujeres-escritoras-11

27 April 2026
6:00-8:00pm
Online reading group

This reading group is held in Spanish and looks at Spanish and Latin-American Contemporary Women Writers. The Group has been meeting since 2009 when it started as part of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW) Spanish Seminars at the University of London. Texts to be discussed by Lectoras together with the students.

Monday 27th April 2026
Mónica Varney (UK) will introduce "Todo Lo Que Crece" by Clara Obligado (Buenos Aires, Argentina-1950).

Available on both paper and digital formats.

If you are interested in attending please email Ana Gordon at [email protected] in order to gain online access to this reading group.

Upcoming sessions – all taking place at 18hrs (6pm UK time):
Monday 1st June 2026
Marisa Pinkney (UK) will introduce "Sólo Un Día Más" by Susana Fortes (Pontevedra, Spain - 1959).
Monday 29th June 2026
Carmen González Bosch (Spain) will introduce "Entre Visillos" by Carmen Martín Gaite (Salamanca, Spain - 1925-2000).

All books are available on both paper and digital formats

This reading group is held in Spanish and looks at Spanish and Latin-American Contemporary Women Writers. The Group has been meeting since 2009 when it started as part of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW) Spanish Seminars at the University of London. Texts to be discuss...

10/04/2026

This online workshop is the second event in the CCWW series The Business of Women’s Writing and Reading Communities Today.

Speakers will share their experiences of founding and/or coordinating reading groups for adults in person or online, facilitating and promoting reading through social media, and their research on reading communities.

The aim of the workshop is to try to answer the following questions:

How do different communities read? How have social media affected reading communities and reading habits? What are the gender dynamics of online and in-person reading communities and how do they influence reading choices and habits?

Speakers include:
Prof. Jenny Hartley OBE, Emeritus Professor, co-founder of Prison Reading Groups (PRG), and author of The Reading Groups Book (OUP, 2003).

Helen Patuck, Writer and illustrator, working at the intersection of storytelling, translation, and community practice. Founder of 'Kitabana - Our Book', and ILCS Creative Practitioner in Residence.

Eithne McCarthy Bowen, Manager of Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, Trinity College Dublin, and Coordinator of the Centre’s Book Club.

Prof. Francesca Calamita, Associate Professor, University of Virginia, USA & Visiting Professor, UniStrasi Siena, Italy . Author of Ti trovo cambiata (Enciclopedia delle Donne, 2026), a book about Italian women today based on 400 interviews that explore, among other things, what they read.

Dr Serena Todesco, Independent researcher and co-organiser, with Alessandra Trevisan, of the CCWW seminar series The Grain of her Voice. Women Writers and Literary Podcasts: Critical Functions and Cultural Impacts (October-November 2025).

Dr Alessandra Trevisan, Independent researcher and co-founder of Le Ortique, an online initiative born during the Covid-19 pandemic with the aim of rediscovering and promoting reading of forgotten women artists. Co-organiser, with Serena Todesco, of the CCWW series The Grain of her Voice (see above).

Viviana Fiorentino, Writer, translator, and co-founder of Le Ortique (see above). She is a board member of the Irish PEN.

Natascha Lusenti, Rai Radio2 speaker, journalist, author, and TV host.

This workshop will be followed by a second one on 18 September 2026 aimed at answering similar questions about reading communities for children and young adults.

The workshop is open to all and free of charge. Please register by clicking Book Now at the top of the page for your free place and to obtain the Zoom link.

Programme

15:00 – 15:05: Welcome and Introductions

15:05 – 15:20: Prof. Jenny Hartley OBE, Prison Reading Groups

15:20 – 15:35: Helen Patuck, Somewhere between solitude and solidarity: reading spaces as frameworks of care in literary, feminist, LGBTQ+ and displacement contexts

15:35 – 15:50: Eithne McCarthy Bowen, Reading the World: Fiction in Translation

15:50 – 16:05: Prof. Francesca Calamita, What do Italian women currently read? An analysis of data from Ti trovo cambiata (2026)

16:05 – 16:35
Dr Serena Todesco and Dr Alessandra Trevisan, Conclusions from the CCWW seminar series The Grain of her Voice. Women Writers and Literary Podcasts: Critical Functions and Cultural Impacts (October-November 2025).
Viviana Fiorentino, Reinventing a readership for forgotten female writers: Freda Laughton in translation.
Natascha Lusenti,Mother and daughter: a polyphonic personal and literary podcast narrative

16:35 – 17:00: Q&A and discussions

Organisers: Dr Sandra Daroczi (University of Bath), Dr Adalgisa Giorgio (University of Bath and CCWW-ILCS), and Prof. Claire Williams (University of Oxford)

Supported by the John Coffin Memorial Trust Fund.

Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing This online workshop is the second event in the CCWW series The Business of Women’s Writing and Reading Communities Today. Speakers will share their experiences of founding and/or coordinating reading groups for adults in person or online,...

09/04/2026

ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES RESEARCH HUB
CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S WRITING
School of Advanced Study • University of London

Childhood, Youth and Ecological Imaginaries in Italian Studies

Monday 27 April 2026 (online)
Tuesday 28 April 2026 (hybrid: in person and online)
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/childhood-youth-ecological-imaginaries-italian-studies

The symposium seeks to investigate childhood and youth as critical sites of hybridity, ecological vulnerability, and ontological transformation in the era of the Anthropocene. In contemporary Italian literature, child figures frequently emerge as thresholds between human and nonhuman forms, embodying new configurations of life that extend beyond anthropocentric paradigms. Theoretical approaches informed by the Environmental Humanities and Children’s and Youth Studies offer a productive framework for examining these intersections, as child figures often serve as catalysts for alternative ontologies that challenge Western anthropocentric thought.

The event will conclude with a keynote featuring renowned novelist Viola Di Grado, titled '“Becoming Otherwise”: Childhood and Youth as Forces of Environmental Resistance', in conversation with Dr Olga Campofreda, and Dr Marco Ceravolo.

MONDAY 27 APRIL - ONLINE
14:00 / 14:15
Opening and Greetings by the organiser, Marco Ceravolo

14:30 / 16:00 – Panel 1 (online)
Chair: Carolina Celeste Granini (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Francesco Gallina (University of Parma)
ILVA as infernal myth-machine: eco-teratology, necropolitics, and narrative prosthesis in Maurizio Cotrona’s Il figlio di Persefone
Dalila Forni (University of L’Aquila)
Becoming-with Nature: Dismantling Anthropocentric Perspectives in Marina Girardi’s Ortica
Francesca Favaro (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Bambini nella narrativa di Giovannino Guareschi, tra realismo e figurazioni fantastiche

16.30 / 18:00 – Panel 2 (online)
Chair: Pablo a’ Marca (Brown University)
Novella Primo (University of Messina)
Crossing Nature in youth. About two eco-literary novels by Paolo Giordano
Andrea Ierna (University of Verona)
From Bad Wood to Good Flesh: The Child After Eco-Queerness in Pinocchio
Caterina Brandoli & Giada Quaranta (Independent Scholars)
Teaching Ecological Consciousness: A Classroom Approach to Italo Calvino’s Il barone rampante

TUESDAY 28 APRIL - HYBRID: IN PERSON AND ONLINE
Room 261, Second floor, Senate House, University of London
Malet Street, WC1E 7HU, London, UK

13:00 / 14:30 – Panel 1 (hybrid)
Chair: Elena Sottilotta (University of Cambridge)
Claudia Dell’Uomo d’Arme (Université Paris Nanterre)
Becoming a “Little light”: towards a r-evolutionary, micro-fairy ethics of care
Julia Okołowicz-Szumowska (University of Warsaw)
Non guastare i fanciulli. Anna Maria Ortese’s The Iguana as a Fairytale of Colonial Ecological Violence
Nunzia Zevola (University of Toronto)
“Era un tronco d’albero? O era un uomo?”. Interazioni e ibridazioni tra bambino e non umano in Sua Altezza! di Annie Vivanti.

14:30 / 15:00 – Coffee Break

15:00 / 16:30 –Panel 2 (hybrid)
Chair: Anna Finozzi (University of Stockholm)
Andrea Cominetti (University of Verona)
From the Primordial Egg to the Consumer Society: Childhood as a Hybrid and Material Threshold in Giuliano Scabia’s Zip
Marzia La Barbera (University of Palermo)
The Ontological Porousness of Childhood: Cultural Ecology Perspectives in Gilda Musa’s L’arma Invisibile
Alessio Aletta (University College Cork)
Children, Toys, and Frogs: Questioning Anthropocentrism in Rubino’s Tic e Tac

17:00 / 18:30
GUEST LECTURE by Viola di Grado (hybrid)

"Becoming Otherwise"
Childhood and Youth as Forces of Environmental Resistance

in conversation with Olga Campofreda and Marco Ceravolo

18:30
Reception

All are welcome to attend this free symposium. Please register in advance: https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/childhood-youth-ecological-imaginaries-italian-studies

Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s WritingEnvironmental Humanities Research HubOnline (27 April), online and in person (28 April) Room 261 The symposium seeks to investigate childhood and youth as critical sites of hybridity, ecological vulnerability, and ontological transformation in t...

Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing

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