Italian Program Celebrates Pier Paolo Pasolini's Centenary Today

The Italian Program is celebrating Pier Paolo Pasolini's Centenary, March 5, 1922, with a one-day symposium on Friday, Oct. 21. The symposium was envisioned around an Honors College Collaboration Research Grant with Ryan Calabretta-Sajder and four students: Cesca Craig, Thomas Consolino, Caden Hall and Lila Bowler.

The project itself includes the creation of a digital humanities site dedicated to the civil poet. The research collaboration grew into a one-day event, which will highlight undergraduate, graduate and faculty research. The day ends with two keynote addresses.

Many thanks to African and African American Studies, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, the Honors College, International and Global Studies and Italian Consulate in Houston for co-sponsoring the event. The conference program follows. The event is free and open to the public; please spread the word widely. All events will take plane in the First Floor Lounge of Gearhart Hall (Honors College).

Celebrating Pier Paolo Pasolini's Centenario

A one-day symposium, sponsored by the Honors College and the Italian Program

Friday, Oct. 21

8:30 a.m. — Opening Remarks

• Jennie Popp, associate dean, Honors College
• Ryan Calabretta-Sajder, associate professor of Italian and section head

8:35 a.m.

• Caden Hall, an honors criminology and political science major at the U of A, "Feminist Dreams and Social Nightmares: The Entrapments of Gender in Pasolini's Calderón"
• Lila Bowler, an art major at the U of A, "Self-Reverence and Film: How Pier Paolo Pasolini's Personal Religion Informs His Use of Art"

9:40 a.m.

• Cesca Craig, an Honors College Fellow and anthropology major at the U of A, "Pasolini's Medea in the Context of Colonialism"
• Chiara Caputi, CUNY Graduate Center, "La Mortaccia: Pasolini's First Rewriting of Dante's Commedia"

10:45 a.m.

• Shakira "Honey" Okuneye, a pre-medical student at the U of A, "Pasolini and the Femme Fatale?"
• Thomas Nelson, marketing student at the U of A, "Italian Cinema Censorship Trends During the Pasolini Era"
• Irene Hatzopoulos, University of California, Irvine, "Pasolini's Poetics of Non-Communication Through a Meta-Cinematic Lens in La Ricotta" 

Noon — Lunch

12:55 p.m.

• Thomas Consolino, an honors international business major at the U of A, "Pasolini: A Eurocentric View of Africa & the Lower Class"
• Elisabetta D'Amanda, Rochester Institute of Technology, "Africa and Blackness in Pasolini's Cinema"

2 p.m.

• Shelleen Greene, UCLA, "Pasolini and the Italian Third World Imaginary"

3:05 p.m.

• Filippo Trentin, University of Pennsylvania, "Gramsci's Rigor, Pasolini's Guts: On the Sexual Politics of Pasolini's 'Gramsci's Ashes'"