Past Fellows
Expanded biographies can be obtained by clicking on each entry.Academic Year:
| | | 2008-2009 | | | 2007-2008 | | | 2006-2007 | | | 2005-2006 | | | 2004-2005 | | |
| | | 2003-2004 | | | 2002-2003 | | | 1993-2002 | | |
Current Fellows 2007-2008
Francesca Bartolini
New York University
Regulation of microtubules and actin cross-talk in oriented cell migration: the role of formins, APC protein and unconventional myosins
Francesca Bartolini began her studies at the University of Rome "La Sapienza," where she was trained as a geneticist and received her degree in Biology. In 2004 she earned her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology at New York University with a thesis on the characterization of two newly identified proteins with similar functions to tubulin-specific chaperones. The same year she moved to the laboratory of Dr. Gundersen at Columbia University, where she was awarded a grant by the "Telethon" Foundation (Italy) to investigate the role of formins, a class of tubulin and actin regulators that are also involved in the onset of a genetic syndrome that causes deafness. She has since focused on the basic understanding of regulated tubulin turn-over and on the cross-talk between the actin and the tubulin cytoskeletons in basic cellular processes such as oriented cell migration and adhesion. More recently, her work is also aimed at dissecting the role of unconventional myosins in the regulation of organelle trafficking through the selective stabilization of the tubulin cytoskeleton downstream of Rho GTPases, and discovering whether this process is also necessary in the establishment of neuronal synapses and long term memory.
Chiara Besso Marcheis
Università del Piemonte Orientale
Litigants' duty to disclose: a forgotten example of the Italian legal heritage
Chiara Besso is Full Professor of Law at University of Piemonte Orientale in Italy.
Member of the Board of the Review "Giurisprudenza Italiana", of the Doctoral school "European Law, History and Law Systems", of the Doctorate on "Foundations of the European Law and Comparative Method", and of the "Scuola di specializzazione per le professioni legali" (Universities of Torino and Piemonte Orientale), she has been Visiting Fellow at the London Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and at the University College of Oxford.
Her areas of research are law of evidence, discovery, reforms of civil procedure, and irregularity of acts.
She is the author of several articles on civil procedure topics (above all civil procedure reforms, taking of evidence, probability and judicial reasoning), and two books on pre-action discovery and procedural formalism (La prova prima del processo; 2004, La sentenza civile inesistente, 1997).
At the Italian Academy, she will be exploring the evolution of the litigants' duty to discover information. She will focus on the origins of the Anglo-American discovery, starting from its antecedent in Roman-canon law methods, as a tool to understand the present differences between the Anglo-American and the European continental attitudes to the ascertainment of truth and to explore the chances to build a notion of the duty to discover acceptable to both civil law and common law countries.
Her areas of research are law of evidence, discovery, reforms of civil procedure, and irregularity of acts.
She is the author of several articles on civil procedure topics (above all civil procedure reforms, taking of evidence, probability and judicial reasoning), and two books on pre-action discovery and procedural formalism (La prova prima del processo; 2004, La sentenza civile inesistente, 1997).
At the Italian Academy, she will be exploring the evolution of the litigants' duty to discover information. She will focus on the origins of the Anglo-American discovery, starting from its antecedent in Roman-canon law methods, as a tool to understand the present differences between the Anglo-American and the European continental attitudes to the ascertainment of truth and to explore the chances to build a notion of the duty to discover acceptable to both civil law and common law countries.
Roberta Bonetti
Università degli Studi di Bologna
Iconographies of memory: the geopolitics of "fantasy coffins"
Roberta Bonetti teaches History of Anthropology at University of Bologna; Faculty Arts and Humanities, 2nd Level Degree Course in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology. She graduated from the University of Bologna with a degree in Anthropology. In 2006 she had a Ph.D. degree in "Religious Studies: Social Sciences and Historical Studies of Religions" and in "Anthropologie sociale, ethnographie et etnologie", a joint program of the University of Bologna and l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales of Paris. Her dissertation, entitled Oggetti funerari dell'Africa contemporanea. Modalità di produzione, uso e rappresentazione nei musei etnografici, discusses contemporary art of South Ghana and its circulation and representation in the western world.
She has extensive work experience in the field of museum anthropology, in particular that of Africa.
From 1996-2002 she conceived and curated a series of exhibitions, educational courses, and catalogues. She has conducted research in African and Italian museums, run university seminars on the topic of museum anthropology and anthropology of art.
Two related research interests have emerged and developed in her work as museum ethnographer: On the one hand, the processes involved in the construction of "traditional" and contemporary art; and on the other, the communicative strategies and cognitive processes of reception employed by exhibitions and social actors respectively. More generally, she is interested in the complex relations between the museum (and art) world and society, which are multidimensional and changing spaces. At the moment, she is involved in exhibition experiments in particular in the field of museum education, concentrating on cognitive processes involved in reading images.
She has extensive work experience in the field of museum anthropology, in particular that of Africa.
From 1996-2002 she conceived and curated a series of exhibitions, educational courses, and catalogues. She has conducted research in African and Italian museums, run university seminars on the topic of museum anthropology and anthropology of art.
Two related research interests have emerged and developed in her work as museum ethnographer: On the one hand, the processes involved in the construction of "traditional" and contemporary art; and on the other, the communicative strategies and cognitive processes of reception employed by exhibitions and social actors respectively. More generally, she is interested in the complex relations between the museum (and art) world and society, which are multidimensional and changing spaces. At the moment, she is involved in exhibition experiments in particular in the field of museum education, concentrating on cognitive processes involved in reading images.
Alessandro Borgomainerio
Istituto IUAV di Venezia
Domenichino and the "maniera antica" in architecture
Alessandro Borgomainerio graduated at Venice's University of Architecture (Università IUAV di Venezia) and he obtained his Ph.D. degree there in 2004. He is currently Teaching Assistant at the Department of History of Architecture at University IUAV in Venice. Alessandro Borgomainerio's main research focuses on the value of antiquity in Seicento Art and Theory.
In his Ph.D. thesis (Il cardinal Francesco Barberini il Laterano e l'antichità restituita) he has investigated Cardinal Barberini's programme of restoration of Christian antiquities and the role of architects, scholars and patrons involved in it. This topic is developed in a recent published article that analyzes the value of antiquarian images in Francesco Borromini's late works (Su alcuni motivi in San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane), and in his teaching activities at the University of Venice (mostly seminars). At the Italian Academy he will work on Domenichino's architectural activity and the antiquarian value of his work, due mostly to his relationship with his patron, the scholar Giovan Battista Agucchi and the Roman cultural context.
Although Seicento architecture is the subject of other articles he is writing (ones dedicated to civil architecture in Venice and the Seicento restoration of the Lateran Baptistery in Rome), Borgomainerio is also interested in modern architecture and in particular in architectural theory of Fin de siècle Vienna. He has completed studies of Adolf Loos' writings for a recent exhibition catalogue, and he is now working on an Italian edition of Loos' Selected Writings.
In his Ph.D. thesis (Il cardinal Francesco Barberini il Laterano e l'antichità restituita) he has investigated Cardinal Barberini's programme of restoration of Christian antiquities and the role of architects, scholars and patrons involved in it. This topic is developed in a recent published article that analyzes the value of antiquarian images in Francesco Borromini's late works (Su alcuni motivi in San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane), and in his teaching activities at the University of Venice (mostly seminars). At the Italian Academy he will work on Domenichino's architectural activity and the antiquarian value of his work, due mostly to his relationship with his patron, the scholar Giovan Battista Agucchi and the Roman cultural context.
Although Seicento architecture is the subject of other articles he is writing (ones dedicated to civil architecture in Venice and the Seicento restoration of the Lateran Baptistery in Rome), Borgomainerio is also interested in modern architecture and in particular in architectural theory of Fin de siècle Vienna. He has completed studies of Adolf Loos' writings for a recent exhibition catalogue, and he is now working on an Italian edition of Loos' Selected Writings.
Mariarosa Bricchi
Università degli Studi di Pavia
"The other side of philology": stories of literary creation
Mariarosa Bricchi received a Ph.D. from the University of Pavia with a dissertation on Archaic and Literary Vocabulary in the 19th Century Italian Narrative Prose, which was then revised and published as a book under the title "La roca trombazza. Lessico arcaico e letterario nella prosa narrativa dell'Ottocento italiano" (Alessandria, Edizioni dell'Orso, 2000).
Besides the literary language of the Ottocento (she is currently working on the syntax of Alessandro Manzoni's essays), her areas of interest are: 20th Century Italian and English speaking literature; history of publishing; the process of literary creation, both from the philologists' point of view (the making of a work through manuscript evidence) and the authors' point of view. On these subjects she has published articles, essays and two books, one on Beppe Fenoglio, one on Giorgio Manganelli.
She is currently professore a contratto of History of the Italian Language at the University of Pavia.
Besides the literary language of the Ottocento (she is currently working on the syntax of Alessandro Manzoni's essays), her areas of interest are: 20th Century Italian and English speaking literature; history of publishing; the process of literary creation, both from the philologists' point of view (the making of a work through manuscript evidence) and the authors' point of view. On these subjects she has published articles, essays and two books, one on Beppe Fenoglio, one on Giorgio Manganelli.
She is currently professore a contratto of History of the Italian Language at the University of Pavia.
Rosalia Crupi
Università degli Studi di Messina
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow (Sciences)
Are antidepressant effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation mediated by stem cells?
Rosalia Crupi received her Ph.D. in Clinical Neurosciences at the Medical School of the University of Messina after taking a degree in Biological Sciences in 2003 at the same university with a thesis entitled "Cytotoxicity effect of nemathocyste Aiptasia mutabilis capsular fluid on VERO and HEP-2 cells." She currently collaborates as a researcher at CUNY's Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education.
Franco D'Intino
Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza"
Critical edition of Leopardi's translation from Greek moral prose and the use of Greek ethics in the early nineteenth century
D'Intino received both his Laurea and his PhD (1992) from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, where he is now Professor of Italian literature and Comparative Literature in the Faculty of Oriental Studies.
He has been lecturer in Italian literature at the Universities of Amsterdam (NL), Birmingham (UK), and Perugia.
His first book (1989, 2nd edition 1998) was on L'autobiografia moderna (theory and history of the genre). In the last fifteen years his main research interest has been the work of Giacomo Leopardi, from both a philological and a comparativist point of view. He published the critical edition of Leopardi's Scritti e frammenti autobiografici (1995), an annotated edition of his verse translations from Greek and Latin, Poeti greci e latini (1999) and twenty-something essays on various aspects of his thought. He is working on the critical edition of Leopardi's prose translations from Greek (Isocrates, Epictetus, etc.) and on a book of essays on the Operette morali.
Other research areas include Pirandello's short narrative (L'antro della bestia, 1992) and literary theory.
In 1998 he founded, with Michael Caesar, the “Leopardi Centre” at the University of Birmingham. As Director of the Centre, he co-organised the International Conference “Leopardi and the book in the age of Romanticism” (October 1998), and many seminars, lectures and events. He is also chief editor (with Michael Caesar) of the first complete translation (in progress) of Leopardi's Zibaldone into English.
He has been lecturer in Italian literature at the Universities of Amsterdam (NL), Birmingham (UK), and Perugia.
His first book (1989, 2nd edition 1998) was on L'autobiografia moderna (theory and history of the genre). In the last fifteen years his main research interest has been the work of Giacomo Leopardi, from both a philological and a comparativist point of view. He published the critical edition of Leopardi's Scritti e frammenti autobiografici (1995), an annotated edition of his verse translations from Greek and Latin, Poeti greci e latini (1999) and twenty-something essays on various aspects of his thought. He is working on the critical edition of Leopardi's prose translations from Greek (Isocrates, Epictetus, etc.) and on a book of essays on the Operette morali.
Other research areas include Pirandello's short narrative (L'antro della bestia, 1992) and literary theory.
In 1998 he founded, with Michael Caesar, the “Leopardi Centre” at the University of Birmingham. As Director of the Centre, he co-organised the International Conference “Leopardi and the book in the age of Romanticism” (October 1998), and many seminars, lectures and events. He is also chief editor (with Michael Caesar) of the first complete translation (in progress) of Leopardi's Zibaldone into English.
Marc Fumaroli
Collège de France
Alexander Bodini Senior Research Fellow (Culture and Religion)
Christianity and its images: from acheiropoieta to photography
Officer of the Légion d'honneur
Commander of L'ordre national du Mérite
Commander of the Palmes Académiques
Commander of Arts and Letters
Honorable Academician of the Accademia Clementina
Honorable Academician of the Académie d'Aix-en-Provence
Member of the Accademia dei Lincei (1997)
Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy
Born in Marseilles on 10 June 1932, Marc Fumaroli spent his childhood and adolescence in Fès. His mother was his first teacher. He completed his secondary education and Baccalauréat in Letters at the Lycée Ville-Nouvelle in Fès. He completed his higher education at the Lycée Thiers in Marseilles, at the University of Aix-en-Provence and at the Sorbonne. He passed the Agrégation in Classical Letters in 1958. He did his military service at the École militaire interarmes de Cõetquidan and in the 6th Artillery Regiment in Colbert in the Constantinois between September 1958 and January 1961. He was pensionnaire of the Fondation Thiers from September 1963 to August 1966. He was elected assistant of the Faculty of Letters at Lille at his return in 1965, and Doctor of Letters at IV-Sorbonne in June 1976. During the same month he was elected master of conferences at the Paris IV-Sorbonne, succeeding Professor Raymond Picard. Director of the journal, XVIIe siècle (1976-1986) and member of the editorial board of the journal Commentaire (1978-1995), under the directorship of Raymond Aron until his death in 1983 and thereafter under that of Jean-Claude Casanova.
In 1986 Marc Fumaroli was elected professor of the Collège de France, to which he was presented by the poet Yves Bonnefoy and the historian Jean Delumeau, and was granted the chair entitled "Rhetoric and Society in Europe (16th-17th centuries)." In 1977 he participated in the foundation of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, over which he presided between 1984 and 85, and organized the Third International Congress at Tours in the last-mentioned year. He served as director of Centre d'étude de la langue et de la literature françaises des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris IV-C.N.R.S.) from 1984-1994. From 1993 to 1999, he was president of the Association pour la sauvegarde des enseignements littéraires (S.E.L.) founded by Mme. Jacqueline de Romilly. After 2000 he succeeded René Pomeau as president of the Society of Literary History of France. He has presided over the Association of the Friends of the Louvre since 1996. In October 2006 he succeeded the Lord Chancellor Gabriel de Broglie as the president of the Interministerial Commission of Technology.
He was a visiting professor at All Souls College, Oxford in 1983 and a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1984. He has taught and delivered lectures in numerous universities in the United States (most notably at New York University, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Princeton, Houston, Los Angeles). Invited by Allan Bloom, he delivered a series of lectures in the division known as the Committee for Social Thought in Chicago of which he became a member, with the status of a professor of the university 'at large', where he teaches two months a year. He has been invited to lecture at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., most notably in the Fifteenth Anniversary Lecture Series. He returned there in March-April 2000 to deliver the six Mellon Series Lectures of that year. He gave the Casal Lecture at the University of London and the Zaharoff Lecture at the University of Oxford in 1991. Each year in May he gives a series of lectures at the Istituto di Studi Filosofici founded and directed by M. Gerardo Marotta, and participates frequently in the congresses at the Cini Foundation in Venice. He has received invitations from most Italian universities. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Naples (Federico II) in 1994, from the University of Bologna in 1999, from the University of Genoa and the University Complutense in Madrid in 2004, and the University Complutense in Madrid in 2005, and his courses at the Collège de France have twice been given in Italian universities: the University of Rome in 1995-1996; and the Scuola normale superiore in Pisa in 1999-2000. Since his youth he has considered Italy his second homeland, and is proud of counting among his innumerable friends there, Professor Tullio Gregory, Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Rome - la Sapienza. He is a member of numerous learned societies in France and abroad. He is an associate member of the British Academy, member of the American Academy of Science, Letters and Arts, member of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, member of the Accademia dei Lincei (since 1997), and he is president of the Société littéraire de la France, and a frequent collaborator in the Revue. He regularly contributes articles to daily and weekly newspapers in France and abroad. In 1982 he received the Monsieur Marcel prize from the Académie française and in 1992 its Critique award. He received the Balzan prize in September 2001, the Lafue prize in 2002, and the Mémorial and Combourg prizes in 2004.
On March 2nd 1995 the Académie française elected him to the sixth chair, in which he succeeded Eugène Ionesco. In 1998 he was elected to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in the chair left vacant by Georges Duby.
Commander of L'ordre national du Mérite
Commander of the Palmes Académiques
Commander of Arts and Letters
Honorable Academician of the Accademia Clementina
Honorable Academician of the Académie d'Aix-en-Provence
Member of the Accademia dei Lincei (1997)
Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy
Born in Marseilles on 10 June 1932, Marc Fumaroli spent his childhood and adolescence in Fès. His mother was his first teacher. He completed his secondary education and Baccalauréat in Letters at the Lycée Ville-Nouvelle in Fès. He completed his higher education at the Lycée Thiers in Marseilles, at the University of Aix-en-Provence and at the Sorbonne. He passed the Agrégation in Classical Letters in 1958. He did his military service at the École militaire interarmes de Cõetquidan and in the 6th Artillery Regiment in Colbert in the Constantinois between September 1958 and January 1961. He was pensionnaire of the Fondation Thiers from September 1963 to August 1966. He was elected assistant of the Faculty of Letters at Lille at his return in 1965, and Doctor of Letters at IV-Sorbonne in June 1976. During the same month he was elected master of conferences at the Paris IV-Sorbonne, succeeding Professor Raymond Picard. Director of the journal, XVIIe siècle (1976-1986) and member of the editorial board of the journal Commentaire (1978-1995), under the directorship of Raymond Aron until his death in 1983 and thereafter under that of Jean-Claude Casanova.
In 1986 Marc Fumaroli was elected professor of the Collège de France, to which he was presented by the poet Yves Bonnefoy and the historian Jean Delumeau, and was granted the chair entitled "Rhetoric and Society in Europe (16th-17th centuries)." In 1977 he participated in the foundation of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, over which he presided between 1984 and 85, and organized the Third International Congress at Tours in the last-mentioned year. He served as director of Centre d'étude de la langue et de la literature françaises des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris IV-C.N.R.S.) from 1984-1994. From 1993 to 1999, he was president of the Association pour la sauvegarde des enseignements littéraires (S.E.L.) founded by Mme. Jacqueline de Romilly. After 2000 he succeeded René Pomeau as president of the Society of Literary History of France. He has presided over the Association of the Friends of the Louvre since 1996. In October 2006 he succeeded the Lord Chancellor Gabriel de Broglie as the president of the Interministerial Commission of Technology.
He was a visiting professor at All Souls College, Oxford in 1983 and a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1984. He has taught and delivered lectures in numerous universities in the United States (most notably at New York University, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Princeton, Houston, Los Angeles). Invited by Allan Bloom, he delivered a series of lectures in the division known as the Committee for Social Thought in Chicago of which he became a member, with the status of a professor of the university 'at large', where he teaches two months a year. He has been invited to lecture at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., most notably in the Fifteenth Anniversary Lecture Series. He returned there in March-April 2000 to deliver the six Mellon Series Lectures of that year. He gave the Casal Lecture at the University of London and the Zaharoff Lecture at the University of Oxford in 1991. Each year in May he gives a series of lectures at the Istituto di Studi Filosofici founded and directed by M. Gerardo Marotta, and participates frequently in the congresses at the Cini Foundation in Venice. He has received invitations from most Italian universities. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Naples (Federico II) in 1994, from the University of Bologna in 1999, from the University of Genoa and the University Complutense in Madrid in 2004, and the University Complutense in Madrid in 2005, and his courses at the Collège de France have twice been given in Italian universities: the University of Rome in 1995-1996; and the Scuola normale superiore in Pisa in 1999-2000. Since his youth he has considered Italy his second homeland, and is proud of counting among his innumerable friends there, Professor Tullio Gregory, Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Rome - la Sapienza. He is a member of numerous learned societies in France and abroad. He is an associate member of the British Academy, member of the American Academy of Science, Letters and Arts, member of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, member of the Accademia dei Lincei (since 1997), and he is president of the Société littéraire de la France, and a frequent collaborator in the Revue. He regularly contributes articles to daily and weekly newspapers in France and abroad. In 1982 he received the Monsieur Marcel prize from the Académie française and in 1992 its Critique award. He received the Balzan prize in September 2001, the Lafue prize in 2002, and the Mémorial and Combourg prizes in 2004.
On March 2nd 1995 the Académie française elected him to the sixth chair, in which he succeeded Eugène Ionesco. In 1998 he was elected to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in the chair left vacant by Georges Duby.
Marco Galli
Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza'
Emotions and power: the system of images in Rome from the mid to the late Republican era (3rd-1st century B.C.)
Marco Galli is Doctor in Classical Art and Archaeology (1998, PhD in Classical Archaeology, Univ. of Cologne (D); 1987 M.A. in Classics, Univ. of Bologna)
CURRENT POSITION: 2003- Univ. of Roma, 'La Sapienza', Fixed Term Professor in Classical Art and Archaeology. 2005- Member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan, Saidu Sharif-Swat (ISIAO Rome). 2002- Research Affiliate of ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la documentazione). PREVIOUS POSITIONS 2002/2003: Teaching Assistant of Prof. P. Pensabene, Univ. of Rome, 'La Sapienza'. 2001-2002: Univ. of Viterbo, Research Affiliate. Research Project "Sculpture and Context". 1999-2001: Research Affiliate of the German Research Society (DFG). Research Project “Domestic Culture in North Italy”, Research Program 'Urban Culture in the Roman Empire' directed by P. Zanker, DAI Rome. 1998-1999: Research-Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Düsseldorf, Research Program (P. Zanker, DAI Rome). 1997-1998: Tutor in Classical Archaeology, Archaeological Institute, Univ. of Cologne. GRANTS AND FellowsHIPS: 1997: Junior Research Fellowship, École Française at Athens. 1994-1997: Junior Research Fellowship, Archaeological Institute of the Univ. of Cologne. Research Program 'Formation and Self-representation of the Urban Elites in the Roman Empire,' directed by H. v. Hesberg, financed by the German Research Society (DFG).
Research themes: Roman Architecture and Sculpture of the Hellenistic/Republican and Imperial Ages (particularly in Italy and Greece). Terminology of Ancient Architectural Terms (Project ICCD Rome). Evergetism and history of mentality in the Second Century AD: The Phenomenon of the Second Sophistic. Transformations of the Sacred Space during the Roman Period in the Greek East. Phenomenon of the Religious Associations in the Roman Empire. Domestic Space and Material Culture of the Roman House. Graeco-Roman Pattern in Early Buddhist Art of Gandhara. Historiography of Classical Archaeology: A. Riegl and the Biology of Image.
Recent monographies and articles
-Die Lebenswelt eines Sophisten. Untersuchungen zu den Bauten und Stiftungen des Herodes Atticus (Philipp von Zabern Verlag, Mainz am Rhein, 2002)
-O. D. Cordovana - M. Galli (a cura di), Arte e memoria culturale nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, Catania 2007.
-P. Callieri, L. Colliva, M. Galli et al. (a cura di), Valli della Memoria. Antiche genti Luoghi Immagini nello Swat. 50 della Missione Archeologica in Pakistan. Catalogo della mostra documentaria, Roma, IsIAO 14.12.2006, Roma 2006.
-Hellenistic Court Imagery in Early Buddhist Art of Gandhara, in P. Calieri (a cura di) Atti del XIX International Conference on South Asian Archaeology, Ravenna 2-6 July 2007 (i.s.)
-Riegl e la “Biologia” delle immagini, in Alois Riegl (1858-1905), Un secolo dopo, Convegno internazionale 30.11-2.12-2005, Accademia dei Lincei Roma (i.s.)
- Processi della memoria nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, in O. Cordovana - M. Galli (a cura di), Arte e memoria culturale nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, Catania 2007, pagg. 7-14
- Et Greci quidem eum consecraverunt. La creazione del mito di Antinoo, in O. Cordovana - M. Galli (a cura di), Arte e memoria culturale nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, Catania 2007, 181-203
-Teatro della memoria: mito e paideia sul sarcofago di Velletri, in: M. Angle, A. Germano, F. Zevi (a cura di), Museo & Territorio, Atti del IV convegno, Velletri 7-8 maggio 2004, Roma 2005, 75-90.
-Vasellame domestico e Lebenswelt: nascita della cultura urbana nella colonia romana di Ariminum, in: P. Zanker - R. Neudecker (Hrsg.) Lebenswelten. Bilder und Räume in der römischen Stadt der Kaiserzeit, Palilia Bd. 16, Wiesbaden 2005, 153-173
-Pilgrimage as lite Habitus: Educated Pilgrims in the Sacred Landscape During the Second Sophistic, in: J. Elsner-I. Rutherford (eds.), Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity. Seeing the Gods, Oxford 2005, 253-290
-'Creating Religious identities' paideia e religione nella Seconda Sofistica, in: B. E. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic. Millennium Studies II, Berlin-New York 2004, 315-356
CURRENT POSITION: 2003- Univ. of Roma, 'La Sapienza', Fixed Term Professor in Classical Art and Archaeology. 2005- Member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan, Saidu Sharif-Swat (ISIAO Rome). 2002- Research Affiliate of ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la documentazione). PREVIOUS POSITIONS 2002/2003: Teaching Assistant of Prof. P. Pensabene, Univ. of Rome, 'La Sapienza'. 2001-2002: Univ. of Viterbo, Research Affiliate. Research Project "Sculpture and Context". 1999-2001: Research Affiliate of the German Research Society (DFG). Research Project “Domestic Culture in North Italy”, Research Program 'Urban Culture in the Roman Empire' directed by P. Zanker, DAI Rome. 1998-1999: Research-Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Düsseldorf, Research Program (P. Zanker, DAI Rome). 1997-1998: Tutor in Classical Archaeology, Archaeological Institute, Univ. of Cologne. GRANTS AND FellowsHIPS: 1997: Junior Research Fellowship, École Française at Athens. 1994-1997: Junior Research Fellowship, Archaeological Institute of the Univ. of Cologne. Research Program 'Formation and Self-representation of the Urban Elites in the Roman Empire,' directed by H. v. Hesberg, financed by the German Research Society (DFG).
Research themes: Roman Architecture and Sculpture of the Hellenistic/Republican and Imperial Ages (particularly in Italy and Greece). Terminology of Ancient Architectural Terms (Project ICCD Rome). Evergetism and history of mentality in the Second Century AD: The Phenomenon of the Second Sophistic. Transformations of the Sacred Space during the Roman Period in the Greek East. Phenomenon of the Religious Associations in the Roman Empire. Domestic Space and Material Culture of the Roman House. Graeco-Roman Pattern in Early Buddhist Art of Gandhara. Historiography of Classical Archaeology: A. Riegl and the Biology of Image.
Recent monographies and articles
-Die Lebenswelt eines Sophisten. Untersuchungen zu den Bauten und Stiftungen des Herodes Atticus (Philipp von Zabern Verlag, Mainz am Rhein, 2002)
-O. D. Cordovana - M. Galli (a cura di), Arte e memoria culturale nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, Catania 2007.
-P. Callieri, L. Colliva, M. Galli et al. (a cura di), Valli della Memoria. Antiche genti Luoghi Immagini nello Swat. 50 della Missione Archeologica in Pakistan. Catalogo della mostra documentaria, Roma, IsIAO 14.12.2006, Roma 2006.
-Hellenistic Court Imagery in Early Buddhist Art of Gandhara, in P. Calieri (a cura di) Atti del XIX International Conference on South Asian Archaeology, Ravenna 2-6 July 2007 (i.s.)
-Riegl e la “Biologia” delle immagini, in Alois Riegl (1858-1905), Un secolo dopo, Convegno internazionale 30.11-2.12-2005, Accademia dei Lincei Roma (i.s.)
- Processi della memoria nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, in O. Cordovana - M. Galli (a cura di), Arte e memoria culturale nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, Catania 2007, pagg. 7-14
- Et Greci quidem eum consecraverunt. La creazione del mito di Antinoo, in O. Cordovana - M. Galli (a cura di), Arte e memoria culturale nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, Catania 2007, 181-203
-Teatro della memoria: mito e paideia sul sarcofago di Velletri, in: M. Angle, A. Germano, F. Zevi (a cura di), Museo & Territorio, Atti del IV convegno, Velletri 7-8 maggio 2004, Roma 2005, 75-90.
-Vasellame domestico e Lebenswelt: nascita della cultura urbana nella colonia romana di Ariminum, in: P. Zanker - R. Neudecker (Hrsg.) Lebenswelten. Bilder und Räume in der römischen Stadt der Kaiserzeit, Palilia Bd. 16, Wiesbaden 2005, 153-173
-Pilgrimage as lite Habitus: Educated Pilgrims in the Sacred Landscape During the Second Sophistic, in: J. Elsner-I. Rutherford (eds.), Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity. Seeing the Gods, Oxford 2005, 253-290
-'Creating Religious identities' paideia e religione nella Seconda Sofistica, in: B. E. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic. Millennium Studies II, Berlin-New York 2004, 315-356
Antonio Garcia Espada
European University Institute
Dante, Sanudo and Marco Polo: romance, crusade and the perpetuation of travel literature as a genre
Antonio Garcia Espada graduated at the Complutense University of Madrid with a degree in Medieval History. His research about the Medieval Travellers to the Indies started at the Jawaharlal Nehru University of Delhi under an anthropological methodology that proved useful to elucidate some of the most puzzling episodes of the narratives of the 14th century travellers. At the European University Institute of Florence his research entered a new stage deeply influenced by the main concerns of the Modern European Expansion. The relation of the first European travel literature to Asia with commerce and the aggressive ideology of the Church against the Muslims became the centre of his dissertation, which was awarded with the Ph. D degree in May 2006. At the Italian Academy he will continue his exploration of the links between the travel literature and romance, and how the symbiosis between these two genres empowered the transmission to the Modern era of a particular idea of otherness and conquest, born at the end of the 13th century. His main areas of interest are travelogue, crusade, mendicant orders, Mongol expansion, cartography, origins of individualism and comparative literature.
Javier P. Grossutti
Università degli Studi di Udine
Italian mosaic and terrazzo workers in New York: the transplantation of an aesthetic and artisanal heritage.
Javier P. Grossutti was born in Argentina in 1967 and graduated in Political Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires in 1991. Also in 1991, he “returned” to Friuli and attended a specialization course at the Degree course in International and Diplomatic Sciences at the University of Trieste in Gorizia. He received his Doctorate in Political Geography from the University of Trieste (1994-1996). His research thesis, "I 'rientri' in Friuli da Argentina, Brasile, Uruguay e Venezuela (1989-1991)", was published in 1997. His main field of study includes: Friulian emigration, return migration and problems connected to Friulian and Italian communities abroad, where he has conducted numerous surveys for the Universities of Trieste, Trento and Udine. He has carried out research in collaboration with the Universities of Caen (France), Buenos Aires, Quilmes, Cuyo-Mendoza and Patagonia (Argentina) and Itajaì (Brazil). He participated in the projects "Regional Development and Cultural Landscape Change: the Example of the Alps - Evaluating and Adjusting EU and National Policies to Manage a Balanced Change" and "Future in the Alps", collaborating with universities and research centers in Austria, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Slovenia.
He has held courses on Italian emigration and return migration for the University of Udine. Currently he is contracted researcher at the University of Udine, Faculty of Economics, and contracted professor at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, also at the University of Udine. His main publications include: Una forma particolare di immigrazione: i 'rientri' in Trentino dall’America Latina 1989-1994 (Milan 1997); Una scelta difficile. Egidio Feruglio in Argentina (Udine 1997); L’emigrazione dal Friuli. Saggio bibliografico (Pordenone 1997); Les coopératives de travail des maçons frioulans en France (Caen 2001); Friulani d’Argentina: l’altra patria oltreoceano 1875-1914 (Roma 2004);Vivir en dos lugares al mismo tiempo. Los enfermeros de Pantianicco (Friuli) en Buenos Aires (siglos XIX-XX) (Buenos Aires 2005); Flussi migratori di rientro e trasformazione dell’economia friulana tra shock petrolifero, terremoto e apertura dell’Est Europeo (San Marino 2007). He was also the scientific editor of the section "Emigration and work" of the Provincial Museum of Country Life "Diogene Penzi".
Anna Ipata
Università degli Studi di Verona
Neurophysiology of emotional memory
Dr. Anna Ipata is at present an Associate Research Assistant at the Mahoney Center for Mind and Brain of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University, with an interest in the study of the neuronal basis of visual and cognitive functions in humans and primates. Her research covers the study of visual functions in children with cerebral damage and single neuron recording in alert monkeys. Dr. Ipata took her medical degree at the University of Pisa, where she also completed her residency in Child Neurology and Psychiatry. During the residency, she performed studies focused on the early diagnosis of visual disorders in children with cortical damage, using psychophysical and neurophysiological techniques. After the residency she moved to the Department of Physiology and Vision of the University of Verona for a Ph.D. program in neuroscience. In Verona she studied the neural basis of visual attention in the visual cortex of non-human primates. After completing her Ph.D., she moved to the sensoriomotor research laboratory of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, where she worked as a postdoc under the supervision of Prof. Michael Goldberg. In 2002 she moved to Columbia University with Prof. Goldberg and set up a new laboratory of neurophysiology. Since her arrival in the US, the main focus of her research has been the study of the neuronal substrates of cognitive functions in non-human primates, in particular the role of the parietal cortex in the exploration of the visual scene in monkeys.
Domenico Laurenza
Università degli Studi di Firenze
Forms of transmission of anatomical knowledge: drawings and three-dimensional models in the age of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Vesalius
Domenico Laurenza earned his doctorate in Historical Studies from the Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici (San Marino, 1996; Ph.D.) after training in medicine at the University of Naples (Laurea, 1991).
He devotes his research principally to the relationship between scientific models of nature and the theory and practice of art in Early Modern Europe. In particular, he specializes in the work of Leonardo da Vinci and in Renaissance anatomical illustrations, considering the images from both artistic and scientific perspectives.
He is a researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Florence and collaborates with the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (IMSS, Florence). He has spent periods of research at the Warburg Institute in London (Frances A. Yates Fellowship, 1995), at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London (Wellcome Research Travel Grant, 1994), at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Mellon Fellowship, 2006-7) and, as visiting professor, at McGill University in Montreal (2006-7). He is the author of several books, some appearing in English, French and German translation; select titles include: De figura umana. Fisiognomica anatomia e arte in Leonardo (Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 2001); Leonardo. La scienza trasfigurata in arte (Milano, Le scienze/Scientific American 2000); La ricerca dell'armonia. Rappresentazioni anatomiche nel Rinascimento (Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 2003); Leonardo on flight (Giunti, Firenze, 2005); and Leonardo's Machines: Da Vinci's Inventions Revealed (David & Charles, Devon, 2006). In addition he has published articles in scholarly journals such as The Burlington Magazine, Nuncius, ALV Journal, Raccolta Vinciana, and Micrologus.
He is a researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Florence and collaborates with the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (IMSS, Florence). He has spent periods of research at the Warburg Institute in London (Frances A. Yates Fellowship, 1995), at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London (Wellcome Research Travel Grant, 1994), at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Mellon Fellowship, 2006-7) and, as visiting professor, at McGill University in Montreal (2006-7). He is the author of several books, some appearing in English, French and German translation; select titles include: De figura umana. Fisiognomica anatomia e arte in Leonardo (Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 2001); Leonardo. La scienza trasfigurata in arte (Milano, Le scienze/Scientific American 2000); La ricerca dell'armonia. Rappresentazioni anatomiche nel Rinascimento (Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 2003); Leonardo on flight (Giunti, Firenze, 2005); and Leonardo's Machines: Da Vinci's Inventions Revealed (David & Charles, Devon, 2006). In addition he has published articles in scholarly journals such as The Burlington Magazine, Nuncius, ALV Journal, Raccolta Vinciana, and Micrologus.
Marco Maiuro
Università degli Studi di Trieste
The economic effects of imperial property in Roman Italy
Marco Maiuro (living in Rome), studies Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology at the Universities of Perugia, Siena, Freiburg (Germany), Trieste and Clermont-Ferrand. PhD Thesis (Trieste and Clermont) on Economic History of Imperial Italy ("La proprietà imperiale in Italia: un'interpretazione storica") soon to be published; collaborates with Universities of Rome and Viterbo (Roman History, professors Lo Cascio and de Romanis) and, since 2006, Field Director at the Archaeological Mission at Villamagna (University of Pennsylvania, BSR, AIAC). Articles published on ancient topography of Rome, on Economic History of the Roman Empire, on cultural change in the Imperial Period. A new archaeological guide of the suburbs of Rome (together with F. Coarelli) is in preparation. Interests focused also on History, Epigraphy and Archaology of the Eastern and African Provinces of the Roman Empire from the Hellenistic Period to Late Antique.
Irina Oryshkevich
Columbia University
Associate Fellow
From necropolis to metropolis: the rediscovery of the catacombs in Counter Reformation Rome
Irina Oryshkevich received her Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University in 2003. Since completing her dissertation--a study of the history of the Roman catacombs from late antiquity to the early modern period--she has been a fellow at the Society of Fellows at Columbia University and a recipient of a grant from the American Association of University Women (AAUW).
Since her dissertation, Dr. Oryshkevich has focused on the cult of martyrs and the historiography of the early Church in the Counter Reformation, and their impact on the nascent discipline of 'Christian archaeology'. She will devote her residency at the Italian Academy to what is in effect a sequel to her dissertation, namely, the transformation of the catacombs, which had been viewed throughout the middle ages as mere cemeteries, into 'Roma sotterranea', a clandestine city that sheltered thousands of Christians from imperial persecutions. This transformation, assisted through imagery and rhetoric, provided Christian Rome with physical foundations, thereby reconfirming its primacy at a time when the papacy was under fierce attack on every confessional front.
Since her dissertation, Dr. Oryshkevich has focused on the cult of martyrs and the historiography of the early Church in the Counter Reformation, and their impact on the nascent discipline of 'Christian archaeology'. She will devote her residency at the Italian Academy to what is in effect a sequel to her dissertation, namely, the transformation of the catacombs, which had been viewed throughout the middle ages as mere cemeteries, into 'Roma sotterranea', a clandestine city that sheltered thousands of Christians from imperial persecutions. This transformation, assisted through imagery and rhetoric, provided Christian Rome with physical foundations, thereby reconfirming its primacy at a time when the papacy was under fierce attack on every confessional front.
Giorgio Pino
Università degli Studi di Palermo
Challenges of pluralism and challenges to pluralism: the legal contexts
Giorgio Pino is Associate Professor in Philosophy of Law at the Law School of the University of Palermo; he graduated from the University of Palermo with a degree in Law (1996), then received an LL.M. from the European Academy of Legal Theory (Brussels, 1997) and completed a post-graduate course in Law and Computers at the University of Bologna (2001). Professor Pino also holds a Ph.D. in Human Rights (University of Palermo, 2001). He served for three years at the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, Rome, 2002-2004).
His research interests mainly concern privacy rights, freedom of expression, legal reasoning, and constitutional interpretation. An editor of Diritto & Questioni pubbliche, an international on-line journal on philosophy of law and public policy, Professor Pino has extensively published in Italian and foreign journals, such as Ragion pratica, Analisi e diritto, and Law and Philosophy, and is the author of the book Il diritto all'identità personale. Interpretazione costituzionale e creatività giurisprudenziale (Il Mulino, 2003).
His research interests mainly concern privacy rights, freedom of expression, legal reasoning, and constitutional interpretation. An editor of Diritto & Questioni pubbliche, an international on-line journal on philosophy of law and public policy, Professor Pino has extensively published in Italian and foreign journals, such as Ragion pratica, Analisi e diritto, and Law and Philosophy, and is the author of the book Il diritto all'identità personale. Interpretazione costituzionale e creatività giurisprudenziale (Il Mulino, 2003).
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Fellows 2006-2007
Bella Brover-Lubovsky
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
'Prima e seconda prattica' of settecento music theory
Bella Brover-Lubovsky received her B.A. and M.A. in musicology in Russia, and her Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2001). Her principal research interests include eighteenth-century harmonic theories; the epistemological and cultural roots of tonality; early and mid-eighteenth century instrumental music; and Russian music. She has been published articles in various scholarly journals and presented papers at international conferences and symposiums. Her book "Estro armonico" on Vivaldi's tonality is soon to be published by the Indiana University Press.
Brover-Lubovsky has been a recipient of the Vigevani Postdoctoral prize for a study in Italy (2003), and a Newberry Library fellowship for individual research (2005). She spent a 2003-04 as a postdoctoral fellow and a visiting assistant professor at the School of Music, University of Illinois. She has been a Research fellow and lecturer at the Musicology Department, Hebrew University from 2001-2006; a lecturer at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and Dance since 1995, and an Assistant Professor at the Music Department, Bar-Ilan University, since 2005.
While at Columbia, she will further her current research towards a study of theoretical and philological sources into the concepts of organization of tonal space and systematization of pitch phenomena in Italian music of the "long eighteenth century," viewed against the intellectual and artistic background of the time.
Brover-Lubovsky has been a recipient of the Vigevani Postdoctoral prize for a study in Italy (2003), and a Newberry Library fellowship for individual research (2005). She spent a 2003-04 as a postdoctoral fellow and a visiting assistant professor at the School of Music, University of Illinois. She has been a Research fellow and lecturer at the Musicology Department, Hebrew University from 2001-2006; a lecturer at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and Dance since 1995, and an Assistant Professor at the Music Department, Bar-Ilan University, since 2005.
While at Columbia, she will further her current research towards a study of theoretical and philological sources into the concepts of organization of tonal space and systematization of pitch phenomena in Italian music of the "long eighteenth century," viewed against the intellectual and artistic background of the time.
Domenica Crupi
Università degli Studi di Messina
Adjunct Associate Research Scientist
Mirror neuron system and art perception
Domenica Crupi received her Italian degree in medical school in 2002 from the University of Messina (110/110 cum laude) and she discussed a thesis on "Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study". At the present she is in the last year of her residency in Neurology at the University of Messina. From the beginning of her residency she worked at the department of Neuropathology and, in particular, she took multiple sclerosis in-patients' and out-patients' clinical care at the Regional Center for Management of Multiple Sclerosis. From June 2005 to November 2006 she worked at department of Neurophysiology in Messina as electromyographist. In summer 2006 she attended a course in clinical neurosciences and neuroanatomy at Virginia Commonwealth University.
The main research experience of Dr Crupi is on transcranial magnetic stimulation, a non-invasive technique used to study the function of the human central motor system in health and disease. She has been working in the Prof. Quartarone's laboratory since March 2002 focusing her activity on movement disorder pathophysiology (dystonia in particular).
At the Italian Academy she will investigate the changes in cortico-spinal excitability and within intracortical circuits induced by observation of a work of art, during its mental representation and by observation of the real action itself, using transcranial magnetic stimulation. The experiments will be performed in Professor Battaglia's laboratory at City College of New York.
She was founder and is currently President and Health Director of the local section of "AVIS", the association of voluntary blood donors which operates in collaboration with the Transfusional Center in the city of Reggio Calabria. She is also member of "GADCO", an association for the promotion of umbilical cord donation.
The main research experience of Dr Crupi is on transcranial magnetic stimulation, a non-invasive technique used to study the function of the human central motor system in health and disease. She has been working in the Prof. Quartarone's laboratory since March 2002 focusing her activity on movement disorder pathophysiology (dystonia in particular).
At the Italian Academy she will investigate the changes in cortico-spinal excitability and within intracortical circuits induced by observation of a work of art, during its mental representation and by observation of the real action itself, using transcranial magnetic stimulation. The experiments will be performed in Professor Battaglia's laboratory at City College of New York.
She was founder and is currently President and Health Director of the local section of "AVIS", the association of voluntary blood donors which operates in collaboration with the Transfusional Center in the city of Reggio Calabria. She is also member of "GADCO", an association for the promotion of umbilical cord donation.
Maurizio Ferraris
Università degli Studi di Torino
Documentality: the ontology of social objects
Maurizio Ferraris (Turin, 1956) is professor of philosophy at the University of Turin, where he heads the Center for Theoretical and Applied Ontology and the Laboratory of Ontology.
Awarded many literary and research prizes (fellow of the Italian Academy at the Columbia University, "Claretta" Prize, Valitutti Prize, Castiglioncello Philosophical Prize), he is the author of 30 books and more than 1,000 scientific articles.
A more extensive version of his curriculum, with a complete bibliography, descriptions and reviews of his works can be found at labont.it/ferraris.
Awarded many literary and research prizes (fellow of the Italian Academy at the Columbia University, "Claretta" Prize, Valitutti Prize, Castiglioncello Philosophical Prize), he is the author of 30 books and more than 1,000 scientific articles.
A more extensive version of his curriculum, with a complete bibliography, descriptions and reviews of his works can be found at labont.it/ferraris.
Luana Fioriti
Mario Negri Institute for Pharmaceutical Research, Milan
Molecular mechanisms for the perpetuation of memory storage
I received a Laurea in Scienze Biologiche from the Università degli Studi di Milano in 2001, where I was trained in Molecular Biology. I received a Specialisation in Biotechnology from the same university in 2004 and a PhD in Pharmacology from the Open University, London, in 2006. From 2001 to 2006 I have been working on molecular and cellular aspects of Familial Prion Disease which affect humans, like Creutzfeld Jacob Disease and Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome, in an attempt to clarify the crucial steps for the appearance of these fatal pathologies, and possibly identifying a cure. My interest in prion molecules made me contact Prof. Eric Kandel, who recently hypothesized that a prion mechanism might be responsible for the persistence of long-term memory (Si et al, 2003). A protein called cytoplasmic polyadenylation element-binding protein (CPEB), a regulator of local protein synthesis, exists in a particular form in the nervous system of Aplysia and stabilizes newly formed synaptic connections. The first 150 amino-acids of CPEB constitute a domain that is very similar to that of prions. Like prions, CPEB can exist in two conformationally distinct isoforms but only one is metabolically active--the dominant form, characterized by an aggregate state. During my stay at the Italian Academy I will test the idea that these aggregates bind to dormant mRNA (ribonucleic acid messenger) resident at the synapse and modify them in order to be translated and give rise to proteins that stabilize synaptic growth. I also plan to examine if the prion domain of CPEB leads to a self-perpetuating level of local translation in neurons and if this novel mechanism leads to the stabilization of learning-related synaptic growth and the persistence of long-term memory and I will try to identify molecules that interact with CPEB and explore how this interaction leads to the activation of dormant mRNA or the conformational changes of CPEB at the neuronal synapse.
Jennie Hirsh
Maryland Institute College of Art
Mediterranean modernity: art and nationalism in Italy and Greece, 1918-1945
Jennie Hirsh received her Ph.D. in 2003 from the Department of History of Art at Bryn Mawr College, where she wrote a dissertation on pictorial and literary self-representation in the oeuvre of the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico. She also holds an MA in Italian from Middlebury College (1998), an MA in Italian Renaissance Art from Bryn Mawr (1997), and a BA in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania (1993).
While at the Italian Academy, she will continue to work on her project on "Mediterranean Modernity: Art and Nationalism in Italy and Greece, 1918-1945," which compares six artists working under authoritarian regimes during and after the interwar period. In particular, this project examines how classical, Etruscan, and Byzantine strategies function with the rhetoric of pictorial modernism in these two countries. She will also be completing work on a monograph on Giorgio de Chirico, a project that grows out of her doctoral dissertation. Her research and teaching interests include the classical tradition, fascist architecture, postwar Italian cinema, visual culture and the Holocaust, relationships between word and image, and self-portraiture. Her publications include essays on Giorgio de Chirico, Jean-Luc Godard and Roberto Rossellini, Gianni Amelio, and contemporary photographer Pipo Nguyen-Duy.
Prior to arriving at the Italian Academy, she was Hannah Seeger Davis postdoctoral fellow (2005-2006) in the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, where she began work on her project on "Mediterranean Modernity." From 2003 until 2005, she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture at Oberlin College. Prior to that appointment, she taught courses on modern and contemporary art, the history of Western Art, Italian Renaissance art and architecture, postwar Italian cinema, and Italian language at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, Moore College of Art & Design, and Temple University between 1997 and 2003. Hirsh will be joining the faculty in the Department of Art History at the Maryland Institute College of Art in January 2007.
While at the Italian Academy, she will continue to work on her project on "Mediterranean Modernity: Art and Nationalism in Italy and Greece, 1918-1945," which compares six artists working under authoritarian regimes during and after the interwar period. In particular, this project examines how classical, Etruscan, and Byzantine strategies function with the rhetoric of pictorial modernism in these two countries. She will also be completing work on a monograph on Giorgio de Chirico, a project that grows out of her doctoral dissertation. Her research and teaching interests include the classical tradition, fascist architecture, postwar Italian cinema, visual culture and the Holocaust, relationships between word and image, and self-portraiture. Her publications include essays on Giorgio de Chirico, Jean-Luc Godard and Roberto Rossellini, Gianni Amelio, and contemporary photographer Pipo Nguyen-Duy.
Prior to arriving at the Italian Academy, she was Hannah Seeger Davis postdoctoral fellow (2005-2006) in the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, where she began work on her project on "Mediterranean Modernity." From 2003 until 2005, she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture at Oberlin College. Prior to that appointment, she taught courses on modern and contemporary art, the history of Western Art, Italian Renaissance art and architecture, postwar Italian cinema, and Italian language at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, Moore College of Art & Design, and Temple University between 1997 and 2003. Hirsh will be joining the faculty in the Department of Art History at the Maryland Institute College of Art in January 2007.
Margherita Losacco
Università degli Studi di Bari
Books in Byzantium: in search of libraries
Losacco (Bari, 1974) is lecturer in Classical Philology at the University of Bari. She graduated in 1996 in Classical Philology; in 1998 she obtained the Diploma of Greek Palaeographer at the "Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia"; in 2000 she passed the final exam for her Ph.D. in Classical Philology at the University of Bari. In 2003 she joined the European project «Rinascimento virtuale» for the cataloguing of Greek palimpsests in European libraries. Her scientific activity has regarded the history of transmission of classical and Byzantine Greek texts, from the Middle Ages up to modern times, and their manuscript tradition. She concentrated her work mostly on the huge corpus of the Byzantine patriarch Photius. Among her publications are the volume Antonio Catiforo e Giovanni Veludo interpreti di Fozio (Edizioni Dedalo, Bari, 2003) and articles on topics related to the history of transmission of Byzantine texts in international journals, such as the Revue d'histoire des textes, Thesaurismata, Quaderni di Storia. At present she is working on a comprehensive study of the Greek manuscript collection preserved in the Archiginnasio Library in Bologna, and doing extensive research about manuscripts (from the 11th to the 15th centuries) containing excerpts of Photius' so-called Library. At the Italian Academy she will be focusing her research on the history of books, libraries, and culture in the Byzantine age, starting from a significant case-study such the Byzantine tradition of Photius' Library.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe
King's College, London
Diabolical politics: images and ideas of the devil in early Christian Rome
Lunn-Rockliffe graduated from the University of Oxford in 1998 with a degree in History. She moved to Cambridge University for her postgraduate studies and from there received an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History, and a PhD in History. She was a Research Fellow and a Teaching Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge, between 2002 and 2006, and she is now a University Lecturer in Roman History in the Classics Department of King's College, London. Her general areas of interest are political thought, the history of ideas, religious history, and the history and theory of the reception of images. Her doctoral work was on the political theology of the late Roman Christian writer Ambrosiaster; through this she developed an interest in early Christian ideas and images of the Devil in Rome, which is the subject of her research at the Italian Academy. This project will begin by investigating the supposed absence of artistic representations of the Devil from early Christian Rome. The second part, on presence, will deal with Christian images depicting the Devil in bestial form, and visual narratives of exorcism and healing which implied an invisible diabolical presence. The third part, on memory, will deal with Christian memories of and attitudes towards the physical remains of pagan Rome.
Sebastiano Maffettone
Luiss Guido Carli, Roma
Cultural identity and human rights
Sebastiano Maffettone is Full Professor in Political Philosophy at Luiss University, Rome; Director of the Centro di Studi e Ricerche sui Diritti Umani (CERSDU), Rome; President of "Humanity," a group that works on human rights and public policy; (first) President of the SIFP (Società italiana di filosofia politica); Director of the journal "Filosofia e questioni pubbliche"; and Member of the Ethical Committee of Capitalia. Outside of Italy, he has been a Visiting Professor at the School of Law, New York University; at Tufts University (Boston); at the Maison Sciences de l'Homme, Paris; at Boston College (Boston); and at Harvard University. He has also been a Senior Fellow in the Program in Ethics and Professions, Harvard University.
His areas of interest are political philosophy (in particular: theories of justice, international political philosophy, liberalism, human rights), ethics (normative ethics and applied ethics), bioethics, business ethics, philosophy of international relations, environmental ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, history of philosophy (in particular: Greek philosophy, Kant, Hegel), and analytic and continental philosophy.
Professor Maffettone is the author of almost 300 hundred scientific papers and 12 books in the area of moral, political and social philosophy. Among the volumes are Valori comuni (il Saggiatore), Ermeneutica e scelta collettiva (Guida), Le ragioni degli altri (il Saggiatore), I fondamenti del liberalismo (Laterza, with Ronald Dworkin), Il valore della vita (Mondadori), Etica pubblica (il Saggiatore), and La pensabilità del mondo (il Saggiatore 2006).
His areas of interest are political philosophy (in particular: theories of justice, international political philosophy, liberalism, human rights), ethics (normative ethics and applied ethics), bioethics, business ethics, philosophy of international relations, environmental ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, history of philosophy (in particular: Greek philosophy, Kant, Hegel), and analytic and continental philosophy.
Professor Maffettone is the author of almost 300 hundred scientific papers and 12 books in the area of moral, political and social philosophy. Among the volumes are Valori comuni (il Saggiatore), Ermeneutica e scelta collettiva (Guida), Le ragioni degli altri (il Saggiatore), I fondamenti del liberalismo (Laterza, with Ronald Dworkin), Il valore della vita (Mondadori), Etica pubblica (il Saggiatore), and La pensabilità del mondo (il Saggiatore 2006).
Simone Magherini
Università degli Studi di Firenze
Palazzeschi and the domain of the comic genre in early twentieth-century avant-garde European literature
Simone Magherini was born in Florence on 7th September 1964. He graduated with Gino Tellini in 1990, examined on a thesis about «Frammenti lirici» by Clemente Rebora. On February 1991, he was awarded "Premio Palazzeschi", published by the Faculty of Humanities of Florence for Theses, deserving the highest praise, dedicated to the «study of our literature and our language». Since 1992 he carries out his research work at the Department of Italianistica of the University of Florence.
On February 2004 he won the competitive examination for researchers in Italian Literature at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Florence.
He devotes himself particularly to archives research, to the study of literary letters and the poetry of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, and to the informatics applications in the Humanities field.
He edited the first volume of the Moretti-Palazzeschi Letters, 1904-1925 (Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1999, pp. 540); and, with Gloria Manghetti, a biography of Palazzeschi in images: Scherzi di gioventù e d'altre età. Album Palazzeschi 1885-1974 (Firenze, Pagliai Polistampa, 2001, pp. 302); and the catalogue of the Biblioteca di Aldo Palazzeschi (Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004, pp. 532). On the occasion of congresses and study days, he dedicated several documentary exhibitions and an audiovisual collection of interviews recovered from the Archive of Rai Teche (Aldo Palazzeschi si legge. .e si racconta) to the Florentine writer.
On the Informatics side he projected and took part in the realization of the Digital Archive of Fondo Palazzeschi; of the Bibliografia leopardiana informatizzata in Italia e all'estero (1815-1999), edited by Enrico Ghidetti; and of AD900 (Digital Archive of Italian Literary Twentieth Century), a modern and useful digital built-in archive for on-line access to the cataloguing cards and to the facsimile reproduction of the papers of Italian poets and writers (letters, manuscripts, bibliographic records, iconographic and audiovisual material), coming from several archival sources (Palazzeschi's Archive of Florence, Twentieth Century Liguria's Archive of Genoa, Gozzano-Pavese's Archive of Turin), on which linguistic research is possible.
He is member of the editorial staff of the «Studi italiani» review (edited by Riccardo Bruscagli, Giuseppe Nicoletti, Gino Tellini); member of the board of directors of the "Aldo Palazzeschi" Study Center; member of the Scientific Council of the "Primo Conti" Foundation and of the teaching staff Council of the Doctoral International School in Italianistica; he is President of the "Vittorio e Piero Alinari" Foundation.
On February 2004 he won the competitive examination for researchers in Italian Literature at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Florence.
He devotes himself particularly to archives research, to the study of literary letters and the poetry of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, and to the informatics applications in the Humanities field.
He edited the first volume of the Moretti-Palazzeschi Letters, 1904-1925 (Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1999, pp. 540); and, with Gloria Manghetti, a biography of Palazzeschi in images: Scherzi di gioventù e d'altre età. Album Palazzeschi 1885-1974 (Firenze, Pagliai Polistampa, 2001, pp. 302); and the catalogue of the Biblioteca di Aldo Palazzeschi (Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004, pp. 532). On the occasion of congresses and study days, he dedicated several documentary exhibitions and an audiovisual collection of interviews recovered from the Archive of Rai Teche (Aldo Palazzeschi si legge. .e si racconta) to the Florentine writer.
On the Informatics side he projected and took part in the realization of the Digital Archive of Fondo Palazzeschi; of the Bibliografia leopardiana informatizzata in Italia e all'estero (1815-1999), edited by Enrico Ghidetti; and of AD900 (Digital Archive of Italian Literary Twentieth Century), a modern and useful digital built-in archive for on-line access to the cataloguing cards and to the facsimile reproduction of the papers of Italian poets and writers (letters, manuscripts, bibliographic records, iconographic and audiovisual material), coming from several archival sources (Palazzeschi's Archive of Florence, Twentieth Century Liguria's Archive of Genoa, Gozzano-Pavese's Archive of Turin), on which linguistic research is possible.
He is member of the editorial staff of the «Studi italiani» review (edited by Riccardo Bruscagli, Giuseppe Nicoletti, Gino Tellini); member of the board of directors of the "Aldo Palazzeschi" Study Center; member of the Scientific Council of the "Primo Conti" Foundation and of the teaching staff Council of the Doctoral International School in Italianistica; he is President of the "Vittorio e Piero Alinari" Foundation.
Tito Magri
Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza'
Practical sense: a study of action and mind
Tito Magri was born in Rome in 1948. Although raised as a philosopher in the turmoil of the Italian post-1968 academy, he was sheltered from the worst effects of that time and place by an enlightened, skeptical Marxist teacher, Lucio Colletti. Beginning his career as a political philosopher and an historian of ideas, he studied for some years the foundations of modern political philosophy in the thought of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.
This experience brought him into contact with analytic philosophy, which has been since the early eighties the only form of philosophical activity he can really take an interest in. He has worked on the foundations of contractarianism, on practical rationality, on the philosophy of emotions and (with exclusively analytic concerns) on the philosophy of David Hume.
He is currently completing a book-length work on the conceptual and normative content of action, and eyeing a monograph on Hume's theory of imagination. He is married and has two daughters.
This experience brought him into contact with analytic philosophy, which has been since the early eighties the only form of philosophical activity he can really take an interest in. He has worked on the foundations of contractarianism, on practical rationality, on the philosophy of emotions and (with exclusively analytic concerns) on the philosophy of David Hume.
He is currently completing a book-length work on the conceptual and normative content of action, and eyeing a monograph on Hume's theory of imagination. He is married and has two daughters.
Alberto Morgante
Università degli Studi di Trieste
Charge transport in molecular devices
Alberto Morgante received his degree and PhD in Physics from the University of Trieste where he is associate Professor of Physics at the Physics Department since 1999. He teaches Electromagnetism, optics and relativity to Physics students. He is head of the CNR-INFM research project of the National Laboratory TASC-INFM in Trieste called Nano3, dedicated mainly to studies of organic molecules in gas-phase and thin films and of fullerene and nanotube based materials. He is the scientific coordinator of the ALOISA beamline of the Italian Synchrotron light source Elettra.
He is also the coordinator of various MIUR (Ministry of Instruction, University and Research), INFM (National Institute for the Physics of Matter) and international projects.
He has been a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and for many years cooperated with the Fritz-Haber-Institut of the Max-Planck-Society in Berlin.
His research work is concerned mainly with the experimental study of solid surfaces and thin films by using electron, X-ray and neutral atom scattering: thermodynamics of surface structures due to reconstructions and adsorbates, studying in particular critical phenomena in 2-D phase transitions; thin film growth and inverse growth (removal); reordering kinetics of surfaces and thin films; gas-surface reactions, thin film structure and phase transitions, organic thin films and interfaces.
He is also the coordinator of various MIUR (Ministry of Instruction, University and Research), INFM (National Institute for the Physics of Matter) and international projects.
He has been a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and for many years cooperated with the Fritz-Haber-Institut of the Max-Planck-Society in Berlin.
His research work is concerned mainly with the experimental study of solid surfaces and thin films by using electron, X-ray and neutral atom scattering: thermodynamics of surface structures due to reconstructions and adsorbates, studying in particular critical phenomena in 2-D phase transitions; thin film growth and inverse growth (removal); reordering kinetics of surfaces and thin films; gas-surface reactions, thin film structure and phase transitions, organic thin films and interfaces.
Daniela Puzzo
Università degli Studi di Catania
Beta-amyloid-induced memory loss: beneficial effect of drugs acting on the nitric oxide cascade
Puzzo is a neuroscientist who has contributed to the characterization of the mechanisms of learning in both normal conditions and during neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Puzzo received her M.D. from the University of Catania (Italy) where she graduated in 1999 (110/110 with honours). In 2002 she obtained her Ph.D. in Applied Biomedical Sciences at the University of Catania. She has also obtained a Degree in Acupuncture and she is attending a Gestalt Therapy School. She has focused her scientific interest on learning and memory, with particular attention to hippocampal synaptic plasticity. She started performing research at the Nathan Kline Institute (NYU School of Medicine, New York) in 2002 with Prof. O. Arancio. She determined that a signaling pathway initiated by nitric oxide is inactivated by beta-amyloid during synaptic plasticity and learning. Thanks to her experience in electrophysiology, immunocytochemistry and behaviour, she has started an independent research line in Italy in collaboration with Prof. S. Sapienza and Prof. A. Palmeri at the University of Catania. Her results have been communicated at several national and international meetings, with great enthusiasm from the neuroscience community, and published in international scientific journals. The fruitful collaboration with Prof. Arancio is continuing, so Dr. Puzzo has returned to work with him at Columbia University.
Dr. Puzzo combines her scientific skills with a great artistic talent. Graduated in music in 1993, she has performed piano concerts in Italy and abroad. Together with a percussionist of Arabic instruments, Giorgio Rizzo, she performs an original fusion of traditional Middle Eastern music with classical music. Her main artistic project consists in a composition of a lyric opera. As a fellow of the Italian Academy, she will focus on the beneficial effect of drugs acting on the nitric oxide cascade to counteract memory loss in Alzheimer's Disease and other neurodegenerative disorders characterized by cognitive impairment.
Dr. Puzzo combines her scientific skills with a great artistic talent. Graduated in music in 1993, she has performed piano concerts in Italy and abroad. Together with a percussionist of Arabic instruments, Giorgio Rizzo, she performs an original fusion of traditional Middle Eastern music with classical music. Her main artistic project consists in a composition of a lyric opera. As a fellow of the Italian Academy, she will focus on the beneficial effect of drugs acting on the nitric oxide cascade to counteract memory loss in Alzheimer's Disease and other neurodegenerative disorders characterized by cognitive impairment.
Lidia Santarelli
European University Institute, Florence
Jews under Italian occupation: the case of Greece
Lidia Santarelli received her Ph. D. (2005) from the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute, Florence, with a dissertation on the Italian occupation of Greece during the Second World War. As Hannah Seeger Davis post-doctoral fellow in the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University (2005-2006), she expanded and revised her thesis for publication as a book-length study; in particular, she completed research on the process of forced Italianization of the Ionian Islands in the years 1941-1943. While at Columbia, she will complete the final stages of this book project entitled "End of the Empire. Fascist War and Occupation of Greece 1940-43."
As a research fellow at the Italian Academy for the academic year 2006-2007, she is carrying out new research for a project entitled "Diplomacy of Aid, Living Space, and the Holocaust: Fascist Italy and the Jews in the Axis-occupied Europe. The Case of Salonika." Based on a vast array of unpublished historical documents, this research explores the controversial policy through which Fascist Italy addressed Jewish communities residing within the territories occupied by the Axis Powers, focusing on both Rhodes and Salonika, the city that housed one of the largest Jewish communities in all of interwar Europe.
Prior to arriving in the United States, she served as Adjunct Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Rome La Sapienza and History of South-Eastern Europe at the University of L'Aquila, where she taught several courses on social and political conflicts in Axis-occupied Europe, Italian Fascism, nations and nationalism in the Balkans, cultures of war, human rights, and globalization. From 1999 to 2002, she was a member of the Research Project on "The Impact of the Nazi and Fascist Rule in Europe, 1938-1950," sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Her research interests include war and society, civil war and ethnic conflicts, Fascist culture and ideology, war crimes, international politics, and systems of occupation, as well as memory and oblivion of traumatic past in transitional periods. She has published widely on the topics related to her research work.
As a research fellow at the Italian Academy for the academic year 2006-2007, she is carrying out new research for a project entitled "Diplomacy of Aid, Living Space, and the Holocaust: Fascist Italy and the Jews in the Axis-occupied Europe. The Case of Salonika." Based on a vast array of unpublished historical documents, this research explores the controversial policy through which Fascist Italy addressed Jewish communities residing within the territories occupied by the Axis Powers, focusing on both Rhodes and Salonika, the city that housed one of the largest Jewish communities in all of interwar Europe.
Prior to arriving in the United States, she served as Adjunct Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Rome La Sapienza and History of South-Eastern Europe at the University of L'Aquila, where she taught several courses on social and political conflicts in Axis-occupied Europe, Italian Fascism, nations and nationalism in the Balkans, cultures of war, human rights, and globalization. From 1999 to 2002, she was a member of the Research Project on "The Impact of the Nazi and Fascist Rule in Europe, 1938-1950," sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Her research interests include war and society, civil war and ethnic conflicts, Fascist culture and ideology, war crimes, international politics, and systems of occupation, as well as memory and oblivion of traumatic past in transitional periods. She has published widely on the topics related to her research work.
Kristina Sessa
Ohio State University
The household and the bishop in late antique Rome: space, social practice and the establishment of episcopal authority (ca. 350-700 CE)
Sessa studies the cultural history of the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean world from ca. 300-700 CE. She is especially interested in the relationship between early Christianity and social practice, and how new figures of authority, like the Christian bishop, were integrated into pre-existing Roman structures and institutions. She has published on late Roman hagiography and is guest editing a forthcoming special volume of the Journal of Early Christian Studies on Christianity and domestic space in late antiquity. At the Italian Academy, she will be working on her current book project, a study of the relationship between Roman papal authority and the aristocratic household in the city of Rome. She holds degrees from Princeton University (A.B. in Religion, 1992) and from the University of California at Berkeley (M.A. in Medieval History, 1996; Ph.D. in Ancient and Medieval History, 2003). From 2003-2006 she was an assistant professor of Ancient Mediterranean History at Claremont McKenna College and will be joining the faculty in the Department of History at The Ohio State University in the fall of 2007.
Marcello Simonetta
Wesleyan University
Images of power in Renaissance Italy from Federico da Montefeltro to Clement VII
Simonetta, currently an Assistant Professor of Italian at Wesleyan University, took a first degree in history of ideas at the University of Rome La Sapienza (1993) and a Ph.D. in Italian literature at Yale University (2001). His thesis, on the figure of the humanist secretary in the Renaissance, was published as "Rinascimento segreto. Il mondo del Segretario da Petrarca a Machiavelli" by Franco Angeli (2004). Co-editor of Pope Pius II's "Memoirs" in the I Tatti Renaissance Library (Harvard University Press), he is the author of numerous articles on various aspects of the "Machiavelli Age" and most notably of "Federico da Montefeltro contro Firenze. Retroscena inediti della congiura dei Pazzi," in the Archivio storico italiano (2003), featuring his discovery of a deciphered letter which led to widespread media coverage (La Repubblica, The Independent, El Pais, The New York Times) and to a documentary aired by the History Channel. He has just completed a book on the Pazzi Conspiracy and its intricate background, entitled "Montefeltro. A Coded Conspiracy, the Medici, and the Sistine Chapel." He is now curating an exhibition on Duke of Urbino Federico da Montefeltro's Library at the Pierpont Morgan Library, in New York City, slated to open in Spring 2007.
Maddalena Spagnolo
Università degli Studi di Siena
Mocking works of art: wit and blame in art criticism from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century
Maddalena Spagnolo graduated in Art History (La fortuna critica di Andrea del Sarto, 1995) and got the Diploma di Specializzazione in Art History at the Università di Pisa (La matita rossa: storia e analisi di un medium grafico e delle sue implicazioni tecniche e stilistiche, 1998). She was awarded a fellowship for one year of Perfezionamento at the Warburg Institute, London (1999). She received the PhD in Art History from the Università di Pisa (Geografia e storia della fortuna di Correggio, 2003). She is currently assegnista di ricerca and Professore a contratto of Art History criticism at the Università di Siena. In the 2004 she was awarded a fellowship from the Accademia dei Lincei- British Academy and in the 2005 she has been a Frances A. Yates Short-Term Research Fellow at the Warburg Institute. Her research deals with the history of reception of works of art, particularly in the XVIth and XVIIth century. In this respect, she has investigated both published and unpublished sources of art history and has studied the relationship between art its audience. She has published in "Ricerche di storia dell'arte", "Arte Lombarda", "APOLLO". She is coauthor of the book The Basilica of Saint Peter's in the Vatican (Modena, 2000) and has coedited Percorsi vasariani fra le arti e le lettere (Siena, 2004). She is author of Correggio. Geografia e storia della fortuna (1528-1657) (Milano, 2005) and Bernini. Il Baldacchino (Modena 2006). She is currently writing a book on art history sources of the XVIth century (Le fonti per la storia dell'arte. Il Cinquecento, Roma, Carocci). At the Italian Academy she will work on the rise of wit and irony in early modern art criticism and will investigate ephemeral texts - sonnets, pamphlets, brochures - written in immediate response to works of art displayed in public spaces.
Domenica Crupi
Universita' degli Studi di Messina
Adjunct Associate Research Scientist
Mirror neuron system and art perception
Domenica Crupi received her Italian degree in medical school in 2002 from the University of Messina (110/110 cum laude) and she discussed a thesis on "Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study". At the present she is in the last year of her residency in Neurology at the University of Messina. From the beginning of her residency she worked at the department of Neuropathology and, in particular, she took multiple sclerosis in-patients' and out-patients' clinical care at the Regional Center for Management of Multiple Sclerosis. From June 2005 to November 2006 she worked at department of Neurophysiology in Messina as electromyographist. In summer 2006 she attended a course in clinical neurosciences and neuroanatomy at Virginia Commonwealth University.
The main research experience of Dr Crupi is on transcranial magnetic stimulation, a non-invasive technique used to study the function of the human central motor system in health and disease. She has been working in the Prof. Quartarone's laboratory since March 2002 focusing her activity on movement disorder pathophysiology (dystonia in particular).
At the Italian Academy she will investigate the changes in cortico-spinal excitability and within intracortical circuits induced by observation of a work of art, during its mental representation and by observation of the real action itself, using transcranial magnetic stimulation. The experiments will be performed in Professor Battaglia's laboratory at City College of New York.
She was founder and is currently President and Health Director of the local section of "AVIS", the association of voluntary blood donors which operates in collaboration with the Transfusional Center in the city of Reggio Calabria. She is also member of "GADCO", an association for the promotion of umbilical cord donation.
The main research experience of Dr Crupi is on transcranial magnetic stimulation, a non-invasive technique used to study the function of the human central motor system in health and disease. She has been working in the Prof. Quartarone's laboratory since March 2002 focusing her activity on movement disorder pathophysiology (dystonia in particular).
At the Italian Academy she will investigate the changes in cortico-spinal excitability and within intracortical circuits induced by observation of a work of art, during its mental representation and by observation of the real action itself, using transcranial magnetic stimulation. The experiments will be performed in Professor Battaglia's laboratory at City College of New York.
She was founder and is currently President and Health Director of the local section of "AVIS", the association of voluntary blood donors which operates in collaboration with the Transfusional Center in the city of Reggio Calabria. She is also member of "GADCO", an association for the promotion of umbilical cord donation.
Luigi Mazzone
Università degli Studi di Catania
Alexander Bodini Research Fellow (Sciences)
The influence of risperidone on emotional stimuli processing in a sample of individuals with autism: a functional MRI study
Luigi Mazzone received his Italian degree in Medical School in 1998 at the University of Catania, Italy. He completed his residency in Children's Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Catania in 2003 and discussed a thesis on "Behavioural and temperamental characteristics of children and adolescents suffering from primary headache." In 2001, he worked as a visiting student at the division of child neurology and psychiatry at "Stella Maris" in Pisa, Italy, where he focused his attention on the psychopharmacological treatment of psychiatric disorders in childhood. In 2005-2006 he worked as visiting fellow at the Development and Affective Neuroscience Section of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Bethesda, MD. During this period he worked on the relationship between high levels of Glucocorticoid and psychiatric disorders by using functional magnetic resonance. Currently, he is a PhD student in Clinical Paediatrics at the University of Catania. The main focus of Dr. Luigi Mazzone's research is the use of neuroimaging to identify the mechanisms underlying the neurobiological function of psychiatric disorders in childhood such as Anxiety Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism. During his fellowship at Columbia University, Dr. Luigi Mazzone will use functional MRI to study the alteration in the reward system in patients with ADHD and Anxiety Disorder compared to healthy controls. He was founder and is currently President of the Organization "Progetto AITA," an association of voluntary service that promotes care of Children and Adolescents with Neurological and Psychiatric disease in Italy. He has been member of the Italian Fencing National Team and winner of the Italian National Championship of Fencing in 2002.
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Fellows 2005-2006
Pamela Ballinger
Bowdoin College
Italy's Forgotten Refugees
Pamela Ballinger is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College. She holds degrees from Stanford University (B.A. 1990), Cambridge University (M. Phil. 1991), and Johns Hopkins University (M.A. 1994, Ph.D.1998). She is author of History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (2003, Princeton University Press). She has published on topics that include D'Annunzio's occupation of Fiume, Trieste and "imperial nostalgia," the Adriatic "seascape," hybridity, and the repressed memory movement. Her current book project takes the fate of the Italian populations of Istria as a starting point for analyzing the broader topic of the "return" of Italian nationals to peninsular Italy from former Italian possessions after World War II. She is also interested in issues of coastal development in contemporary Croatia, having begun a new ethnographic project that examines meanings of place, the politics of vacation homes, and the reconfiguration of the tourist industry in Istria.
Francesco Borghesi
Brown University
Critical Edition of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Letters and the Idea of Concordia during the Late Middle Ages
Francesco Borghesi received his degree in Philosophy at the University of Bologna (2000) and his Ph.D. in Italian Studies from Brown University (2004). He visited several foreign academic institutions such as the Seminar für Geistesgeschichte und Philosophies der Renaissance at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (Germany) and the Warburg Institute in London (UK), where he has been a Frances A. Yates Short-Term Research Fellow. His research interests include late medieval and early modern literature, philosophy and theology.
Currently he is preparing a critical edition of Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola's letters and, recently, has begun work on a project addressing the diffusion of the idea of Concordia during the late Middle Ages and aiming at exploring interactions among the literary, philosophical, historical and theological culture of his times.
As his main research project entails the edition of a humanist text, he has developed a strong interest in textual criticism, history of scholarship and philology. Furthermore he is actively collaborating to two on-line projects regarding, respectively, Giovanni Pico's Oration and his 900 Theses, based on a collaboration between the University of Bologna and Brown University. Having entered the somewhat uncharted territory of digital editions, he is also interested in the new philological models to experiment with and in issues that have to do with the function and goals of print versus electronic editions of the same texts.
Currently he is preparing a critical edition of Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola's letters and, recently, has begun work on a project addressing the diffusion of the idea of Concordia during the late Middle Ages and aiming at exploring interactions among the literary, philosophical, historical and theological culture of his times.
As his main research project entails the edition of a humanist text, he has developed a strong interest in textual criticism, history of scholarship and philology. Furthermore he is actively collaborating to two on-line projects regarding, respectively, Giovanni Pico's Oration and his 900 Theses, based on a collaboration between the University of Bologna and Brown University. Having entered the somewhat uncharted territory of digital editions, he is also interested in the new philological models to experiment with and in issues that have to do with the function and goals of print versus electronic editions of the same texts.
Benedetta Cestelli Guidi
Università di Siena
The Art Criticism of Franz Boas and Gladys A. Reichard (1897-1933)
After studies at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza' (Italy), Benedetta Cestelli Guidi received her MA in 1994 at the Warburg Institute, London: both her researches dealt with cultural and visual politics in Renaissance Italy (Venice and Ferrara). A portion of her part time research project dealt with the materials (both written and figurative) that Aby Warburg collected during his 'fieldtrip' during his American journey (1895-1896). From this research came two publications: Warburg's photographs, published in the English-German volume 'Photographs at the Frontier. Aby Warburg in America 1895-1896' co-edited by Cestelli Guidi and Nicholas Mann (Merrell Holberton and The Warburg Institute, London, 1998), and the first comprehensive study of Warburg's Pueblo collection, published in the French volume 'Le Rituel du Serpent. Art et Anthropologie' (Macula, Paris 2003). She co-organized the international conference on the legacy of Aby Warburg including panels on aesthetics, art history and anthropology (Rome, 2001). The collected works of the conference are published under the title 'Lo sguardo di Giano. Aby Warburg fra tempo e memoria'; papers in the collection which concern anthropology were also edited by Cestelli Guidi (Nino Aragno, Torino 2005).
In her Ph.D. she conducts a comparative study between Aby Warburg's Kulturwissenschaft and Franz Boas's research on cultural anthropology as seen in their respective approaches to museum display and the visual arts (University of Siena, Italy, 2005).
Her research at the Italian Academy focuses on Boas and Reichard's framework for art criticism with respect to native art. Boas and Reichard's methodologies concerning native art are compared to European art criticism developed in the 19th and 20th centuries in German speaking countries (G.Semper; A.Riegl; H.Wolfflin; A.Warburg) in order to prove if, and to what extent, the two disciplines - anthropology and art history - have had an influence in methods and analysis.
In her Ph.D. she conducts a comparative study between Aby Warburg's Kulturwissenschaft and Franz Boas's research on cultural anthropology as seen in their respective approaches to museum display and the visual arts (University of Siena, Italy, 2005).
Her research at the Italian Academy focuses on Boas and Reichard's framework for art criticism with respect to native art. Boas and Reichard's methodologies concerning native art are compared to European art criticism developed in the 19th and 20th centuries in German speaking countries (G.Semper; A.Riegl; H.Wolfflin; A.Warburg) in order to prove if, and to what extent, the two disciplines - anthropology and art history - have had an influence in methods and analysis.
Antonio Feliciello
Università di Napoli
Inhibition of EGF Signaling in Human Cancer Cells
Antonio Feliciello (M.D., Ph.D) is an Assistant Professor of Molecular Pathology at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Pathology, University of Naples, Italy and currently is a Fellow at the Italian Academy; he is also a visiting scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Max Gottesman at the Institute of Cancer Research, Columbia University. The main focus of Dr. Feliciello's research is the definition of the molecular mechanism(s) underlying the biological functions of hormones and neurotransmitters. This is relevant to the secretion of hormones in endocrine glands and the development of certain types of human cancers. During his residency at Columbia, Dr. Feliciello will concentrate on the spatial and temporal framework of hormone action and cancer growth. The ultimate goal of this research is to improve our understanding of human cancer and hormone action, and to develop new tools for a targeted therapy.
Nicola Gardini
Università di Feltre, Italy
Lacuna: Building the Void for a New Theory of Literary Expression
Nicola Gardini received a Laurea in Lettere Classiche from the Università degli Studi di Milano and a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from New York University. He currently teaches Comparative Literature at the Università degli Studi di Palermo. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, literary translations from various languages, and poems. His second novel is due to be published next year. More information can be found at Nicola Gardini's website.
Ludovico Geymonat
Università di Milano
Iconography as Relic: The Transmission of Medieval Images
Ludovico Geymonat works on the role of images in cultural transmission. His research concerns the formation and diffusion of medieval iconography. He graduated in Art History at the Università di Torino (1996) and will receive a PhD in Medieval Art from Princeton University (2005). As professore a contratto, he has taught History of Medieval Art at the Università di Milano (2002-2004). He is the author of "1233 Byzantinizing the Parma Baptistery" (Miscellanea Marciana, 2002) and "Stile e contesto: gli affreschi di San Zan Degol a Venezia" (in Venezia e Bisanzio, Venezia 2005). At the Italian Academy, his research will focus on medieval means of duplicating images and iconography and on the role of model drawings in cultural appropriation.
Sergius Kodera
Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Austria
Radical Natural Philosophy, Politics and Culture in Late Sixteenth Century Naples. The Cases of Bernardino Telesio, Giordano Bruno, Giambattista della Porta
Sergius Kodera received his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Vienna, Austria, in 1994. Since then he has been teaching history of Renaissance Philosophy at the same university.
Form 1994 to 1997 he was a Frances Yates and Erwin Schroedinger Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London. He received his Habilitation at the University of Vienna in 2004; during this year he was research fellow at the IFK in Vienna. Kodera has published on and/or translated works by Leone Ebreo, Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino and Giambattista della Porta. Currently, he is working on a book exploring the intellectual culture of late sixteenth century Naples.
Forella Kostoris Padoa Schioppa
Università di Roma La Sapienza
Italian and European Economic Policies in the Context of Changing US-EU Relationships
Forella Kostoris Padoa Schioppa received her Italian degree in the Department of Economics at Bocconi University in Milan. She has a Master of Science from the Graduate School of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now Professor at the University of Rome La Sapienza and teaches a senior seminar at the Department of Economics at Columbia University. She is also Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. She served for two terms on the board of the International Economic Association and has been a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research since 1989 and a Member of the Scientific Committee or the Advisory Board of numerous European institutions, in Brussels, London, and Paris and the Eurogroup of 50.
She is editor of the Economic Book Series for the Publisher Ulrico Hoepli; a Member of the Scientific Board of the Enciclopedia Treccani; one of the 7 members of the Comitato di Indirizzo per la Valutazione della Ricerca; and an editorialist for the daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore and the Radio Radicale broadcast "Lessico dell'Economia".
Among many other distinctions Kostoris is Grande Ufficiale al Merito, nominated by the Italian President of the Republic in 2000, and Officier dans la Legion d'Honneur, nominated by the French President of the Republic in 2001.
She has published more than 100 papers and 20 books. Her research interests include macroeconomics and labour, public finance and European matters, gender equality, social mobility, regional economics, and the cultural heritage.
She is editor of the Economic Book Series for the Publisher Ulrico Hoepli; a Member of the Scientific Board of the Enciclopedia Treccani; one of the 7 members of the Comitato di Indirizzo per la Valutazione della Ricerca; and an editorialist for the daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore and the Radio Radicale broadcast "Lessico dell'Economia".
Among many other distinctions Kostoris is Grande Ufficiale al Merito, nominated by the Italian President of the Republic in 2000, and Officier dans la Legion d'Honneur, nominated by the French President of the Republic in 2001.
She has published more than 100 papers and 20 books. Her research interests include macroeconomics and labour, public finance and European matters, gender equality, social mobility, regional economics, and the cultural heritage.
Simon Levis-Sullam
Università di Venezia, Ca' Foscari
Political Theologies and Political Religions in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s
Simon Levis-Sullam (Venezia 1974) received a PhD in European Social History from the University of Venice, Ca' Foscari. His main fields of interest are the history of ideas in Europe between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century, with a particular focus on nationalisms and fascisms; the history of the Jews and of Anti-Semitism; the history of the Holocaust. He has studied at the University of Venice, Ca' Foscari, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and he has been a fellow of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi in Turin. He is the author of Una Comunità Immaginata: Gli Ebrei a Venezia, 1900-1938 (Unicopli: Milan 2001), and the editor of Risorgimento Italiano e Religioni Politiche (special issue of "Società e Storia", 2004, 106). He is also the editor, with M. Cattaruzza, M. Flores and E. Traverso, of an international Storia della Shoah, the first volume of which was published by UTET (Turin) in October 2005. He is working on a book on the relationship between the Risorgimento and Fascism through the influence of Mazzini. At the Italian Academy, this year, he is initiating a new research project on "political theologies" in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, based on a comparison between Giovanni Gentile and Carl Schmitt, and aimed at the study of the long-term influence of "political romanticism" in the rise of fascisms in Europe.
Piergiorgio Odifreddi
Università di Torino
The Three Envies of a Mathematician: of the pen, of the brush, and of the stick
Meetings with Remarkable Minds
Piergiorgio Odifreddi has studied mathematics and logic in Italy (Torino), the United States (Urbana and Los Angeles) and the Soviet Union ( Novosibirsk), and has taught it in Italy (Torino), the United States (Cornell) and in various other countries (from China to Australia). His main professional interest is the theory of computation, which studies potentialities and limitations of computers. In this field he has published the 1600 pages of "Classical Recursion Theory" (North Holland, 1989 and 1999), in two volumes. In the last decade he has devoted himself to expository works, writing for many newspapers and magazines, from "Repubblica" and "L'Espresso" to "Le Scienze", and publishing many books: among the latest are "Penna, pennello e bacchetta" (Laterza, 2005), on the relationships between mathematics and the arts, and "Il matematico impertinente" (Longanesi, 2005), a collection of essays on science and the humanities. At the Academy he is working on "Incontri con menti straordinarie," a collection of interviews with Nobel laureates and other extraordinary minds, and on "Perche' non possiamo essere cristiani," a pamphlet against the current revival of Christian fundamentalism in Italy and elsewhere.
Linda Pagli
Università di Pisa
Computer Networks and Communication
Born in 1950 in Livorno, Italy. Citizen of Italy.
Received the "Laurea in Scienze dell'Informazione" from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1973. She is currently a full professor of computer Science at the University of Pisa.
Since 1973, she was associated as a researcher with the Department of Informatica of the University of Pisa. From 1987 to 1990 she was appointed full professor of computer science at Department of "Informatica e Applicazioni" at the University of Salerno. Since 1990 she joined the Department of Computer Science of Pisa, where she presently teaches courses of "Algorithm and Data Structures" and "Web Algorithms". She was Coordinator of the study programs of the Department of Computer Science of Pisa from 1991 to 1994. During that period the study programs were completely revised.
She has been visiting professor at the National University of Somalia in 1989 and visiting scientist at the Carleton University of Ottawa in Canada in 1991 and at the Ottawa University in 2003. She was also visiting professor at the Botswana University of Gaborone in Botswana in 2004.
In the framework of UNESCO projects of "Informatics for developing countries" she has given basic courses of informatics in many universities of developing countries. As an expert of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she spent several research and teaching periods in Jordan in 1996, 97 and 98 and in Egypt.
She is referee of several international journals and is in the program committee of international conferences. Her research activity, started in the field of data structures and sequential algorithm, has developed in the field of parallel and distributed algorithms and in the relationship between abstract computational models and realistic computers and circuits. The research is attested by around fifty papers published on the main scientific journals. She is co-author of one textbook of large diffusion and of another book on the relationships between algorithmica, other fields of knowledge and normal life.
Recent research papers:
1. P. Crescenzi, A. Del Lungo, R. Grossi, E. Lodi, L. Pagli, G. Rossi, Text Sparsification via Local Maxima, THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE, num. 1, vol. 304, pp. 341-364, 2003
2. A. Bernasconi, V. Ciriani V., F. Luccio, L. Pagli, Three-level logic minimization based on function regularities, IEEE TRANSACTION ON COMPUTER-AIED DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, num. 22, vol. 8, pp. 1005-1005, 2003
3. P. Flocchini, E. Lodi, F. Luccio, L. Pagli and N.Santoro, Dynamic Monopolies in Tori, DISCRETE APPLIED MATHEMATICS, vol. 137, pp. 197-212, 2004 4. G. Franceschini, R. Grossi, J.I. Munro, L. Pagli, Implicit B-trees: a new data structure for the dictionary problem, JOURNAL OF COMPUTER AND SYSTEMS SCIENCES INTERNATIONAL, num. 4, vol. 68, pp. 788-807, 2004
5. A. Bernasconi, V. Ciriani, F. Luccio, and L. Pagli, Exploiting Regularities for Boolean Function Synthesis, THEORY OF COMPUTING SYSTEMS, to appear. Books:
6. Luccio F., Pagli L., Algoritmi, divinità e gente comune, ETS, Pisa, 0, 1999
Received the "Laurea in Scienze dell'Informazione" from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1973. She is currently a full professor of computer Science at the University of Pisa.
Since 1973, she was associated as a researcher with the Department of Informatica of the University of Pisa. From 1987 to 1990 she was appointed full professor of computer science at Department of "Informatica e Applicazioni" at the University of Salerno. Since 1990 she joined the Department of Computer Science of Pisa, where she presently teaches courses of "Algorithm and Data Structures" and "Web Algorithms". She was Coordinator of the study programs of the Department of Computer Science of Pisa from 1991 to 1994. During that period the study programs were completely revised.
She has been visiting professor at the National University of Somalia in 1989 and visiting scientist at the Carleton University of Ottawa in Canada in 1991 and at the Ottawa University in 2003. She was also visiting professor at the Botswana University of Gaborone in Botswana in 2004.
In the framework of UNESCO projects of "Informatics for developing countries" she has given basic courses of informatics in many universities of developing countries. As an expert of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she spent several research and teaching periods in Jordan in 1996, 97 and 98 and in Egypt.
She is referee of several international journals and is in the program committee of international conferences. Her research activity, started in the field of data structures and sequential algorithm, has developed in the field of parallel and distributed algorithms and in the relationship between abstract computational models and realistic computers and circuits. The research is attested by around fifty papers published on the main scientific journals. She is co-author of one textbook of large diffusion and of another book on the relationships between algorithmica, other fields of knowledge and normal life.
Recent research papers:
1. P. Crescenzi, A. Del Lungo, R. Grossi, E. Lodi, L. Pagli, G. Rossi, Text Sparsification via Local Maxima, THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE, num. 1, vol. 304, pp. 341-364, 2003
2. A. Bernasconi, V. Ciriani V., F. Luccio, L. Pagli, Three-level logic minimization based on function regularities, IEEE TRANSACTION ON COMPUTER-AIED DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, num. 22, vol. 8, pp. 1005-1005, 2003
3. P. Flocchini, E. Lodi, F. Luccio, L. Pagli and N.Santoro, Dynamic Monopolies in Tori, DISCRETE APPLIED MATHEMATICS, vol. 137, pp. 197-212, 2004 4. G. Franceschini, R. Grossi, J.I. Munro, L. Pagli, Implicit B-trees: a new data structure for the dictionary problem, JOURNAL OF COMPUTER AND SYSTEMS SCIENCES INTERNATIONAL, num. 4, vol. 68, pp. 788-807, 2004
5. A. Bernasconi, V. Ciriani, F. Luccio, and L. Pagli, Exploiting Regularities for Boolean Function Synthesis, THEORY OF COMPUTING SYSTEMS, to appear. Books:
6. Luccio F., Pagli L., Algoritmi, divinità e gente comune, ETS, Pisa, 0, 1999
Bina Santoro
Columbia University
Waves, Rhythms and Oscillations: the pacemaker molecules that enable our body to keep the beat
Bina Santoro completed her studies at the University of Rome, where she was trained as a molecular biologist and received a PhD in Evolutionary Biology. She has since specialized in the study of electrical signaling in the nervous system and the molecules responsible for it, namely ion channels. Her interests particularly concern a class of ion channels responsible for the generation of oscillatory, rhythmic electrical activity in the brain, as well as in the heart (pacemaker channels). She first identified the family of genes that encode pacemaker channels, and is still involved in the study of their molecular expression pattern and cellular organization, a field in which she is considered one of the leading experts. Her work is aimed both at understanding basic mechanisms of brain function, with a specific focus on the neural substrates for learning and cognition, as well as at understanding diseases due to electrical disturbances, including epilepsy and cardiac arrhythmias. Bina Santoro is an Associate Research Scientist in the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University, where she works in collaboration with a group of biophysicists, electrophysiologists and geneticists interested in ion channel function.
William Stenhouse
Yeshiva University
Antiquities, Museums and Historical Writing in the Late Renaissance
William Stenhouse is Assistant Professor of History at Yeshiva University in New York. He studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford, before receiving an MA from the Warburg Institute in Renaissance historical studies and a Ph.D. in history from University College London. He is the author of articles on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century classical scholarship and two books: the volume of the Cassiano dal Pozzo catalogue raisonné devoted to drawings of inscriptions (2002), and Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History: Historical Scholarship in the Late Renaissance (2005), a study of the interpretation of classical inscriptions and sixteenth-century recreations of the ancient world. At the Italian Academy, he will be exploring the connections between museums and the writing of history in the second half of the sixteenth century. He will focus on the ways in which the display of antiquities in Italian collections changed the ideas of scholars across Europe about what constituted historical evidence and how they were to present their own historical scholarship.
Nick Wilding
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Gianfrancesco Sagredo: The Virtual Virtuoso
Nick Wilding was awarded his PhD in History from the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy (2000). He has taught at Stanford University and the department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, where he was a British Academy Post Doctoral Fellow (2002-2005). He has published articles on Robert Hooke, Athanasius Kircher and John Wilkins. His interests include the history of science in the early modern period and the history of the book. He is currently working on a new translation of Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems for Penguin and writing a biography of Galileo's close friend, the Venetian natural philosopher Gianfrancesco Sagredo.
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Fellows 2004-2005
Luciano Boschiero
University of New South Wales, Australia
The Accademia degli Inquieti: an Analysis of Experimental Philosophy in Bologna from 1690 to 1714
Luciano Boschiero graduated with first-class Honours in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Wollongong in 1999. He recently completed his PhD at the University of New South Wales. The title of his doctoral dissertation is: Natural philosophy inside the mid to late seventeenth-century Tuscan court: the history of the Accademia del Cimento. Luciano has had several chapters of his thesis published with international journals specializing in the history and philosophy of science. In 2002 he was the winner of the Annals of Science Prize for the paper: "Natural philosophical contention inside the Accademia del Cimento: the properties and effects of heat and cold." In his post-doctoral appointment at the Italian Academy, Luciano will be researching the rise of experimental philosophy in late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century Italian institutions, with particular focus on the activities of the Accademia degli Inquieti in Bologna. He is interested in the way the Inquieti used experimental philosophy as a persuasive presentational device in order to strengthen its authority in natural philosophical fields and appeal to potential members and patrons.
Mauro Carbone
Universita' di Milano
Mnemosyne and Mythical Time Nowadays
After studies at the Universities of Bologna and Padua (Italy), Mauro Carbone received his PhD in 1990 at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, with a dissertation awarded by the Royal Academy of Belgium. A revised and enlarged edition of this work is available in French under the title La visibilité de l'invisible: Merleau-Ponty entre Cézanne et Proust [The Visibility of the Invisible: Merleau-Ponty between Cézanne and Proust] (Hildesheim: Olms, 2001). An English collection of his essays, The Thinking of the Sensible: Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy, was published in the Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy series of Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL: 2004). Mauro Carbone is also the founder and a member of the Board of Directors of the journal Chiasmi International. Trilingual Studies concerning Merleau-Ponty's Thought (filosofia.dipafilo.unimi.it/~chiasmi). At the Italian Academy Carbone's work will aim at verifying the relevance of Proust's concept of reminiscence in our epoch, as well as at verifying whether the most recent developments of arts could still be interpreted according to that direction, or rather open different ways of philosophically thinking reminiscence, recognition and memory themselves.
Laura Chiesa
Yale University
Fortunato Depero's Multidimensional Spatial Inventions in New York
Laura Chiesa received her Laurea in Philosophy from the University of Pisa and a D.E.A. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In October she will receive her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. She is currently a lector in the Italian Department at Yale University. She translated Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler's Ecografie della televisione into Italian. Her article on Italo Calvino and Georges Perec, "Multiple e contrastanti emozioni tra città e puzzle," is forthcoming in the Romanic Review (Fall 2004). At the Italian Academy she will research Fortunato Depero's spatial inventions during his stay in New York (between 1927 and 1930), focusing on the theatrical, architectural and visual dimensions of his work, and situating it within the context of other works of the same period.
Giovanna Devetag
Universita' di Trento
Mental Representations of Strategic Interaction
Giovanna Devetag received a B.A. in Business Economics from Ca' Foscari University of Venice (1996), a Ph.D. in Economics from the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa (2000), and a Post-doc Research Fellowship from the University of Trento (2000-2002). She is currently Ricercatrice in Business Economics and Management at the University of Trento. She has been a visiting student at UC Berkeley (1995) and visiting research fellow at Princeton University (1997). Her main research interests include experimental economics, behavioral game theory, and agent-based modelling. She has published articles in international journals including Experimental Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, Industrial and Corporate Change, Physica A. At the Italian Academy, Giovanna will work on the impact of visual and diagrammatic reasoning in the mental representation of strategic interaction.
Alessandra Di Maio
Universita' di Palermo
Black Italia: Narrations and Representations of Blacks in Contemporary Italy
Alessandra Di Maio is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Palermo, Italy. She received her Italian doctorate in Comparative Studies and Literary Sciences from the Universities of Bari and Pavia in 1995. She further specialized in the United States, where she first was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and where she taught at different institutions as Assistant Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature. Her area of specialization includes migratory, postcolonial, diasporan and black studies, with a particular attention to how issues of ethnicity, gender, representation, narration, memory and forgetting interact in the formation of national and transnational identities. Among her publications are the volumes Tutuola at The University: The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor (Rome: Bulzoni, 2000); and the translation and introduction to Nuruddin Farah's Rifugiati (Rome: Meltemi, 2003; original title Yesterday, Tomorrow), which was awarded the Sandro Onofri Prize. Her research at the Italian Academy focuses on the narration and representation of people of African descent in contemporary artistic productions from and about Italy.
Francesca Frigerio
Universita' di Milano
The Figure in the Portrait. An Interdisciplinary Recognition 1850-1915.
Francesca Frigerio graduated summa cum laude in Foreign Languages and Literatures (English and French) at the University of Milan, with a thesis entitled "Modernism and urban culture: London in Dorothy Richardson's novels". In 2004 she has received her PhD in English Literature from the University of Milan, with a dissertation centered on the role of music - both as a theme and as an aesthetic model - in Dorothy Richardson and Rebecca West's novels. While going on investigating the relationship between urban culture and women's writing (she is currently member of the editorial board of the "Literary London Journal"), she is now working on a project focused on the cultural history of the portrait, as it unfolds in England in the second half of the Nineteenth century. She has most recently published both on Rebecca West ("Under West(ern) Eyes: Rebecca West Reads Joyce", Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. XXVI, No.1, Fall 2002; "Music and the Feminine Aesthetics of Detail in Rebecca West's Harriet Hume", in Rebecca West Today: Contemporary Critical Approaches, edited by Bernard Schweizer, Palgrave, forthcoming) and on Dorothy Richardson (Musical Aesthetics and Narrative Forms in Dorothy Richardson's prose, Textus, Textus, XVI, No.1, 2003; "'A Filmless London': Flânerie and Urban Culture in Dorothy Richardson's Articles for Close Up", in The Swarming Streets: Twentieth-Century Literary Representations of London. Selected Essays from the 2002 Literary London Conference: Representations of London in Literature, (Rodopi Press, November 2004).
Klaus Krueger
Freie Universität Berlin
Signa and Res-Pictoral Allegories in the Italian Renaissance (14th-16th century)
Klaus Krueger, Ph.D. (University of Munich 1987) is currently Professor of Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has been Research Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, and Professor at the Universities of Greifswald and Basel. His main research interests are the history and cultural status of visual images, particularly their changing role in medieval and early modern times, with special reference to Italian painting and sculpture from the Duecento to the Seicento. He is author of Der frühe Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien: Gestalt- und Funktionswandel des Tafelbildes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert [The early cult of the image of St Francis in Italy: Formal and functional change in 13th and 14th century panel painting] (1992) and Das Bild als Schleier des Unsichtbaren: Ästhetische Illusion in der Kunst der frühen Neuzeit in Italien (2001) [to be published in English translation by Zone Books as Unveiling the Invisible. Image and Aesthetic Illusion in Early Modern Italy]. Klaus has also published articles on the origin and early history of the altarpiece, on visionary images, on Caravaggio, and on aesthetic issues of film and contemporary art.
Maura Imbimbo
Universita' di Cassino
A Structural Health Monitoring Approach to Detect Damage in Historical Constructions
Maura Imbimbo is Associate Professor of Structural Analysis and Design at the University of Cassino. She received a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II. From 1996 to 2003 she received fellowships and grants from the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research and from the Italian National Research Council (C.N.R.). During 2002 and 2003 she was visiting scholar at the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics of Columbia University. She is local responsible of the research project "R.C. structural elements strengthened in shear by FRP: theoretical and experimental modelling and structural health monitoring ", supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research. She was member of the Scientific Committee for doctoral theses and the Tribunal for doctoral theses at the Departamento de Ingeniería de la Construcción, Unversitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain (2002-2003). She is author of more than 40 papers published on international technical journals and conference proceedings. Her main research studies are base isolation (modelling of the non linear behaviour of elastomeric bearings for base isolation, mixed f.e.m. for rubber-like material), composite materials (shear and flexural strengthening of reinforced concrete structural elements with composite sheets, strengthening of masonry arches with composite sheets), masonry structures (stabilization and stability of leaning towers, analyses of the safety conditions of the Colosseum in Rome), system identification (damage identification, reduced order models).
William McCuaig
Independent Scholar and Translator, Toronto
Two translations: Flavio Biondo's Roma Instaurata and Gianni Vattimo's Dialogo con Nietzsche
William McCuaig is an independent scholar and translator living in Toronto. He holds two graduate degrees in Renaissance Studies from the Warburg Institute, University of London: M. Phil, for a dissertation on Bernardo Rucellai of Florence (1448-1514), a political actor and historian; and Ph. D., for a thesis on Carlo Sigonio (c. 1522-1584), an ancient and medieval historian. During the period 1985-1987 William held a posto di perfezionamento at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, where he studied European history. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, he taught early modern European history at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of Toronto in Mississauga. Carlo Sigonio. The changing world of the late Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) is his major independent publication. His translations include works by Federico Chabod, Carlo Rosselli, and Piero Gobetti. At the Italian Academy, he will prepare translations of a Latin work by the fifteenth-century humanist Flavio Biondo (for I Tatti Renaissance Library) and the collected articles of the philosopher Gianni Vattimo on Friedrich Nietzsche (for Columbia University Press).
Tanja Michalsky
Heinrich Heine Universität Dusseldorf
Topology of social memory. Tomb Chapels of the Neapolitan nobility in early modern times
Tanja Michalsky, Ph.D. (University of Munich 1995) recently finished a study on "Projection and imagination. Conceptions of Netherlandish landscape in the dialogue between geography and painting" (supported by a scholarship from the Lise-Meitner-Programm). She has been Research Fellow in the Faculty of Art History at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University of Frankfurt/Main (1995-2000). Her main research interests are the relationship between (political and artistic) representation and the social network of memory, Italian late-medieval sculpture, Netherlandish painting (16th and 17th century) and the process of collective imagination in different visual media. Tanja is author of Memoria und Repräsentation. Die Grabmäler des Königshauses Anjou in Italien (2000) and the editor of Medien der Macht. Kunst zur Zeit der Anjous in Italien (2001). Most of her articles in the field of tomb sculpture deal with methodological questions concerning form, function and competition. Her papers on Netherlandish landscape painting focus on the ideological and epistemological background of its modes of visualization. She has also published articles on film and contemporary art.
Maria Concetta Miniaci
Universita' di Catanzaro
Cellular and Molecular Mechanism Underlying the Persistance of Long-Term Memory
Maria Concetta Miniaci is Assistant Professor of Physiology at the University "Magna Græcia" of Catanzaro and currently a visiting scientist in the laboratory of Eric Kandel at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University. She received her M.D. (cum laude) from the University of Reggio Calabria, Catanzaro. Her main research interests lie in the areas of synaptic plasticity and the mechanisms underlying learning and memory storage. She began her studies by investigating the role of the hippocampus in associative learning in collaboration with Pietro Scotto, University of Catanzaro, and Bruno De Luca, University of Naples. As a Fondazione Bonino Pulejo fellow with Jan Bures at the Academy of Science in Prague, she focused her research on place navigation and the cognitive map of rats guided by vestibular and kinesthetic orienting cues. She next turned her attention to an electrophysiological analysis of synaptic plasticity in the cerebellum as a CNR postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Piergiorgio Strata in Turin. As a fellow of the Italian Academy she will focus on the cellular and molecular events that underlie both the initiation and stabilization of the synaptic changes associated with long-term memory.
Luisa Nardini
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto; Universita' di Roma 'La Sapienza'
Neo-Gregorian Chant for the Mass in Southern Italy: A Bridge between Old and New Style
Luisa Nardini earned her PhD in Musicology at the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" with a dissertation on the neo-Gregorian chant found in manuscripts from southern Italy (11th-13th centuries). She has received scholarships to study at the University of California, Santa Barbara with Prof. A.E. Planchart. She was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Santa Barbara, California (2002-2003), where she taught Music History and Notation. In 2003-2004 she was an A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, where she is currently finishing her postdoctoral Licence in Medieval Studies. She has published articles and delivered conference presentations on Gregorian chant, medieval musical theory, music iconography, early polyphony, and Hildegard von Bingen. She has performance experience as a pianist and choir singer and director. Her project at the Italian Academy will be the preparation of a book containing the edition and study of the neo-Gregorian chants for the Mass in southern Italy from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Her previous research on the subject has shed light on some of the most controversial problems regarding the earliest history of Western music and the interrelationships between Roman, Gallican, and Italian chants, as well as on issues of oral and written transmission in the medieval musical culture.
Guido Olivieri
University of California, Santa Barbara; Universita' degli Studi "Federico II" Napoli
The Influence of Italian Music on the Emergence of a Modern Audience in France in the Eighteenth Century
Guido Olivieri has published articles and reviews on Baroque instrumental music and on the music of Gaetano Donizetti and Luciano Berio in scholarly journals. He also contributed to the new editions of the two major dictionaries in the field: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. His research traces the influence of social and political contexts on the circulation of music and musicians in eighteenth-century Europe. Using new sources, he has investigated the history of musical institutions in Naples, aspects of the aesthetics of reception and musical patronage, shedding light on the activity of several musicians and rediscovering unedited compositions. His research at the Italian Academy will focus on the reception of Italian music in France and the emergence of a modern audience at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Gloria Origgi
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
The Sense of Others: Towards an Epistemology of Trust
Gloria Origgi (Ph.D, University of Milan) is now a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She has worked in Paris for Ecole Polytechnique and taught at the University of Bologna for six years. Her research interests are in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and, more recently, in social epistemology and Web studies. She is the author of the book Introduzione a Quine (Laterza, 2000) and has edited the volume Text-e (Editions Bpi, Paris, and Macmillan Palgrave, London). She has also written numerous articles (some of them available on line at gloriaoriggi.free.fr) and collaborates regularly to the cultural supplement of Il Sole 24 Ore. She is the editor of the interdisciplines.org project, a website for virtual conferences in social and cognitive science. While at the Italian Academy, Gloria will work on a project entitled The Sense of Others: Towards an Epistemology of Trust.
Davide Stimilli
Northwestern University, Chicago; Universita' di Pisa
Aby Warburg: A Philosphy of the Future
Davide Stimilli is Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He holds degrees in philosophy from the University of Pisa and in comparative literature from Yale University. He is the author of Fisionomia di Kafka (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2001) and The Face of Immortality: Physiognomy and Criticism (Albany: SUNY Press, November 2004). He is the editor of a monographic issue of the Italian journal aut aut devoted to Aby Warburg (Aby Warburg. La dialettica dell'immagine, 321-322/2004), and of a forthcoming selection of Warburg's unpublished writings under the title Per monstra ad sphaeram: Selected Writings 1923-1925 (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 2005). At the Italian Academy he will be completing a book-length study of Warburg's work, which carries the provisional title Aby Warburg: A Philology of the Future and is meant to articulate the dialectic of philology and divination that is at the core of Warburg's methodology.
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Fellows 2003-2004
Enrico Arbarello
Università di Roma 'La Sapienza'
Geometry of Algebraic Curves
(Spring term only)
Enrico Arbarello is a professor in the Mathematics Department at the University of Rome, "La Sapienza". He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1973 and is currently specializing in geometry. Of particular interest to Dr. Arbarello are algebraic curves, their moduli and the topology of moduli spaces. In addition, he works on the geometrical aspects of the theory of non-linear differential equations of the KdV type. He has taught at a number of international universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, and the Institut Henri Poincarè in Paris. At the Italian Academy, his research will focus on the geometry of algebraic curves.
Carla Benedetti
Università di Pisa
Lo stile come fattore di identità culturale e di memoria nell'arte e nella società contemporanea
Carla Benedetti is Professor of Italian Contemporary Literature at the University of Pisa, and recurrent Visiting Professor of Italian at New York University. Her books include "La soggettivita' nel racconto. Proust e Svevo"(1984), "Una trappola di parole. Lettura del 'Pasticciaccio'" (1987) [on Gadda's Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana], "Modi di attribuzione. Filosofia e teoria dei sistemi," co-authored (1989), and more recently, "Pasolini contro Calvino. Per una letteratura impura" (1998), "L'ombra lunga dell'autore. Indagine su una figura cancellata" (1999, soon to be published by Cornell University Press) and "Il tradimento dei critici" (2002). Professor Benedetti has also written numerous articles and contributes regularly to the Italian edition of the "New York Review of Books" and to the culture section of the Italian magazine, "L'Espresso."
Gabriele Cifani
Università di Roma 'La Sapienza'
Roman Archaeological Heritage and Cultural Identity in Republican Italy 1946-1992
(Spring term only)
Gabriele Cifani, born in Rome in 1970, received a M.A. in Literature (1993), Ph.D. in Archaeology (2000) and Postgraduate Specialisation (2001) at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", where he was a young research fellow from 2002-2003. From 1994 to 2003, he was recipient of fellowships and grants from the Ministero dell'Università e Ricerca, Aylwin Cotton Foundation (UK), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. In 1998 he was a visiting student in the Department of Archaeology of Cambridge University. Since 1996 he has been consultant in fieldwork activities for the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma. From 1997 to 2000 he also worked in Libya, as a member of the Italian Archaeological Mission of "Roma Tre" University at Leptis Magna.
His main research interests include archaic Roman architecture, the landscape archaeology of Italy and the history of archaeology. Among his most recent publications is the article "Notes on the Rural Landscape of Central Tyrrhenian Italy in the 6th-5th c. B.C. and its Social Significance," in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, vol. 15, 2002 and the book: Storia di una frontiera. Dinamiche territoriali e gruppi etnici nella media Valle Tiberina (Roma 2003, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato). At the Italian Academy, he will analyze the role of archaeological heritage as part of cultural memory in Italy during the five decades from the end of the Second World War to 1992.
His main research interests include archaic Roman architecture, the landscape archaeology of Italy and the history of archaeology. Among his most recent publications is the article "Notes on the Rural Landscape of Central Tyrrhenian Italy in the 6th-5th c. B.C. and its Social Significance," in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, vol. 15, 2002 and the book: Storia di una frontiera. Dinamiche territoriali e gruppi etnici nella media Valle Tiberina (Roma 2003, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato). At the Italian Academy, he will analyze the role of archaeological heritage as part of cultural memory in Italy during the five decades from the end of the Second World War to 1992.
Simone Cinotto
Università di Genova
A Transnational History of Italian Cuisine: Icon of Diasporic Identity, Cultural Commodity in the Global Marketplace
(Spring term only)
Simone Cinotto received a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Genoa (2000). He is a member of the "Piero Bairati" Center for Euro-American Studies at the University of Turin. His research interests include immigration and ethnic history, food history, and history and film. He is the author of Una famiglia che mangia insieme: cibo ed etnicità nella comunità italoamericana di New York, 1920-1940 [A Family That Eats Together: Food and Ethnicity in the Italian American Community of New York City, 1920-1940], Turin, 2001, and the editor of Colture e culture del riso: una prospettiva storica [Rice Cultures in Historical Perspective], Vercelli, 2002. As a fellow of the Fondazione Bellonci in Rome, he is working on Luchino Visconti's film Rocco and His Brothers and its representation of Italian internal migrations in the 1950s-1960s. He is also coordinating a local history project on emigration from a Northeastern Piedmont community in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
Annalisa Coliva
Università di Modena
Self-Knowledge
(Spring term only)
Annalisa Coliva (Milan 1973), MA (Bologna), M. Litt. (St. Andrews), PhD (St. Andrews), PhD in Philosophy of language (Vercelli, Italy), Fulbright Fellow 2002-2003 (Columbia, NY), after teaching and researching at Bologna and Fribourg (CH) Universities, is now a lecturer at the University of Modena. Her main interests are in history of analytic philosophy and in philosophy of mind and epistemology. Among her publications: (with Elisabetta Sacchi) Singular Thoughts. Perceptual-Demonstrative Thoughts and I-Thoughts, Macerata, Quodlibet, 2001, Moore e Wittgenstein: scetticismo, certezza e senso commune, Padova, Il Poligrafo, 2003. She has published several papers on the topics of philosophy of perception, I-thoughts, philosophy of psychiatry, current interpretations of Moore's proof of an external world and history of analytic philosophy, appeared in journals such as The Journal of Philosophy, Dialectica, Philosophy, Psychology and Psychiatry and in collected volumes both in English and Italian.
At the Academy she will be working on an on-going project on the topic of our knowledge of our own mental states.
At the Academy she will be working on an on-going project on the topic of our knowledge of our own mental states.
Daniela Del Boca
Università degli Studi di Torino
Why Are Labor Market Participation and Fertility Rates So Low in Italy?
(Fall term only)
Daniela Del Boca, Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison 1988, is a Professor of Economics at the University of Turin. She has been a Visiting Professor at New York University and an Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Milano. She has published several books and articles in the area of Labor Economics and the Economics of the Family. Her articles have appeared in international journals, including The American Economic Review, The Journal of Human Resources, Labour, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, The Review of Economics of the Family, and The Journal of Population Economics. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Labour and The Review of Economics of the Family. She is currently a Fellow of the Center for European Studies (CES) at NYU and of the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA), and is Director of the Center for Household Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD).
Ellen Esrock
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Touching Art: Intimacy, Embodiment, and the Somatosensory System
Ellen Esrock is an Associate Professor of Literature at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Professor Esrock received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University and a B.A. in Philosophy from Washington University in St. Louis. Her publications include The Reader's Eye: Visual Imaging as Reader Response (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) and a translation of Umberto Eco's The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Poetics of James Joyce (Harvard University Press, 1989.) Drawing on contemporary neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Professor Esrock has focused her research on the role of mental images, particularly visual and somatosensory, in our experience of visual art and literature. For the 2003-4 Fellowship year at the Italian Academy she will explore a process by which viewers can use their somatosensory systems to shift their sense of bodily boundaries in order to bring themselves into more intimate relationships with art obje