Welcome to our team!
The Italian faculty welcomes Tsunoda Kahlua (Keio University, Tokyo). Tsunoda Kahlua will join our research team from February to the end of July 2022 as a member of the Young Researchers’ Exchange Programme between Japan and Switzerland. The agreement is supported by the Leading House Asia, ETH Zurich. Tsunoda Kahlua will work under the supervision of Prof. Federico Luisetti on her current research project entitled Fotodinamismo and the Reception of Photography in Italian Futurism.
We also warmly welcome Dr. Marco Malvestio. Dr. Marco Malvestio is EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Padua and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He will join our research team and work under the supervision of Prof. Federico Luisetti from February to the end of April 2022, in the framework of his project The Ecology of Italian Science Fiction. The project is funded by the European Commission, Horizon 2020 initiative.
Dr. Marco Malvestio’s project, “EcoSF”, explores the presence of ecological issues in Italian science fiction. Dr. Marco Malvestio holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Padua and was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has been visiting PhD student at the University of Cambridge and at Royal Holloway, University of London.
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Public Guest Lectures HS21
Tim Ingold (em. University of Aberdeen)
The Sustainability of Everything
Tuesday, October 19th 2021, 12:15-2:00 pm, University of St. Gallen (online lecture: registration)
Sustainability is about carrying life on, not about the achievement and maintenance of a steady state. Moreover if it is to mean anything, it must be for everyone and everything, and not for some to the exclusion of others. What kind of world, then, has a place for everyone and everything, both now and into the indefinite future? What does it mean for such a world to carry on? And how can we make it happen? To answer these questions, I shall take a closer look at what we mean by ‘everything’. I shall argue that it is not the sum total of minimally existing entities, joined together into ever larger and more complex structures, but a rather a fluid and heterogeneous plenum from within which things emerge as its crumples and folds. How, then, does such an understanding of everything affect our concept of sustainability?
Tim Ingold, FBA, FRSE, is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out fieldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and has written on environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, on animals in human society, and on human ecology and evolutionary theory. His more recent work explores environmental perception and skilled practice. Ingold’s current interests lie on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. His recent books include The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013), The Life of Lines (2015), Anthropology and/as Education (2018), Anthropology: Why it Matters (2018) and Correspondences (2020).
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Miriam Tola (University of Lausanne)
The commons reimagined: a case study from Rome, Italy
Tuesday, November 30th 2021, 6:15-8:00 pm, University of St. Gallen (online lecture: registration)
Once associated to a site of tragedy in mainstream environmental thinking, the commons have been reimagined as an alternative to extractive economies that deplete both territories and populations. Through the case study of an urban lake in a postindustrial area in Rome, Italy, this lecture explores activist commons that engage nonhuman beings as actors in projects that challenge neoliberal regimes of property and governance. Thus, it provides insights on the socio-ecological dimension of commoning.
Miriam Tola is assistant professor in Environmental Humanities at the University of Lausanne, where she is a member of the Institute of Geography and Sustainability. Her research explores the intersections of gender, race and nature in the political imagination of modernity. Her work has appeared in journals including South Atlantic Quarterly, Feminist Review, Environmental Humanities and Feminist Studies.
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ItaliCHa 2021-2022 – Letture pubbliche delle cattedre di italianistica svizzere
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Public Guest Lectures FS21
Malcom Ferdinand (Université Paris-Diderot)
A Decolonial Ecology – Thinking from the Caribbean World
Tuesday, March 9th 2021, 12:15-2:00 pm, University of St. Gallen (online lecture: registration)
Behind its claim of universality, environmental thinking has been built on the occultation of the colonial, patriarchal and slavery foundations of modernity. Thinking ecology from the Caribbean world confronts postcolonial ecological thought with a region where imperialism, slavery and landscape destruction violently tied the destinies of Europeans, Amerindians and Africans. In his guest lecture, Malcom Ferdinand will introduce his concept of a "decolonial ecology" as an option to link ecological issues to the quest for a world emerging from slavery and colonization.
Malcom Ferdinand is a doctor in political philosophy from Université Paris Diderot, researcher at the CNRS (IRISSO). His research draws on the fields of political philosophy, political ecology and postcolonial theory, with a focus on the Black Atlantic and mainly the Caribbean. Malcom Ferdinand is the author of Une écologie décoloniale (Sueil 2019). In his work, he explores the relations between current ecological crises and the colonial history of modernity.
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Nerea Calvillo (University of Warwick)
Aeropolis
Tuesday, May 4th 2021, 12:15-2:00 pm, University of St. Gallen (online lecture: registration)
Air Pollution is a matter of public concern. But what are exactly the political and social dimensions of environmental pollution or, more specifically, of “urban air”? How to render visible qualitative conditions of toxicity not through management or policy making, and beyond established forms of environmental activism? In her guest contribution, Nerea Calvillo will discuss her recent research and investigations on toxic politics, pollen and queer urban political ecologies.
Nerea Calvillo is an architect, researcher, curator and associate professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (University of Warwick). The work produced at her office, C+ arquitectas, and her environmental visualization projects have been presented, exhibited and published at international venues. Her research investigates the material, technological, political and social dimensions of environmental pollution. This has led her to analyse notions of toxicity, digital infrastructures of environmental monitoring, DIY and collaborative forms of production, smart cities and feminist approaches to sensing the environment.
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Public Guest Lectures HS20
Professor Serenella Iovino (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
The Virus, Humans, and Other Animals – Understanding COVID-19 with Biosemiotics and Posthumanism
Tuesday, Nov. 10th 2020, 12:15-2:00 pm, University of St. Gallen (online lecture)
More information and registration
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knowbotiq (Zurich University of the Arts)
Swiss Psychotropic Gold
Tuesday, Nov. 17th 2020, 12:15-2:00 pm, University of St. Gallen (online lecture)
More information and registration
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Public Guest Lecture HS19
Prof. Dr. Christoph Kueffer, ETH Zurich, University of Applied Sciences Eastern Switzerland
Extinctions – The Fate of Biodiversity in the Anthropocene
Tuesday, December 3rd 2019, 10:30 am to 12 pm, University of St. Gallen, 07-003 (main building)
more information
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Public Guest Lecture HS18
Professor Christian Uva (Università Roma Tre)
The Representation of Terrorism in Italian Cinema
Tuesday, Nov. 27th 2018, 4:30-6.30 pm, University of St. Gallen, 01-112 (main building)
More information about the conference
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International Conference 2018
Politics of Nature
October 11th to 13th 2018
More information about the conference and program
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Conference
On March 23 and 24, the HSG hosted the conference Anche io parlo italiano organized by the faculty of Italian culture UNISG, the society and the Società Dante Alighieri and the Italian Consulate.