Coordinators

• Carla Francellini, Università di Siena francellini@unisi.it
• Elisabetta Marino, Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata” marino@lettere.uniroma2.it

Speakers

Carla Francellini (University of Siena)

Vulnerable Rocks. Miners and Fathers in Pietro di Donato’s and Adria Di Bernardi’s Works

Matteo Cacco (University of Cologne, Germany)

Americanization as a Survival Strategy in Helen Barolini’s Umbertina

Elisabetta Marino (University of Rome Tor Vergata)

Exposing Vulnerability, Developing Resilience: Donna Jo Napoli’s Children’s Literature

Cristiana Pagliarusco (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice)

Emiliano Ponzi: The Italian Artist who Inspired American People in Pandemic Times

Marta Lucari (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)

Understanding the Italian American Ability to Survive Through a Lexical Analysis of John Fante’s Novels

Panel Coordinators:

• Pilar Martinez Benedi, University of L’Aquila p.martinezbenedi@gmail.com
• Chiara Patrizi, University of Bologna/University of Trieste/University of Venice, Ca Foscari chiara.patrizi6@unibo.it

Speakers 

Session 1

Elizabeth Esch (University of Kansas, USA)

Production and Reproduction in Frida Kahlo’s Henry Ford Hospital: Vulnerability Confronts Fordism and Capitalism

Elle Griffiths (University of Nottingham, UK)

Radical Hillbillies: Resisting the Trump Country Narrative in Appalachia

Giulia Magro and Sara Riccetti (University of Rome, La Sapienza)

Dimensions of Vulnerability, Survivance, and Decolonized Futures in Yvette Nolan’s The Unplugging and Gerald Vizenor’s Bearheart

Maria Jennifer Estévez Yanes (University of La Laguna, Spain)

Challenging the Promise of ‘The Good Life’: Vulnerability as Resistance in The Good Immigrant USA

Session 2

Paola Loreto (State University, Milan)

The Resilience of Vulnerability: Writing as Misreading, Inquiry, Process (and Failure) in the Ecopoetry of Orchid Tierney

Mena Mitrano (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice)

Poetic Theology and Creaturely States (Revisiting Textuality)

Andrea Pitozzi (University of Bergamo)

Errancy and Vulnerability as Alternatives of Life

Session 3

Paolo Simonetti (University of Rome, La Sapienza)

‘But We Know Another Truth, Dont We?’ Fiction, Physics, and Mental Disorders in Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris

Anna Ferrari (University of Rome, La Sapienza)

‘If My Life Wasn’t Funny It Would Just Be True, and That Is Unacceptable:’ The Subversive Vulnerability of Carrie Fisher’s Writings on Bipolar Disorder

Chiara Patrizi (University of Bologna)

Healing in Black: Reclaiming Time, Challenging Resilience

Panel Coordinators:

• Enrico Mariani, Roma Tre University enrico.mariani@uniroma3.it
• Giacomo Traina, University of Rome La Sapienza giacomo.traina@uniroma1.it

Speakers

Francesco Chianese (Cardiff University and California State University, USA)

Connecting Diasporas on American Screens: From Sopranoland to Everything Everywhere All at Once

Enrico Mariani (Roma 3 University)

Re-Writing the Script: The Multimedia Strategies of the Novel in Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto

Giacomo Traina (University of Rome, La Sapienza)

Fantasies of Revenge: Dismantling Hollywood’s Vietnam

Mattia Arioli (University of Bologna)

The Other Side: Remediating the Vietnam War Experience from Hanoi to Hollywood to Comics

Nicolangelo Becce (Roma 3 University)

The Terror: Infamy and the Limits of Contemporary Representations of the Japanese American Internment Experience

Panel Coordinators

• Gianna Fusco, University of L’Aquila mariagiovanna.fusco@univaq.it
• Giuseppe Polise, University of L’Aquila giuseppe.polise@univaq.it

Speakers

Gianna Fusco (University of L’Aquila)

Title: “Black Bodies, ‘blood memories’: The Triangulation of Grief, Joy, and Hope in Alvin Ailey’s Revelations and Cry”

DeLisa D. Hawkes (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

Black Vulnerability Beyond Earth in Contemporary Popular Television and Fiction

Giuseppe Polise (University of L’Aquila)

Title: “A Beautiful Chokecherry Tree on Her Back: Sethe as the Enfleshment of Black Female Vulenrability and Strength in Beloved”

Aashima Rana (Dublin City University, Ireland)

Title: “Rhetorical Strategies to Invoke Resistance in Toni Morrison’s Fiction”

Simone Sannio (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)

Title: “Find Your Voice: Colson Whitehead’s Early Works and the True Apprenticeship of ‘America’s Storyteller’”

Panel coordinators

• Livia Bellardini, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, livia.bellardini@uniroma3.it
• Anna Cadoni, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, anna.cadoni@uniroma3.it

Speakers

Session 1

Agnese Marino (University of L’Aquila)

Negotiating vulnerability and pride in Maud Howe’s Roma Beata and Two in Italy

Kazuya Ikuta (Nagasaki University, Japan)

“I am a Becoming”: Rethinking Emerson’s Individualism in “Self-Reliance”

Ilaria Tonelli (University of Turin)

The Plot Against American Exceptionalism: Philip Roth’s Search for the American Identity and its Vulnerable Democracy

Anna Cadoni (Roma 3 University)

Shaping Her: Words, Affects and Identity in H.D.’s HERmione

Session 2

Cristina Consiglio (University of Bari)

Identity crises and vulnerable selves in a selection of Sherwood Anderson’s and James Purdy’s short stories.

Cristiana Brunetti (University of Rome, La Sapienza)

Acquiring a Place within the Canon: Hart Crane as a Neglected Voice

Olena Moskalenko (University of Palermo)

Ethnic Irony in Don DeLillo’s Underworld: A Counter-Narrative of the Italian American Resilience and Vulnerabilities

Julie Dickson (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)

The Multiple-I in Imagining the Group: Queer Female Identities in Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties

Session 3

Beatrice Carnelutti (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

“Mother Tongue is Your Refuge”: Body, Language, Exile in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee

Stefano Franceschini (Roma 3 University)

Can Music Mean Things? Musical Identity and Signification in Richard Powers’ Orfeo.

Livia Bellardini (Roma 3 University)

Adrienne Rich’s “An Atlas of the Difficult World”

Kamelia Talebian Sedehi (University of Rome, La Sapienza)

Memory and Identity Formation in The Marrow Thieves

Giulia Brazzale (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice)

“Stubb Kills a Whale”: Overcoming the Challenges of Extractivism through the Non-Human

Panel Coordinators

• Vincenzo Bavaro  Università di Napoli “L’Orientale” vbavaro@unior.it
• Antonio Di Vilio, Università degli Studi di Udine/Trieste ANTONIO.DIVILIO@phd.units.it

Speakers

Session 1

Steffen Woll (Leipzig University, Germany)

Visualizing Vulnerabilities in R.H. Dana’s Californian Travel Literature

Vincenzo Maggitti (Roma 3 University)

The ekphrastic fear in The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

Antonio di Vilio (University of Udine/Trieste)

From Sunshine to Noir: The Manson Murders in the re-imagination of the Sixties

Session 2

Daniela Fargione (University of Turin)

L.A.’s Vulnerabilities and America’s Exaggerations in Lydia Millet’s Trilogy

Ali Dehdarirad (University of Rome, La Sapienza)

“That’s Life. Or That’s Death”: California and the Environmental Vison in William T. Vollmann’s Imperial and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

Vincenzo Bavaro (University of Naples L’Orientale)

Out of California. Fragility and Persistence in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower

Panel Coordinator

• Cristina Bon, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milano cristina.bon@unicatt.it

Speakers

Alessandra Bitumi (University of Teramo)

The “return of the barricades”: Atlantica in the new world (dis)-order

Alice Ciulla (Roma 3 University)

Crises, Weaknesses, and Fractures. A European Left-Wing Perspective on Cold War America

Michele Di Donato (University of Pisa)

US Hegemony and Social Democratic ‘Embedded Internationalism’: The 1970s as a Turning Point?

Matteo Pretelli (University of Naples L’Orientale)

The Last City of the President: John F. Kennedy in Naples, July 2, 1963

Panel Coordinators

• Cristina Iuli, University of Eastern Piedmont cristina.iuli@uniupo.it
• Marco Petrelli, University of Pisa marco.petrelli@unipi.it

Speakers

Session 1

Francesco Bacci (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)

Confessions from the Margins: Real Life and The Mad Man

Alice Balestrino (Roma 3 University)

Plotting an Alternate Genealogy after WWII. Fe/male Genius and Gender in Gertrude Stein’s Four in America

Antonella Francini (Syracuse University in Florence)

Vulnerable Bodies and the Resistance of Poetic Forms

Cristina Iuli (UPO, University of Eastern Piedmont)

Time for a New Gaze: Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World in June Jordan’s Testimony

Session 2

Viola Marchi (University of Bern, Germany)

Making Sense (Out) of Vulnerability: The Semiotics of Walking of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s “Zimmer Land”

Stefano Morello (The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA /University of Piemonte Orientale)

Recovering John Henry Hewlett: A Study in Southern Racial Solidarity

Marco Petrelli (University of Pisa)

Which Story is it? Narratives of Violence and Narratives of Redemption in Candyman

Cinzia Schiavini (University of Milan)

Refracting Vulnerabilities, writing back pluralities: Arab-American playwrights beyond the State of Exception

Panel Coordinators

• Serena Mocci, University of Bologna serena.mocci@unibo.it
• Emanuele Monaco, University of Bologna emanuele.monaco2@unibo.it

Speakers

Emanuele Monaco (University of Bologna)

Gay and Dangerous. Concepts of Vulnerability during the Lavender Scare in the 1950s

Serena Mocci (University of Bologna)

Vulnerable White Women? Histories, Concepts and Contradictions of Gender in the Construction of the U.S. Empire

Marco Arvati (University of Milan)

The Vulnerability of Race: The Impact of Blood Segregation on African Americans during World War II

Alejandro Arizmendy Méndez (University Ca’ Foscari, Venice)

Is the United States Responsible for the Paramilitary Forces in Colombia? Plan Colombia and the Clinton Administration

Coordinators

• Cristina Di Maio, University of Turin cristina.dimaio@unito.it
• Fulvia Sarnelli, University of Messina fusarnelli@unime.it

Speakers

Session 1

Tuula Kolehmainen (University of Turku, Finland)

“I Hear No Men Talking about It”: Male Stand-Up Comedians on Reproductive Justice

Daniele Giovannone (University Federico II, Naples)

Abortion in Revolutionary Road from page to screen

Fulvia Sarnelli (University of Messina)

“A flip on the [TV] dial is your power to shape the way women are depicted.” Experimenting with race on maternity in contemporary TV shows

Session 2

Helen A. Gibson (University of Erfurt, Germany)

Is There An Elder in the Room? Divination in Contemporary Black Midwifery

Serena Fusco (University of  Naples L’Orientale)

Vulnerable, Resilient, Who? Spaces of Breastfeeding in Contemporary Narratives

Cristina Di Maio (University of Turin)

“I’m a bad bitch, and you’re gonna be a bad bitch with me”: intersectional perspectives on IVF and motherhood in Master of None

Panel Coordinators

• Theodora Patrona, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki  tpatrona@enl.auth.gr
• Stefano Luconi, University of Padua, stefano.luconi@unipd.it

Speakers

Session 1

Theodora Patrona (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)

“Are you Tough Enough?”: Resilience in the Italian American / Greek American Lesbian Memoir

Marina Cacioppo (University of Palermo)

Women Who Kill: Cases of Female Italian American Murderers in the Press (1890s-1910s)

Francesca de Lucia (Independent scholar)

Resilience in Italian American Women’s Writing: Miss Giardino by Dorothy Calvetti Bryant

Session 2

Luca Coniglio (University of Rome Tor Vergata)

Overcoming Distrust with Resilience: Italian Exiles and the American Public Opinion in the Penny Press Era

Claudio Staiti (University of San Marino, Republic of San Marino)

“Forced Labor in West Virginia”: 1903 Gino Speranza’s Report and the Redemption of Italian Immigrant Workers

Stefano Luconi (University of Padua)

Double Resilience: Italian Jewish Refugees in the United States in the Aftermath of the 1938 Fascist Racial Measures

Panel Coordinators

• Nicola Paladin, Università “G. d’Annunzio” di Chieti-Pescara nicola.paladin@unich.it
• Francesca Razzi, Università “G. d’Annunzio” di Chieti-Pescara francesca.razzi@unich.it

Speakers

Alessandra Calanchi (University of Urbino)

Vulnerable Detectives: The Troubled Life-Cycle of Crime Fiction in Italian American Studies

Cinzia Scarpino (University of Milan)

Faulkner and Italian “americanisti” (1930s-1960s). A Long Romance

Nicola Paladin (University of Chieti-Pescara)

Hyphenated Volumes: American Literary Canons in Italy before Americana

Francesca Razzi (University of Chieti-Pescara)

One Canon, Three Matters: On the Uses of F.O. Matthiessen’s American Renaissance in Italy

Panel Coordinators

• Beatrice Melodia Festa, University of Bari/University of Verona, beatrice.melodiafesta@univr.it
• Valentina Romanzi, University of Turin/University of Verona, valentina.romanzi@univr.it

Speakers

Beatrice Melodia Festa (University of Bari/ University of Verona)

‘Everything may be labelled – but everybody is not’: Vulnerability and Emotional abuse in The Age of Innocence from novel to film

Rachele Puddu (University of Trieste/ University of Udine)

‘It was the old defenseless feeling. Small, weak, death-bound, alone’: Vulnerability and Death in White Noise (1985-2022)

Valentina Romanzi (University of Turin/ University of Verona)

‘Why didn’t you give me a sign?’: Vulnerability, Care, and Subjectivity in Call Me By Your Name and Its Movie Adaptation

Lee A. Flamand (Ruhr University Bochum, Germany)

Is Visibility (Always) a Trap? Laverne Cox, Orange is the New Black, & The “Trans-Visibility/Trans-Vulnerability Paradox”

Panel Coordinators

• Emanuele Nidi, University of Naples “L’Orientale” enidi@unior.it
• Bruno Walter Renato Toscano, Ph.D Candidate, University of Pisa bruno.toscano@phd.unipi.it

Speakers

Emanuele Nidi (University of Naples L’Orientale)

Violent Self-Defense and the New Negro “Manhood” Movement

Tommaso Rebora (University of Teramo)

“L’America brucia!” Black Power in the Italian New Left’s Imaginary

Valerio Spositi (Roma 3 University): “The Greatest Hope for the Negro”: The New Negro and the Communist Question, 1917-1919

Bruno Walter Renato Toscano (University of Pisa)

Reclaiming Agency: Exploring Transnational Womanhood in the Political Imaginary with Non-Aligned Fighters by African American Women, 1960s-1970s.

Panel Coordinators

• Matteo Rossi, University of Torino matteo.rossi@unito.it
• Clemente Parisi, University of Bologna clemente.parisi2@unibo.it 

Speakers

Matteo Rossi (University of Turin)

Abolitionism, Political Economy and the Vulnerabilities of Gradual Emancipation before the Civil War

Clemente Parisi (University of Bologna)

“A third class, which is not a class”. The Public as a Vulnerable Subject of U.S. Democracy between the 19^th and the 20^th Centuries

Matteo Battistini (University of Bologna)

The Vulnerability of Consensus: CLR James, the Antagonism against Work and the Stalemate of American Capitalism

Melanie Meunier (Sciences Po Strasbourg, France)

The war on pollution: how environmental activism lessened America’s vulnerability to unchecked economic development

Panel Coordinators

• Simone Francescato, Università di Venezia Ca’ Foscari simone.francescato@unive.it
• Sabrina Vellucci, Università di Roma Tre sabrina.vellucci@uniroma3.it

Speakers

Session 1

Jelte Olthof (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)

“Those alive today:” The courtroom as an intergenerational space in Juliana v. United States

Klaus Rieser (University of Graz, Austria)

Intergenerational Vulnerability in US Film: Father-Daughter Relations

Simone Francescato (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice)

Intergenerational Confrontations in Henry James’s “The Diary of a Man of Fifty”

Salvatore Marano (University of Catania)

What History Teaches: The Interplay of Three Generations in Three Stories by Carl Barks

Session 2

Agnese De Marchi (Independent scholar)

“Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs”: Whitman, Alabama, and vulnerability in the American South

Anthony Julian Tamburri (Queens College, CUNY, USA)

Felix Stefanile’s Intergenerational Sensibilities in The Country of Absence

Mirella Vallone (University of Perugia)

“Garments Shed by Ghosts”: Trauma and Narrative as Intergenerational Dis/continuity in Nguyen’s and Vuong’s Works

Sabrina Vellucci (Roma Tre University)

Intertextual and Intergenerational Dialogues in Don DeLillo’s “Midnight in Dostoevsky”

Panel Coordinators

• Virginia Pignagnoli, Universidad de Zaragoza vpignagnoli@unizar.es
• Laura Roldan-Sevillano, Universidad de Zaragoza lroldan@unizar.es

Speakers

Session 1

Merve Sarıkaya Şen (Başkent University, Ankara, Turkey)

An Exploration of Affective Narratology: Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom

Laura Roldán-Sevillano  (University of Zaragoza, Spain)

Ibi Zoboi’s American Street: A Relational Response to Migrant Vulnerability and the Limits of the Haitian/American Dream

Tatsuro Ide (Tohoku Gakuin University, Japan)

‘I’ as an Experience of Radical Passivity in Charles Yu’s “Standard Loneliness Package”

Lauren Eglen  (University of Nottingham, UK)

Vulnerability and Human Trafficking in the USA: Lessons from the Voices Archive

Session 2

Taura Napier (Wingate University, North Carolina, USA)

Our Dark Heart: Women’s Autobiography in the American South

Selen Aktari-Sevgi (Başkent University, Ankara, Turkey)

Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House as a Networked Novel of Vulnerability and Resilience

Alejandro Sánchez Cabrera (University of Salamanca, Spain)

“When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing”: Exploring Vulnerable Bodies and the Resilient Power of Music in Lana del Rey’s Lust For Life

Carlotta Ferrando  (University of Rome, La  Sapienza)

Vulnerable Body, Vulnerable Mind: The New Me (2019) by Halle Butler