Chiasmi 2016: BROWN-HARVARD Graduate Student Conference of Italian Studies
Brown University, 8-9 April 2016
ADAPTATION: TRANSFORMING REPRESENTATION – RE-PRESENTING TRANSFORMATION
 
Keynote speaker: Millicent Marcus (Yale University)
Re-narrations, re-interpretations and adaptations of inherited texts and stories are crucial mechanisms through which human beings receive and create meaning. The upcoming edition of the Chiasmi conference will investigate the multifaceted theme of adaptation and intertextuality in relation to Italian culture. It is the aim of the conference to explore the problematic yet generative notion that any encounter with a text, in the broadest sense of the word, is an act of appropriation; to discuss what gets lost and found in transformations across media and in re-presentations that cross linguistic, geographical, temporal, and cultural borders; to examine the productiveness of interstices and to voice the knowledge therein produced.
We welcome proposals from all periods and disciplines; possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• The role played by adaptation and rewriting in the Italian cultural, literary and philosophical tradition
• Adaptation, re-presentation and rewriting as mediation in intercultural and transnational encounters
• Theories of adaptation, appropriation, rewriting, and intertextuality
• From text to image, and beyond: relations, collisions and collusions among textual, visual and aural codes of meaning
• Intermedialità and transmedia storytelling: how different media inspire and transform each other through the re-telling of stories
• New media and innovative narrative practices
• Multiple voices in the creative process and the question of collective authorship
• Theater semiotics and the adaptive process of staging
• Representational practices and the performing body
• Adaptation and rewriting as a means of acquiring legitimation and inheriting authority
• Anxieties of influence: tradition, milieu, and cultural legacy
• The revisiting of canonical works in order to revision a problematic cultural past (gender studies, postcolonialism, etc…)
• Adaptation, re-presentation and rewriting as pedagogical tools
• Specific case studies with an inquiry focus: multiple adaptations of the same work; the challenges of working with living authors; appropriations of classical, mythological or biblical materials, etc…

The conference welcomes proposals for presentations, in either English or Italian, in one of the following formats:

• 20 mins papers (delivering approximately 8-10 pages of double-spaced text)
• 20 mins performance lectures (focusing on the creation of knowledge enabled by a dialogue between thinking and doing)
• 20-60 mins creative pieces (showcasing adaptive artistic practice;for the extended Call for Creative Interventions, please visit our website https://conferencechiasmi.wordpress.com/[conferencechiasmi.wordpress.com])

To submit your proposal, please email chiasmi@brown.edu by 25 January 2016 including:

1. an abstract (max 300 words) that describes the form and content of the contribution
2. a cover sheet with the title of your proposal, your name, affiliation, contact information, and brief bio; please specify if you will need any technical equipment.