TT25 Term Card
Trinity Term 2025
Guide to all Italy-related events
In order to provide you with a useful guide, the following list comprises all events organised by ISO and other Italy-related associations:
— ITALIAN STUDIES AT OXFORD (ISO) —
http://www.italianstudies.ox.ac.uk
Isaiah Berlin Annual Lecture, in collaboration with the Oxford Centre for European History
Tuesday 20 May, 5pm
Main Hall, Taylor Institution, St Giles' OX1 3NA
Professor Carlo Ginzburg (UCLA, Emeritus)
On Mechanical Traces: Reflecting on Connoisseurship, Once Again
Chaired by: Prof. Filippo de Vivo (Oxford)
Professor Ginzburg has published a significant number of papers and books on topics from witchcraft and agrarian cults in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (1966), to Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes (1984). His monograph The Cheese and the Worms (1975) has been translated in more than 25 languages, and his latest books are Nevertheless: Machiavelli, Pascal (2022) and Secularism and Its Ambiguities: Four Case Studies (2023)
All Welcome – Drinks will follow
— SUB-FACULTY OF ITALIAN —
ITALIAN RESEARCH SEMINARS HILARY TERM 2025
Seminars take place on Mondays at 5.15pm at The Taylorian Institute (Room 2) and via Teams.* Please e-mail italian.res-sem@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk if you wish to attend remotely.
*With the exception of Week 7, where we will have an additional seminar on Thursday at 12:30-2pm in the Taylor Institution, Room 2.
Week 5 (26 May)
Dr. Emanuela Patti (Edinburgh), David Rizzio (1533-1566): History and Myth across Arts and Media
Week 6 (2 June)
Prof. Charlotte Ross (Oxford), Queer Kinship in Italian Cultural Texts: Fumbling Towards Empathy
Week 7 (9 June)
Dr. Giorgia Alù (Sydney) and Dr. Elena Bellina (New York), Mapping Transnational Italian Creativity during Wartime
Week 7 (12 June)
Dr. Sara Miglietti (Warburg) and Dr. Marco Spreafico (Warburg), Writing Bilingually, 1465-1700: Self-Translated Books in Italy and France
Week 8 (16 June)
Work-in-progress—Graduate Students
- OXFORD UNIVERSITY ITALIAN SOCIETY —
Oxford University Italian Society is honoured to host His Excellency the Italian Ambassador, Inigo Lambertini in conversation with the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Hague, for the 11th consecutive year.
The event will be held at Lincoln College in the Oakeshott room, on Friday 2nd of May from 5pm, and will be followed by a drink reception.
Throughout the event we will discuss the relation between Italy and the University, and it will be an occasion for students to interact with H.E. the Ambassador and with the Chancellor.
Admission is free, please register your interest here: https://fixr.co/event/in-conversation-with-the-chancellor-and-the-ambass-tickets-985206116
For further details, please contact: italy.society@studentclubs.ox.ac.uk
— EARLY MODERN ITALIAN SEMINAR SERIES —
https://italianhistory.web.ox.ac.uk/early-modern-italian-seminar
This interdisciplinary seminar will host papers and discussions about any aspect of Italian culture and society in the period 1400-1800. We are keen to range across the Italian peninsula including, as the title implies, Italian communities, cultures and connections outside Italy in the Mediterranean, Europe and the rest of the world. The seminar is open to all post-holders, early career researchers, doctoral and masters students, and interested undergraduates, especially those considering graduate studies. E-mail earlymodernitaly@history.ox.ac.uk to register.
Convenors: Filippo de Vivo (St. Edmund Hall); Leah Clark (Kellogg); Jane Crawshaw Stevens (Brookes); Zoe Farrell (St. Edmund Hall); Federica Gigante (History of Science Museum); Giuseppe Marcocci (Exeter); Emanuela Vai (Worcester)
The seminar is funded by the Faculty of History and St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
Week 1 (29 Apr)
Hannah Marcus (Harvard): Was it Possible to Die of Old Age in Early Modern Italy?
St. Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall, 4:30pm
Week 3 (13 May)
Kathryn Taylor (UTC): Ordering Customs: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice
St. Edmund Hall, Doctorow Room, 4:30pm
Week 5 (27 May)
Lucio Biasiori (Padua): The daily prophet: the Letter of the Grand Master of the Hospitallers and its audiences (1319-1793)
St. Edmund Hall, Doctorow Room, 4:30pm
Week 7 (10 June)
Emily Michelson (St. Andrews): Title and abstract, forthcoming
St. Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall, 4:30pm
— THE ITALIAN FILM SEMINAR —
Interfaculty Seminar – Classics and History
Italian Film, Greek Tragedy, and Adaptation
The Italian Film Seminar aims to bring together graduate students and senior academics from a wide range of disciplines, including classics, history, film studies, and modern languages. Alternating between screening and discussion-based weeks, this term we will embark on a journey through Italian film adaptations of Greek tragedy.
The seminar will take place weekly from week 1 to week 8 of Trinity Term on Tuesdays. We will host the seminar in Balliol College: screenings will take place on odd weeks while discussions on even weeks, and the discussion sessions will revolve around one brief presentation based on the week’s relevant film. Each presenter will introduce the movie, giving a quick summary of the plot, themes, and classical works from which it draws inspiration. Beyond that, presenters will be free to develop their paper however they like.
We welcome creative proposals on any topics and themes relating to the films, and we are eager to gather volunteers – with a special emphasis on graduate students and early career researchers - in the faculties of Classics and History, but students from all faculties are very welcome to apply. Presentations will last 25-30 minutes and will be followed by a discussion aimed at gathering fresh perspectives on the development of Italian cinema, history, and culture, as well as the reception of the classical world broadly defined. Please submit a 200-word proposal on your film of choice via email to Angelica Rossi- Hawkins (History) or Valentino Gargano (Classics) if you would like to present by Friday 18 April. You can find attached the schedule for the term below. We will provide some basic bibliography in due course. . Valentino: valentino.gargano@balliol.ox.ac.uk Angelica: angelica.rossi-hawkins@seh.ox.ac.uk
Schedule
Week 1: Tuesday 29 April, 7.30 pm: Screening of Pasolini’s Medea (Balliol, Gillis Lecture Theatre)
Week 2: Tuesday 6 May, 3-4.30 pm: Seminar on Pasolini’s Medea (Balliol, Massey Room)
Week 3: Tuesday 13 May, 7.30 pm: Screening of Cavani’s I Cannibali (Balliol, Gillis Lecture Theatre)
Week 4: Tuesday 20 May, 3-4.30 pm: Seminar on Cavani’s I Cannibali (Balliol, Massey Room)
Week 5: Tuesday 27 May, 7.30 pm: Screening of Visconti’s Vaghe Stelle dell ’Orsa (Balliol, Gillis Lecture Theatre)
Week 6: Tuesday 3 June, 3-4.30 pm: Seminar on Visconti’s Vaghe Stelle dell ‘Orsa (Balliol, Massey Room)
Week 7: Tuesday 10 June, 8pm: Screening of Pasolini’s Teorema (Balliol, Gillis Lecture Theatre)
Week 8: Tuesday 17 June, 3-4.30 pm: Seminar on Pasolini’s Teorema (Balliol, Massey Room)
OTHER:
28th Henry Rowlatt Bickley Memorial Lecture
to be given by Thea Lenarduzzi on Tuesday 27 May 2025 at 5.00pm
“Collapsing Houses: A new, unbounded biography of Natalia Ginzburg”
Maplethorpe Hall, St Hugh’s College
About the talk:
Natalia Ginzburg is one of the most important figures in Italian literature, a Jewish-Catholic antifascist known for unsentimental writing about families during and after the Second World War. Drawing on her own life, Ginzburg wrote across a number of genres, but never really believed in genre. She believed in truth, always, and that the writer’s job lay in capturing it, however oblique, painful, fleeting or contradictory. The question Lenarduzzi will address in her talk is: how do you write the life of a woman who hid almost as much as she shared?
About the speaker:
Thea Lenarduzzi is an award-winning author, broadcaster, and essayist. Her first book, Dandelions (2022), a family memoir and cultural history of migration between Italy and England, was the winner of the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize and was shortlisted for the 2023 PEN Ackerley Prize. Her new book, The Tower, is forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo in October 2025. She is currently writing the first English-language biography of Natalia Ginzburg, one of Italy’s most important 20th century writers, entitled Collapsing Houses: Pieces of Natalia Ginzburg.
The lecture will be followed by drinks.
— from the GRADUATE SEMINAR IN HISTORY 1680-1850—
Series organisers: P. Gauci (Lincoln) , Elisabeth Grass (St Peter's) , Cameron Bowman (Keble) , Estella Chen (Queen's)
The seminar will meet fortnightly, with talks starting on Tuesdays at 16:15. For those who wish to attend in person, our regular venue will be the Lower Lecture Room, Lincoln College (ask at the college lodge for directions). Tea and coffee will be available from 16:00. For those who cannot make it to Oxford, these sessions will be available on Microsoft Teams. Please contact mailto:perry.gauci@lincoln.ox.ac.uk for the online link.
All research students working in this period are encouraged to attend; anyone else interested is very welcome.
For information about the seminar, and news of forthcoming events, visit our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/Oxford-seminar-in-mainly-British-History-1680-1850/123050627891042
Week 3 (13 May)
Riccardo Neri (Mansfield College, Oxford) , British espionage in 18th-century Italy: the case of Philipp von Stosch (1691-1757)
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For further information please contact: italianstudies@area.ox.ac.uk