Special Lecture Presentations
Thursday, November 19, 5:00 pm
Jean Gimbel Lane Professor Cristina Lombardi-Diop
"Minor Empires: Postcolonial Italy and the Memory of the Past."
Location: Kresge Hall, room 2-380
Widely used in relation to the colonial and imperial Anglophone world, the term “postcolonial” is rarely applied to explore "minor empires" such as Italy's imperial past in the Horn of Africa and its link to contemporary times. Even less often is a theoretical understanding of postcolonial studies encouraged which analyzes the specificity of the Italian context away from the more traditional Anglophone paradigm. Yet, in the past twenty years, the arrival of African, Asian, Latin American and Eastern European immigrants has turned Italy from a country of emigration into a nation that now hosts one of the most diverse immigrant populations in Europe. This remarkable social change has given impetus to a consistent body of literary works written in the Italian language by first generation immigrants and, in the last few years, by second generation writers. If no public or academic debate had previously developed which openly and critically confronted Italy's colonial past and its lingering legacy, now these new literary voices are re-awaking the country's collective colonial memory thus also revealing the contradictions of its postcolonial condition.
Born in Rome and educated in Italy and the United States, Professor Lombardi-Diop has taught at the American University of Rome and the University of California-Berkeley. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Yale University in African and African American Studies and her Ph.D. is in Comparative Literature. As a faculty member she is committed to intercultural, interdisciplinary exchange and international education. This commitment is apparent in the intellectual range of her classes and in her publications. Her teaching and research interests include interrelated issues of gender, class and race in Italian cultural history, Italian colonial literature and culture, and the contemporary African diaspora in Italy. In the Fall of 2009 she has been appointed Jean Gimbel Lane Professor in the Humanities. She is currently at work on a book on Italian Women in Colonial Africa in the period 1890-1942 and on a project on immigration in Rome.
If you require directions to campus for a lecture, please see the campus maps page for maps, directions, parking, and accessibility information. You may also phone or e-mail the Institute.
For information on the completed 2008-2009 lecture series, please see the event archive.
