1) Roundtable on the Future of Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Fisher Library, Seminar Room, 2:30-5pm
Furthering the Sydney Intellectual History Network's interests in the theme of periodisation, Lino Pertile will be the special guest at a "Roundtable on the Future of Medieval and Early Modern Studies," which aims at indicating a roadmap for medieval and early modern studies at the University of Sydney. Its Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is in the unique position to be able to support a Medieval and Early Modern Centre, which has been operating for almost twenty years, and a Global Middle Ages Faculty Research Group, which has recently been established to engage with these historiographical categories from a non-Eurocentric perspective. It will tackle the issue of what it means to study the “medieval’ and the “early modern’ in a global perspective and what repercussions this perspective could have on assumed visions of the Western world and its interactions with the East. This panel intends to tackle basic questions of definition and of periodisation, interrogating some assumed notions associated with the pre-modern world, such as the role of Byzantium, the various facets of Christianity and other religions, the China versus the West binary dichotomy, the significance of the Renaissance, and the role of disciplines in a renewed vision for the future of these studies.
Coordinator:
Francesco Borghesi, Department of Italian Studies, University of Sydney
Presenter:
Lino Pertile, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
Discussants:
Daniel Anlezark, Department of English, University of Sydney
Nicholas Baker, Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University
Nicholas Eckstein, Department of History, University of Sydney
Vrasidas Karalis, Department of Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies, University of Sydney
Esther Klein, Department of Chinese Studies, University of Sydney
Frances Muecke, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney
2) Sydney Ideas - Key Texts Lecture
New Law School Annex, LT 104, 6:30-8pm
Dante, Primo Levi and the role of Literature in the Contemporary World
Is there a degree of suffering and degradation beyond which a man or a woman ceases to be a human being? A point beyond which our spirit dies and only pure physiology survives? And to what extent, if any, may literary culture be capable of preserving the integrity of our humanity? These are some of the questions that this lecture proposes to consider with reference to two places where extreme suffering is inflicted – the fictional hell imagined by Dante in his Inferno, and the real hell experienced by Primo Levi at Auschwitz and described in If This Is A Man.
Respondent: Dirk Moses, Department of History, University of Sydney,
Thursday, 13 October 2016
3) Italian Studies Research Seminar Series
Brennan MacCallum Building, SLC Common Room, 1:15-2:30pm
Dante’s She-wolf: Luxury and Greed in the Divine Comedy
Greed is a literary theme and an obsession that permeates the Divine Comedy, but also an everyday reality that Dante considers responsible for his own exile, the disorder and turmoil of society, and the current overcrowding of Hell. This paper will focus on Dante’s analysis of greed and of its pervasive, economic, social and moral consequences on the quality of people’s lives.
4) Masterclass on Love in Dante’s Heaven
Woolley Building, Lecture Room N497, 3-4pm