Those From Afar Who Look Like Flies: Italian Poetry from Pasolini to the Present

This symposium will showcase and provide a first scholarly test to an ongoing collective enterprise that involves no less than six Yale graduate students. 

November 10-11, 2017 at the Beinecke Library and the Whitney Humanities Center​

The aim of the conference is to showcase the most recent developments in contemporary Italian poetry in light of a translation project spearheaded by the poet and academic Luigi Ballerini. This project involved no less than six members of our department and seeks to provide English readers access to previously untranslated texts. This collective project has created a critically coherent panorama of Italian poetry from the second half of the 20^th century onwards, it has also involved a significant amount of translation, providing English-speakers the possibility of accessing and engaging with previously untranslated material and the most recent developments in contemporary Italian poetry. This collective enterprise served as a practicing workshop for many advanced students of contemporary Italian, English, and Comparative Literature and our event will be of great interest to students of poetry and of translation as well. 

The topics of the two-day conference range from poetry and the poetics of translation to historiography and canon formation, with a range of speakers coming from all across the country.  Professor Jennifer Scappettone, University of Chicago, will give the Keynote Address.  

Conference session details will be announced soon.