“Let everyday life become a work of art”:
The quotidiano in Italian Studies
Graduate Student Conference, University of Chicago
Keynote Speaker: Noa Steimatsky, University of Chicago:
“Lowly Objects, Elemental Housing, Neorealism”
April 17, 2010–University of Chicago
9am-5pm, Harper 103
An illustration by Beth Krommes from “The House in the Night.”
Only recently has the ‘everyday’ emerged as a significant analytical concept in academia, thanks to groundbreaking studies on the everyday transformations wrought by the sociopolitical, artistic and technological productions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
What is perhaps most fascinating about these studies is that the quotidian has proven to be both ordinary and not ordinary when put to the analytical lens. Rita Felski writes, “The everyday is the essential, taken-for-granted continuum of mundane activities that frames our forays into more esoteric or exotic worlds.” What voice is the everyday given, deliberately or accidentally, in literature, cinema, history, and the visual arts? More specifically, how can analyzing the “everyday” be re-imagined as a new kind of critical practice for Italianists and Italian writers of all periods?
Let us explore the means by which the everyday is present in cultural productions; and how and why our daily use of these productions may be seen as both conventional and innovative.
Contact Collettivo Italiano Chairs:
Miriam Aloisio, Ryan Gogol, and Elizabeth Fiedler
italy.everyday@gmail.com
Dept. Romance Languages, University of Chicago
(773) 702-8481
