New publication on Primo Levi

18th Jun 2020Close Encounters in War Journal Leave a comment

Innesti. Primo Levi e i libri altrui, ed. by Gianluca Cinelli and Robert S. C. Gordon, Oxford, Peter Lang, 2020

Innesti. Primo Levi e i libri altrui – flyer Download

Primo Levi’s work presents an extraordinarily rich and articulated case of intertextuality. Being a curious, omnivorous, and asystematic reader, Levi explored multiple fields of knowledge – literary, scientific, historical, etc. – browsing between specialized and popular books and magazines, for reasons of research or pure entertainment, often approaching foreign cultures in the original language, driven by his eclectic curiosity and an intense desire to know and understand. Already fathomed in part by Levi himself in his anthology The Search for Roots (1981), his library remains however to be discovered. This volume intends to trace the features of a critical map of the grafts, intertexts and transplants that link Levi’s work to the books of others, by comparing it with twenty-one authors, in a “polyglot and multipurpose” gallery that includes classics such as Dante, Shakespeare, Leopardi, Baudelaire, and Carroll; authors of modern literature such as Kafka, Mann, and Calvino; and scientists such as Galileo, Darwin, Heisenberg, and Lorenz.

Table of contents

Domenico Scarpa: Prefazione xi
Gianluca Cinelli e Robert S. C. Gordon: Introduzione 1

Parte I – Gli strumenti umani
Antonio Di Meo: Primo Levi e William Henry Bragg 19
Mario Porro: Primo Levi e Galileo Galilei 37
Patrizia Piredda: Primo Levi e Werner Heisenberg 55
Alberto Cavaglion: Primo Levi e Giuseppe Gioachino Belli 73
Enzo Ferrara: Primo Levi e Stanislaw Lem 87
Stefano Bartezzaghi: Primo Levi e Lewis Carroll 107

Parte II – La condizione umana
Vittorio Montemaggi: Primo Levi e Dante 127
Valentina Geri: Primo Levi e William Shakespeare 143
Simone Ghelli: Primo Levi e Pierre Bayle 161
Martina Piperno: Primo Levi e Giacomo Leopardi 179
Damiano Benvegnù: Primo Levi e Konrad Lorenz 197
Pierpaolo Antonello: Primo Levi e Charles Darwin 215

Parte III – Comprendere e narrare il Lager
Charles L. Leavitt IV: Primo Levi e Elio Vittorini 237
Uri S. Cohen: Primo Levi e Vercors 255
Sibilla Destefani: Primo Levi e Charles Baudelaire 273
Stefano Bellin: Primo Levi e Franz Kafka 287
Davide Crosara: Primo Levi e Samuel Beckett 305

Parte IV – La ricerca di sé
Martina Mengoni: Primo Levi e Thomas Mann 327
Gianluca Cinelli: Primo Levi e Herman Melville 345
Mattia Cravero: Primo Levi e Ovidio 361
Marco Belpoliti: Primo Levi e Italo Calvino 381

Biografie degli autori 403
Indice dei nomi 407

Call for papers: “Archives during rebellions and wars. From the age of Napoleon to the cyber war era”

17th Jun 2020Close Encounters in War Journal Leave a comment

19-21 May 2021, Archivio di Stato di Milano, Milan, Italy

The CFP can be downloaded as PDF here: https://closeencountersinwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/symposium-asmi-2021-call-eng-2.pdf

DESCRIPTION

The title of this symposium makes reference to a paper presented on the 29th of November, 1914, at the School of Paleography, Diplomatics and Archival Science of the State Archives of Milan by Giovanni Vittani, who would become the director of that institution in 1920 until 1938. Clearly, a few months after the outbreak of the First World War, this subject was of great topical interest. Vittani discussed the heavy losses suffered by archives in Italy and abroad in the course of history, due to wars, revolutions and revolts. He concluded his speech stating that the only way of minimizing the destruction of archives, apart from international laws and sanctions, would be the development of a true «public interest»: only
«when

will be universally known for why they exist, that is, to everyone’s advantage, to the harm of no one, it will be inconceivable that anybody would think to endanger them on purpose». But this was wishful thinking, as the State Archives of Milan itself, in the summer of 1943, when Milan was heavily bombed, lost a large quantity of documents.

Archival preservation was always at risk during wars and rebellions, but during the age of Napoleon considerable innovations were introduced in this field, as in many others, and we are still today familiar with them. In earlier regimes, archives either were voluntarily destroyed, or became the spoils of war for practical reasons, such as using their information in order to rule new territories or, vice versa, to deprive enemies of the same information. From the beginning of the 19th century to the present day, new direct or indirect causes of danger for archives have developed. As shown in the book Archivio del mondo. Quando Napoleone confiscò la storia, by Maria Pia Donato, it was Napoleon who wanted to create a «great archives of the world» by transferring to Paris, the capital of the new Empire, documents from all of the occupied countries for the sole purpose of symbolizing the birth of a new universal history. From that time on, the historical and symbolical importance of archives has transformed them into political instruments for confirming or discrediting the legitimacy of wars and rebellions fought in the name of a national identity or an ideology.
Two hundred years after Napoleon’s death, the State Archives of Milan wishes to reflect on the theme of archives during wars and rebellions, aware of the fact that Vittani’s wish is still far from coming true, and that probably it will never come true. Wars of the third Millennium, which are also fought cybernetically, definitely refute the idea that archives are «to the advantage of all» and, above all, «of harm to no one». Two centuries after the death of the man who dreamed about the creation of a great
universal archives, colossal corporations have succeeded in collecting and managing an enormous bulk of data which, as the new «archives of the world», may become powerful instruments for influencing people’s thought and actions, even to the point of fostering or stirring up new wars.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Fabio Caffarena, Benedetto Luigi Compagnoni, Antonino De Francesco, Filippo De Vivo, Maria Pia Donato, Luciana Duranti, Pierluigi Feliciati, Andrea Giorgi, Marco Lanzini, Leonardo Mineo, Marco Mondini, Stefano Morosini, Stefano Moscadelli, Raffaele Pittella, Olivier Poncet, Stefano Vitali.

STRUCTURE

The symposium will be structured into 5 sessions, each one dedicated either to an historical period or to one of the themes listed below, depending on the proposals that will be submitted. Each presentation will last 20 minutes, followed by a 5-minute period for questions and answers.

SUBMISSIONS

The deadline for the submission of proposals is September 30th, 2020. Proposals will consist of an abstract, in English and Italian (400 words maximum), a curriculum vitae showing the speaker’s principal areas of expertise and research. Papers may be presented either in English or in Italian. For speakers who prefer to present in another language, a simultaneous translation will be provided, under the condition that the text of the paper be submitted well in advance of the event. However, an English or Italian translation of the paper will be required for publication in the Proceedings. Final papers may be presented in English or in Italian, with an indicative deadline for the submission by August 31st, 2021. The subsequent publication of the Proceedings with an international publisher is expected. E-mail for submissions: convegnoasmi2021@gmail.com.

THEMES

1 – Archives, wars, and diplomacy

Management, transformation, and creation of archives before, during or after a war;

How archivists and their profession change during war time;

Archives of diplomacy.

2 – Secret archives and public archives

Access to records and archives;

Archives as instrument of power;

Archives as instrument for exercising civil rights.

3 – Archives and “Empire”, Archives and “Nation”, Archives and “De-colonization”

Archives as symbols of power;

Archives as identity;

Archives during crises, revolts and transitional periods.

4 – Archives as “Instruments” and Archives as “Monuments”

The retention and/or disposition of archives in order to build an historical narrative;

The construction of archives (collections of autographs, correspondence, letters, oral sources, diaries,
etc.; community archives);

Dismembered, dispersed, destroyed, migrated and removed archives / archives preserved deliberately
or accidentally.

5 – Archives and technology

Archives as technological products and instruments;

Reliability and authenticity of archives in the era of cyber security and artificial intelligence;

Data use and control.

Deadline for submissions extended to June 20, 2020

7th Jun 2020Close Encounters in War Journal Leave a comment

Submission deadline for Issue n. 3 (2020): “Close Encounters in War and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”

In consideration of the impact of the current health emergency on the work of many scholars and colleagues, the editors of Close Encounters in War Journal have decided to extend the deadline for the 3rd issue of the journal: we invite the submission of articles of 6000-8000 words (endnotes included, bibliographical references not included in word-count: please see submission guidelines at https://closeencountersinwar.org/instruction-for-authors-submissions/) in English by 20th June 2020 (although we can allow a certain flexibility) by e.mail to ceiwj@nutorevelli.org. Decisions will be made by mid-July 2020, and the selected articles will undergo a process of double-blind peer-review. The authors invited to publish will have to submit their fully revised articles by 1^st November 2020.

Read full CFA here: https://closeencountersinwar.org/2019/12/16/call-for-articles-ceiwj-issue-n-3-2020-close-encounters-in-war-and-post-traumatic-stress-disorder/