ANNOUNCEMENT
March 25, 2020
We hope this finds everyone safe and healthy.
We thank you all for supporting the AAIS AATI 2020 Joint Conference. As you can imagine, much work has gone into organizing this event and we are disappointed about its cancellation; however, the current public health situation left no other option.
We are writing to let you know that all registrants are eligible for reimbursement of the conference fee. We describe here the situation and the process.
We appreciate your continued patience as we work as fast as we can on refunding you your conference fee. At this time, only final banquet reservations have been reimbursed.
Reimbursements are affected by a Paypal policy that will necessarily make the process slower than we would like.
Paypal, which we used to collect fees, imposes a monthly limit on the number of reimbursements that can be made. This means unwinding could take some time. We have made an appeal to Paypal for an exception in our case and are currently awaiting their response.
We respectfully ask that registrants not file cases with PayPal for refunds. Not only will this incur additional PayPal fees that the organizations are responsible for, but it will require additional steps before the refund is issued, which will slow down the entire process even further. Please know that every effort is being made to restore your fees to you. Neither organization has paid staff, and all efforts are being made by colleagues in a climate of increased pedagogical and administrative demands. We thank you for your understanding.
If you do not need a refund, please consider donating your registration fee (either in part or entirely) to help us offset the expenses that will be incurred by both associations as a result of the cancellation of the 2020 conference. As you know, the AAIS and AATI are both 401c3 (not for profit) organizations. Your tax-deductible donation will help us meet the outstanding financial obligations for the 2020 conference. Further, anything you contribute supports, for example, travel awards to the associations’ less senior members. Whatever revenues donated will be divided equally between the two organizations and any donation is welcome and appreciated.
To request your refund of registration fees, kindly fill out the Google form https://forms.gle/3ZRgeSBRbiKeHwcZ8. Refunds will be made in the order in which the request was received.
If you have any questions, please contact the AATI Secretary/Treasurer, Dr. Enza Antenos, at aati@montclair.edu.
The executive committees of the AAIS and AATI have deferred discussion of another joint conference to some time later this calendar year, when demands of the new online teaching parameters and current distractions have lessened. Like you, we are disappointed that the 2020 conference has been cancelled and we hope to capitalize on the considerable labor already invested in another joint venture in future. We will report back to both organizations after such a time as we have had to discuss the possibilities.
Thanks again for your support and for your continued patience as we unwind the 2020 conference.
The AAIS and AATI Conference Committee
About The Conference
Co-sponsored by the American Association of Italian Studies and the American Association of Teachers of Italian, this year’s Conference will be hosted by the University of Arizona from March 26-29, 2020. Many thanks goes to the University of Arizona for its hospitality and collaboration.
Important Links
Accommodations:
Transportation:
Restaurants:
- Option 1
- Option 2
- Option 3
Entertainment:
- Option 1
- Option 2
- Option 3
Featured Speakers
Sandra Ponzanesi – University College Utrecht
She is currently Professor of Gender and Postcolonial Studies at the Department of Media and Culture Studies/Graduate Gender Programme (UU) and Head of Department Humanities at University College Utrecht (UCU)
Her expertise is gender and postcolonial critique from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. Her research areas include postcolonial studies, transnational feminist theories, comparative literature, Italian colonial history, European migration studies, visual culture, postcolonial cinema, media and conflict studies. She studied English and Commonwealth Studies at the University of Bologna (Italy) and University of Sussex (UK) and received her Ph.D., in Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Utrecht University. She was Visiting Professor at the University of California Los Angeles Women’s Studies Program and visiting scholar at the University of California, Riverside.
She is the founder and coordinator of the Postcolonial Studies Initiative (PCI) www.postcolonialstudies.nl
She is also the principal investigator of PEN (Postcolonial Europe Network) the NWO internationalization grant for the humanities.
See: www.postcolonialeurope.eu
“A Word is Worth a Thousand Photos.”
Luigi Ballerini (UCLA)
Award winning poet, essayist, translator and curator, Luigi Ballerini lives in New York and Milano and has taught modern and contemporary Italian Literature at the University of California (Los Angeles). His books of poetry include eccetera. E (Guanda, 1972), Che figurato muore (Scheiwiller, 1988), Che oror l’orient (Lubrina, 1991) Il terzo gode(Marsilio, 1994), Shakespeherian Rags (Edizioni di Quasar, 1996), Uno monta la luna (Manni, 2001), Cefalonia(Mondadori 2005), Se il tempo è matto (Mondadori 2010), Una dozzina di scherzi +3 (Montanari, 2012), and Apelle figlio d’apollo (Cento Amici del Libro, 2016). In 2015 Beppe Cavatorta edited for Mondadori Luigi Ballerini. Poesie 1972-2015 a comprehensive collection of his poetry. His anthologies of American and Italian poetry include La rosa disabitata(Feltrinelli, 1981), Shearsmen of Sorts (Forum Italicum 1992), The Promised Land (Sun & Moon, 1999), Nuova Poesia Americana: Los Angeles (Mondadori, 2005), Nuova Poesia Americana: San Francisco (Mondadori, 2006), Nuova Poesia Americana: New York (Mondadori, 2009), Nuova Poesia Americana: Los Angeles (Mondadori, 2005), Nuova Poesia Americana: San Francisco (Mondadori, 2006), Nuova Poesia Americana: New York (Mondadori, 2009), Those Who From Afar Look Like Flies (University of Toronto Press 2017), and Nuova Poesia Americana: Chicago e le praterie(Nino Acampora Editore, 2019). He has translated into Italian several books by American authors including Herman Melville, Henry James, William Carlos Williams, James Baldwin, and Kurt Vonegut. His selection of Gertrude Stein’s poetry, La sacra Emilia e altre poesie, was published by Marsilio (Venice) in 1999. Ballerini has written extensively on avant-garde literature (La piramide capovolta, Marsilio 1975), Guido Cavalcanti, on contemporary Italian poetry (4 per Pagliarani, Scritture 2007), and on gastronomy: his edition of Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well inaugurated the Lorenzo da Ponte Itaslian Library in 2003, while his edition of Maestro Martino: The Book of the Culinary Art, was published by the University of California Press, in 2004. He contributed to Gastronomica and the Italian TV Program Il gambero rosso, and he is the general editor of Cum grano salis a series of books dedicated to historical gastronomy published in Milan by Guido Tommasi Editore. His edition of F.T. Marinetti’s Gli indomabili has been issued by Mondadori in the year 2000, followed in the Spring of 2003 by that of Mafarka il futurista. He has curated exhibitions of Contemporary Italian Art including Italian Visual Writing, (New York, Finch Museum and Torino, Galleria civica d’arte moderna, 1973) and Spelt from Sybil’s Leaves (Sydney, Power Gallery, 1984). He has also convened a number of conferences: The Disappearing Pheasant I (New York, NYU, 1991) and The Disappearing Pheasant II (Los Angeles, UCLA, 1994). A number of his publication have been realized in cooperation with Artists. Among them: La parte allegra del pesce (with Paolo Icaro, Telai del Bernini 1984), Leggenda di Paolo Icaro (Essegi, 1985), La torre dei filosofi (with Eliseo Mattiacci and Remo Bodei, Essegi, 1986), Selvaggina (with Angelo Savelli, Scheiwiller, 1988), Una più del diavolo (with Marco Gastini, Noire 1994), Navi di terra e di mare (with Marco Gastini, Montanari, 1999), Vademecum per il Carro solare di Eliseo Mattiacci (Mazzottta 2004), and Le macchine inadempienti di Lawrence Fane(Mazzotta, 2006). He is the publisher of Agincourt Books.
