Conference Schedule

**This event will take place in the Lucy Ellis Lounge in the Foreign Languages Building.

Friday, February 8, 2013

12:30 – 1:00 Registration

1:00 – 1:30 Welcome Address

Remarks from the organizers and Professor Abbas Benmamoun (Director of the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics; Professor of Linguistics; Professor of LAS Global Studies)

1:30 – 3:00 Religious Tensions in the Medieval Mediterranean

Chair: Professor Eleonora Stoppino (Professor in the Dept of Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese; Professor of Medieval Studies; Professor of LAS Global Studies)

  • Kristen Streahle, Department of Art History, Cornell University – “Pseudo-Kufic and ‘Saracen’ Slaughter: Acknowledging Sicily’s Islamic Past on the Painted Ceiling of the Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri”
  • Teresa Greppi, Department of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – “Religions vs. Gender”
  • Scott Kirk, Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University – “Norman-Islamic Political Relations in the Sicilian Middle Ages”

3:00 – 4:30 Discovering Alterity in the Self

Chair: Professor Konstantinos Kourtikakis (Professor of Political Science)

  • Sherif Hasan Ismail, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University – “Crossing Borders/Negotiating Cultures: Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq and His Work”
  • Nicolas G Virtue, Department of History, University of Western Ontario – “Balkan Slavs in the Propaganda of the Italian Second Army, 1941-43”
  • Rama Alhabian, Department of Comparative Literature, Purdue University – “Borders in Mohammed Al-Magout’s Film Borders: Double Functionary and Inherent Contradiction”

4:30 – 4:45 Coffee Break

4:45 – 6:15 Keynote Address

Introduction from Professor Robert Rushing (Professor of Comparative & World Literature; Professor in the Dept of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese; Professor of Cinema Studies; Professor of Criticism and Interpretive Theory)

  • Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat (Professor of History and Italian Studies, Chair of the Department of Italian Studies, and Director of the NYU-CNRS Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences), New York University – “The Mediterranean Crossings of Fascist Empire Cinema”

7:00 Conference Dinner

Saturday February 9, 2013

9:00 – 9:30 Breakfast

9:30 – 11:00 Repercussions of Transregional Contact

Chair: Professor Valerie J. Hoffman (Professor in the Department of Religion; Professor of Medieval Studies;Title VI Centers Faculty Survey; African Studies; Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies; and Gender and Women’s Studies)

  • Sailakshmi Ramgopal, Department of Classics, University of Chicago – “Religion and Associations of Roman Citizens: Parsing the Cult Practices of the Roman Diaspora”
  • Corey Flack, Department of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – “The Gods Which Are Not: Boundaries and Exchange in the Mediterranean of Boccaccio’s Filocolo“
  • Jessica Bernstetter, Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University – “Carthage and the Mediterranean: Breaking Boundaries Through Trade”

11:00 – 12:00 The Impositions of Nationalism

Chair: Professor Emanuel Rota (Professor in the Dept of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese; Professor of History)

  • Emily Otto Kaplan, Department of History, Saint Louis University – “Bound in Birthing: Women and the National Womb in Fascist Italy”
  • Mary Migliozzi, Department of Italian, Indiana University, Bloomington – “Romanità on the Border Between Nationalism and Regionalism”

12:00 –1:30 Lunch (not provided)

1:30 – 3:00 Keynote Address

Introduction from Professor Emanuel Rota (Professor in the Dept of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese; Professor of History)

  • Professor Abdulkader Sinno (Associate Professor of Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies), Indiana University, Bloomington – “Political Dynamics and Population Movements Across the Mediterranean”

3:00 – 4:30 Consequences of Segmentation

Chair: Professor Edward Kolodziej (Director, Center for Global Studies; Interim Director, Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, &  International Security)

  • Brian Hunt, Department of French, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – “Post-Colonial Prosthetics and Parisian Beur Borders”
  • Adriana Varela, Department of Italian, Indiana University, Bloomington – “Wanted Dead and Alive: The Body as Boundary in Francesco Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano”

4:30 Closing Remarks