Keynote Speakers

Giorgio Mariani taught, until his recent retirement, Anglo-American literature at the Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies at Sapienza University of Rome, where for many years he coordinated the PhD in Studies in English Language and Literatures. In his career he has focused mostly on 19th-century American literature (in particular Herman Melville and Stephen Crane); he has investigated the relationship between war, violence and literature; he has written extensively on contemporary American Indian literature.

He was president of the I.A.S.A. (International American Studies Association) from 2011 to 2015, and then directed its journal, RIAS—The Review of International American Studies, for several years. He is a member of the editorial board of Ácoma. Rivista internazionale di studi nordamericani (of which he was co-director from 2001 to 2021). For several years he co-directed the book series “Le Balene” (La Scuola di Pitagora) and “Studies in American Literature and Culture” (Sapienza Università Editrice). 

He has been a four-time faculty member of the Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College (2005; 2013; 2015; 2018); a Visiting Professor at the École Normale Superieur in Lyon (2012); and a several-times Visiting Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He has lectured at numerous Italian and foreign universities, including the Université Diderot in Paris, the Université Lumière Lyon 2; the Ècole Normale Superieur in Lyon; the University of Poznan; the Technische Universitat in Dortmund; the University of Manheim; the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; Yeshiva University in New York; Haverford College (Pennsylvania); the California Institute of Technology; the Etvos Loran University in Budapest; the University of Silesia; the University of Timisoara. 

He has published essays and articles in numerous Italian and foreign journals, including: American Literary History, Leviathan, Studies in American Ficition, Nuova Corrente, Fictions, FIAR-Focus on Inter-American Research, Stephen Crane Studies, RIAS-The Review of International American Studies, RSA Journal, STUDIA ANGLICA POSNANIENSIA, Zapruder, A.I.O.N., Arcipelago, Studi Americani, Letterature d'America, Iperstoria, Novecento Transnazionale, Paradoxa, Janus, Politica internazionale and Ácoma. He is the author of several volumes, including Melville. Guida alla lettura di Moby-Dick, Carocci 2022; Waging War on War. Peacefighting in American Literature, University of Illinois Press, 2015; Leggere Melville, Carocci, 2013; La penna e il tamburo: gli indiani d'America e la letteratura degli Stati Uniti, ombre corte, 2003; Post-Tribal Epics. The Native American Novel Between Tradition and Modernity, Edwin Mellen, 1996; Spectacular Narratives: Representations of Class and War in Stephen Crane and the American 1890s, Peter Lang, 1992. A collection of his essays entitled “One Step Beyond the Hero”. Disrupting War and Violence in American Literature, was recently published by Sapienza Università Editrice and can be read or downloaded for free at https://www.editricesapienza.it/book/10484.

Karsten Fitz is Professor of American Studies / Culture and Media Studies at the University of Passau. He studied American Studies and Political Science at the University of Hannover (M.A., Ph.D.) and at the University of Washington, Seattle. Fitz is the recipient of the Fulbright American Studies Fellowship (2002-03), during which he spent a year at Harvard University and the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. He completed his ‘Habilitation’ at the University of Regensburg, where he has taught for ten years. His monographic works are Negotiating History and Culture: Transculturation in Contemporary Native American Fiction (2001) and The American Revolution Remembered, 1830s to 1850s: Competing Images and Conflicting Narratives (2011). He has edited the anthology Visual Representations of Native Americans: Transnational Contexts and Perspectives (2012). Together with Birgit Däwes and Sabine Meyer he is the editor of the book series Routledge Research in Transnational Indigenous Perspectives, of which he co-edited the first volume, Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Indigenous Studies: Native North America in (Trans)Motion (2015). His research on issues of privacy led to the conference volume Cultures of Privacy: Paradigms, Transformations, Contestations (2015). His interest in transatlantic cultural exchange inspired the conference volume Transatlantic Cinema: Productions – Genres – Encounters – Negotiations (2020). In addition, Fitz has published articles on American popular visual culture, cultural memory, American political culture, and the teaching of American Studies in the EFL-classroom in various journals and conference volumes. Most recently he co-edited (together with Susanne Lachenicht and Volker Depkat) the conference volume Representations and Uses of the American Revolution in Past and Present (2025). Fitz has been Vice President of the German Association for American Studies (2017-2020) and is currently on the board of the European Association for American Studies and of the Bavarian American Academy.