SPEAKERS

Maurizio Ascari teaches English Literature at the University of Bologna (Italy). He has published books and essays on crime fiction (A Counter-History of Crime Fiction, Palgrave 2007, nominated for the Edgar Awards), transcultural literature (Literature of the Global Age, McFarland, 2011) and interart exchanges (Cinema and the Imagination in Katherine Mansfield’s Writing, Palgrave, 2014). He has also edited and translated works by Henry James, Katherine Mansfield, William Faulkner, Jack London and William Wilkie Collins

Francesco Benozzo teaches Romance Philology at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bologna. He is also poet, a musician, and the author of more than 700 publications. Among his several areas of interests are the origins of human language, oral poetry, shamanism, anarchism, ethnophilology, medieval texts, and landscape in literature. As a songwriter and harpist, he has released 11 CDs produced in Italy, Denmark and the UK. For his poetry in defense of natural places and for his use of techniques belonging to the ancient tradition of oral poetry, since 2015 he has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature

Enrico Fink has devoted himself to new interpretations of the Jewish cultural tradition, finding a path between "radical" and traditional, which uses both music and musical theater as means of expression. In the past 20 years he has toured extensively native Italy, Europe, North and South America, in theaters as well as in schools and universities, synagogues and Jewish centers, as musician, as lecturer, as guest cantor, bringing to audiences worldwide his vast repertoire of Italian Jewish synagogue song, as well as his own renditions, arrangements and compositions. He has brought his thorough knowledge of the musical traditions of Italian Jews into very diverse musical environments, from early music to jazz, from classical to contemporary, participating in and leading major groups and orchestras, collaborating with musicians ranging from major pop artists and bands to world class soloists as Frank London or David Krakauer, but also giving classes, workshops, participating in engaging and innovative service leading. Presently, he is back from an American and European tour, from his third annual tour of Italian theaters with his compositions for “Occident Express” by Stefano Massini (“Lehman Trilogy”) with legendary Italian actress Ottavia Piccolo, and from a term as Polonsky Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, researching Italian Jewish religious poetry and its music in the early modern era. He is President of the Jewish Community of Florence

Edoardo Gerlini is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow at the Department of Asian and North African Studies with a three-year research project titled “World Heritage and East Asian Literature – Sinitic Writings in Japan as Cultural Heritage (WHEREAL)” (Supervisor: Bonaventura Ruperti). He spent two years as a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences of Waseda University under the supervision of Kimiko Kono. Edoardo’s specialization is Japanese premodern literature of the early Heian period (9th century), with a focus on poetry, canon formation, and the relationship between Japanese and Chinese literature. He has taught Japanese language at the University of Ca’ Foscari in Venice and at the University of Florence. His interests include cultural heritage, world literature, and Sinitic writings in Japan. He is a translator from Japanese into Italian

Abdulrazak Gurnah is a noted novelist and academic.  His career as a novelist spans over thirty years. His novels include Memory of Departure, Pilgrim Way, Dottie, Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize), The Last Gift and Gravel Heart. Dislocation, exile, loss and identity are central themes in all Gurnah’s novels.

Rodney Harrison is Professor of Heritage Studies at the UCL Institute of Archaeology since 2012. Previously he was Lecturer in Heritage Studies at the Open University from 2007-2012 and has also worked as Historical Archaeologist and Regional Aboriginal Heritage Studies Coordinator in the Cultural Heritage Research Unit of the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service in Sydney. He is the author and editor of several books, journal volumes, journal articles and book chapters, some of which have also been translated into Italian. His research interests include critical heritage studies, intangible and indigenous heritage, archaeologies of colonialism and contemporary material culture studies. Among his most recent books are Heritage. Critical Approaches (Routledge 2013) and Deterritorializing the Future. Heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene (Open Humanities publishing 2020)

Lyn Innes is Emeritus Professor of Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Born and educated in Australia, she taught at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, before coming to Kent. Her publications include The Devil’s Own Mirror: the Irish and the African in Modern Literature (1990); Chinua Achebe (1990); Woman and Nation in Irish Literature and Society (1993); A History of Black and South Asian Writing in Britain (2002, 2008); The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English (2007); Ned Kelly (2008), and an annotated edition of Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky by Francis Fedric (2010). Her biography of the last Nawab of Bengal and his English family will be published by Westbourne Publications (London) in March 2021

Dr. Kim Potowski is Professor of Spanish linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with courtesy appointments in Latin American and Latino Studies and in Curriculum and Instruction. Her research focuses on Spanish in the U.S., including factors that influence language maintenance as well as connections between language, education, and identity. She directed her campus’ Spanish Heritage Language Program for 17 years and is the founding director of its summer study abroad program in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her advocacy for the value of dual language education in promoting bilingualism and biliteracy was the focus of her 2013 TEDx talk “No child left monolingual.” She has authored and edited over 12 books including: El español de los Estados Unidos; Heritage language teaching: Research and practice; Language diversity in the USA; and Language and identity in a dual immersion school, as well as the Spanish textbooks Gramática y variación social and Conversaciones escritas

Fiammetta Sabba PhD. Associate Prof. President of Master degree in Library and Archives Sciences. Director of the international magazine 'Bibliothecae.it' and of the Summer School 'Linked data per i beni culturali’. President of the Scientific Committee of the Ravenna Campus Library, member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the libraries of the University Library System. Principal works: Angelo Maria Bandini in viaggio a Roma (1780-1781), FUP, 2019; Viaggi tra i libri, Serra, 2018; La Bibliotheca universalis di Conrad Gesner, monumento della cultura europea, Bulzoni, 2012; Indice degli autori dei manoscritti in scrittura Latina della Biblioteca Angelica di Roma, PZS, 2009; Profilo di Storia della Bibliografia, con Alfredo Serrai, Sylvestre Bonnard, 2005. International Congresses organized with publishing of the Proceedings: ‘Noetica versus informatica’ (2013); ‘Periodici bibliografici tra passato e futuro’ (2018); ‘Patrimonio culturale condiviso: viaggiatori prima e dopo il Grand Tour’ (2018); ‘Il privilegio della parola scritta: gestione, conservazione, e valorizzazione di carte e libri di persona’ (2019).

Liliane Weissberg is Christopher H. Brown Distinguished Professor in Arts and Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught as a visiting professor at Universities in the United States, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and is the recipient of many awards, including the American Guggenheim Fellowship and the Berlin Prize of the American Academy, as well as the German Alexander von Humboldt Prize for her life’s work. Among Weissberg's recent book publications are: Münzen, Hände, Noten, Finger: Berliner Hofjuden und die Erfindung einer deutschen Musikkultur (2018), and Nachträglich, grundlegend: Der Kommentar als Denkform in der jüdischen Moderne von Hermann Cohen bis Jacques Derrida (with Andreas Kilcher; 2018).