Upcoming Meetings

WEEK VII: On Friday, May 8 there will be no meeting as NYU graduate students are holding a sick-out to leverage demands for just response to the COVID-19 crisis. Info here: https://twitter.com/nyucovid?lang=en and here: https://nyunews.com/news/2020/05/04/graduate-students-pause-zoom-teaching/.

The final meeting will take place on Friday May 15 at 3pm. We will discuss René Girard's "The Plague in Literature and Myth" and a selection from Roberto Esposito's Immunitas, which will be uploaded later this week.

Join the Zoom Meeting here: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/114101929

Past Meetings

Week I: Manzoni, I promessi sposi, cap. XXXI

Friday, March 27 at 3 pm EST

Week II: Manzoni, I promessi sposi, cap. XXXI-XXXVI

Friday, April 3 at 3pm EST

• With special guest, the translator Michael Moore, who is completing a new English translation of Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi. Links to Manzoni's text and audiolibro are below. Here is a link to an Moore's condensed translation of chapters XXXI-XXXII: https://newclasses.nyu.edu/x/STbZEv; this is an unpublished translation - please do not cite without permission from the translator.

Week III: Boccaccio, proemio and introduzione alla prima giornata del Decameron

Friday, April 10 at 3pm EST

Week IV: Curzio Malaparte, "La peste," Chapter 1 of La pelle, with special guest Marisa Escolar, author of Allied Encounters

April 17 at 3pm EST

• The full text of La pelle is available on Archive.org: https://archive.org/stream/CurzioMalaparteLaPelle/Curzio%20Malaparte%20-%20La%20pelle_djvu.txt. The chapter we will be discussing begins on p. 16

• The 1952 English translation by David Moore is also available on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/TheSkin/mode/2up.

• Marisa Escolar's chapter on La pelle in Allied Encounters: The Gendered Redemption of World War II Italy is available here: https://newclasses.nyu.edu/access/content/user/rrf210/Allied_Encounters_The_Gendered_Redemption_of_World..._----__5_Sleights_of_Hand_Black_Skin_and_the_Redemption_of_Curzio_Malaparte%E2%80%99s..._.pdf

• Liliana Cavani's film adaptation can be viewed on Kanopy: https://nyu.kanopy.com/video/skin.

Week V: Dino Buzzati, "La peste motoria," "L'epidemia," and "Sette piani" and Primo Levi, "Cladonia Rapida"

April 24 at 3pm EST

Week VI: Ippolito Nievo, Storia filosofica dei secoli futuri

May 1 at 3pm EST

Other Announcements

Devanshi Khetarpal, a Comparative Literature major with a concentration in Italian is organizing an Elena Ferrante Reading Group, which will meet on Sundays at 10:30 by Zoom to discuss Elena Ferrante's work. For more information about weekly readings and the Zoom URL check here: https://www.meetup.com/Ferrante-Fever-An-Elena-Ferrante-Reading-Group/.

"It would be exaggerated to say that plague descriptions are all alike, but the similarities may well be more intriguing than the individual variations. The curious thing about these similarities is that they ultimately involve the very notion of the similar. The plague is universally presented as a process of undifferentiation, a destruction of specificities."

- René Girard, "The Plague in Literature and Myth"