CALIFORNIA DREAMING
Visions, Spaces, and Shadows from the Golden State
12-13 June, 2025
University of Naples L’Orientale
FULL PROGRAM
June 12 - Palazzo Mediterraneo (Via Nuova Marina 59)
9.00 am Registration - Room T1
9.30 am Opening Remarks
10:00 am, Room T2 - Keynote Lecture 1 – Alison Rose Jefferson
Black California Dreamin': Stories of Claiming Space at America's Leisure Frontier
Moderator: Nicolangelo Becce (University of Roma Tre)
11:15 am Coffee Break - 2nd floor
11:45 am Parallel Panel Session 1
Panel 1 - Racial Uprising and Imagination - Room 1.1
Chair: Agnese Marino (University of Roma Tre)
Michael Docherty (Appalachian State University)
Imagining Elsewhere: Black California in the Fictional Imagination
Eleni Tasioula (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
At the Intersection of LA’s Systemic Violence and Gang Culture: Reading Luis J. Rodriguez’s Always Running (1993)
Cinzia Schiavini (University of Milan)
Dreaming, leaping, struggling to be real (and survive): California and the Arab-American stage
Panel 2 - Water Narratives between Economic Fragilities and Environmental Disasters - Room T1
Chair: Pasquale Concilio (University of Naples L’Orientale)
Pasquale Concilio (University of Naples L’Orientale)
Everything begins and ends right here! Exploring the Los Angeles River in Dick Roraback’s In Search of the L.A. River and Tim DeRoche and Daniel González’s The Ballad of Huck & Miguel
Cinzia Scarpino (University of Milan)
From ‘Miracle In The Desert’ to Environmental Disaster: The History and Narratives of the Salton Sea
Sofia Martinicorena (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
“Some Ruined Heaven:” California Violence in Claire Vaye Watkins’ Gold Fame Citrus
Rachel Marie Davis (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Rethinking Silicon Valley: The Duality of Economic Realities in Ripe
1:15 pm Lunch Break - 2nd floor
2:30 pm, Room T1 - Keynote Lecture 2 – J. Scott Bryson
Myth, Geography, and Geometry: Finding Meaning in Los Angeles and its Literature
Moderator: Elisa Bordin (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
3:45 pm Parallel Panel Session 2
Panel 3 - Environmental Challenges and Natural Resources - Room 1.1
Chair: Enrico Mariani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Ali Dehdarirad (Sapienza University of Rome)
“Los Angeles is Burning” or “The Burning of Los Angeles”? The Vision of Disaster in Richard Powers’ The Overstory and Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland.
Julia Fiedorczuk (Warsaw University)
California in the poetry of Forrest Gander.
Nele Thomann (Heidelberg University)
Beyond State Lines: California’s Climate Leadership in the United States and Abroad.
Enrico Mariani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Ecologies of Waters and Oil Extraction: Mary Austin’s Forerunning Literary Resistance
Panel 4 - Activism and Justice - Room T1
Chair: Fulvia Sarnelli (University of Naples L’Orientale)
William Bauer (University of California, Riverside)
California Indians and the California Dream
Fulvia Sarnelli (University of Naples L’Orientale)
California Reproductive In/Justice in Contemporary Narratives
Magdalena Modrzejewska (Jagiellonian University in Kraków)
Speranza - California’s Utopian Community
5:15 pm End of Day 1
June 13 - Palazzo Mediterraneo (Via Nuova Marina 59)
9:30 am Registration Desk Opens - Room T1
10:00 am, Room T2 - Keynote Lecture 3 – David L. Ulin -
Porousness in the Literature of Southern California
Moderator: Vincenzo Bavaro (University of Naples L'Orientale)
11:15 Coffee Break - 2nd floor
11:45 am Parallel Panel Session 3
Panel 5 - Re-imagining California (Social) Spaces - Room T1
Chair: Antonio Di Vilio (University of Naples L’Orientale)
Antonio Di Vilio (University of Naples L’Orientale) and Shelleen Greene (University of California, Los Angeles)
Smog (1963) and The Ecological Crisis of Post-War Los Angeles
Vincenzo Bavaro (University of Naples L’Orientale)
Cinematic Representation of the Los Angeles Streets: Mobility, Isolation, and Urban Identity
Sarah Gleeson-White (University of Sydney)
Little Harlem’s Little Magazines
Panel 6 - Popular Culture - Room 1.1
Chair: Cinzia Scarpino (University of Milan)
Owen Atkinson (University of Leeds)
Conservative California: tracking the crisis of the white-collar worker in Aerospace Folktales and Falling Down
Florian Groß, (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
Los Angeles is Burning: Social Crisis and Environmental Disaster in SoCal Punk
Konstantin Butz (Academy of Media Arts Cologne)
California to Go: Skateboarding and the Transference of West Coast Site-Specificity
Emma Dinuzzi (Independent Scholar)
Haunted Suburbia: The Racialized Landscape of Mid-Century California in Little Marvin’s Them
1:15 pm Lunch Break - 2nd floor
2:30 pm, Room T2 - Keynote Lecture 4 – Robb Hernández
"Barrio 2000: An East LA Space Odyssey"
Moderator: Vincenzo Bavaro (University of Naples L'Orientale)
3:45 pm Parallel Panel Session 4
Panel 7 - Racial Memory - Room T1
Chair: Nicolangelo Becce (Roma Tre University)
Nicolangelo Becce (Roma Tre University)
Post-WW2 Los Angeles from a Japanese American Perspective in Naomi Hirahara’s “The Chirashi Covenant”
Agnese Marino (Roma Tre University)
States of Exception in the Exceptional State: Interrogating California at the Border, in Desiré Zamorano’s The Dispossessed
Giacomo Traina, (University of Trieste)
“Haunted by the Living”: San José in the Literature of the Vietnamese Diaspora
Cristina Garrigós, (National University of Distance Education). Unhousing Memory in Nueva California: A Revision of Hegemonic Historiography in Cherríe Moraga’s Native Country of the Heart
Panel 8 - Our Mediterranean, Our Italy. Italian American California and Race - Room 1.1
Chair: Elisa Bordin (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Rosemary Serra (University of Trieste)
Under the Californian Sun. Integration Process of Italians from the Great Migration to Today
Elisa Bordin (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Urban Politics and Mexican American Los Angeles: 'Home Is the Hunter' by John Fante and Carey McWilliams
Stefano Luconi (University of Padua)
Dreaming Whiteness in California: Italian Americans and the Color Line in the Golden State
Tommaso Caiazza (Liceo Federigo Enriques, Rome)
“The melting pot is the world”: Robert E. Park’s critique of California “racial” exceptionalism
5:15 pm Closing Remarks