international conferences

The COVID-19 pivot from face to face to remote or digital instruction affected every teacher and student across the world. This roundtable invites participants to reflect and discuss teaching in the current moment, as well as during the unplanned (February-April) 2020 pivot. 

In video games such as Life is Strange, the Witcher series, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead, multiple story choices are offered that are the purview not of the protagonist but of the player, who may be forced to choose from a limited set of outcomes but is still in control of the narrative’s pace and flow. Unlike traditional narratives in which the writer is in control of the characters’ choices and their outcomes, video game narratives involve the participant in an interactive shared story with multiple possibilities.

One immediate side-effect of the current ominous economic climate and general uncertainty of our times has been a downturn in traditional publishing. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, consolidation of publishing houses, the closure of brick-and-mortar bookshops, and the supremacy of Amazon had begun to permanently alter the way creative writing is published. At the same time, creative content on the internet has never been so abundant, with poetry, film, and fiction being shared and streamed in ways that create a flourishing if generally nonremunerative cultural climate. This panel looks at options available to creative writers in the wake of the decline of traditional publishing options.

In an age of Twitter rants, allegations of fake news, and increasingly bitter partisan divides, what happens to the novel or poem? Does literary material have to engage with the political? And if it doesn’t, must the political be read between its lines? What are the possibilities for creative work in an era that is increasingly in a state of emergency? This panel asks creative writers to consider the question of political and literary engagement in our political age. Writers of all modalities and genres are encouraged to explore these questions in the context of their own work. This panel asks creative writers to consider the question of a political literary engagement in our political age. Writers of all modalities and genres are welcome.

For centuries Italy and East Asia have been at the center of numerous economic, political, and cultural exchanges. Studies have mostly focused on the relationship between Italy and China. As Zhang (2018) points out, in the last decade this topic has piqued the interest of a number of scholars on Italy-China issues. In addition to the special issues of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies (2010) and in the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies (2014), books have been published on Italian-Chinese relations such as Marinelli and Andornino (2013) and Chinese migration to Italy (Pedone 2013).