Event Details
Mon, February 10, 2020
18:00 – 19:30
VILLA SASSETTI
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Firenze, Italy
A talk between Fiori Berhane, Brown University and Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, and Neelam Srivastava, Reader in Postcolonial and Comparative Literature at Newcastle University.
Moderated by Angelica Pesarini, NYU Florence
The study of history has often been conceived as an institutionalised knowledge, focusing on certain groups as players and writers of history. The aim of this panel is to trace so called “subjugated knowledges” hidden within the mainstream historiography of Italian colonialism. These are forms of knowledge deemed as inadequate and submerged within the processes of knowledge production. Nonetheless these are also the “small voices of history” able to counter the weight of official discourse and to challenge crystallised versions of historical knowledge.
(Photograph: Second Italo-Ethiopian War Women were recruited for the Ethiopian Army after the country was invaded by Italy Each woman is provided with uniforms, by Everett Historical)
In collaboration with Black History Month Florence V Edition and the American Academy in Rome.
Featured Biographies
Neelam Srivastava
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY
Neelam Srivastava is Reader (Associate Professor) in Postcolonial and Comparative Literature at Newcastle University. She is the author of Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930-1970 (Palgrave, 2018) and the co-editor of The Postcolonial Gramsci (Routledge, 2012), among other publications. Her research interests include Italian colonialism and anti-colonialism, anti-colonial cinema, postcolonial theories of violence, and South Asian literature. She is the co-convenor of the Postcolonial Print Cultures International Network, jointly supported by Newcastle and New York University: https://postcolonialpc.com/
Fiori Sara Berhame
PH.D. CANDIDATE, DEPARTMENT OF ANTRHOPOLOGY, BROWN UNIVERSITY
Fiori Sara Berhame is a PhD candidate at Brown University. She is a socio-cultural anthropologist with focus on migration studies, post-colonial Italy and the political anthropology of Europe. Her current work investigates generational conflict within the diasporan Eritrean community in Italy vis-à-vis the migration crisis. Her work has been funded by the American Academy in Rome, the Wenner Gren foundation, and the Fulbright IIE and featured in Lavoro Culturale
Angelica Pesarini
NYU Florence Lecturer
Angelica Pesarini was awarded a Ph.D. in Sociology in 2015 from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Leeds. At NYU Florence she teaches Black Italia, a cross-disciplinary course dedicated to the intersectional analysis of racial identity in Italy. She previously worked at Lancaster University as a Lecturer in Gender, Race and Sexuality. Her current work investigates dynamics of race performativity with a focus on colonial and postcolonial Italy and she also analyzes the racialization of the Italian political discourse on immigration. At NYU Florence Professor Pesarini is the Faculty IDBE (Inclusion, Diversity, Belonging and Equity) Liaison.