ACIS CHAIR REPORT 2010
Dr Gino Moliterno
The Australian National University
Welcome all, from the new Chair of ACIS.
2009 has been an eventful year for us. In March 2009 Loretta Baldassar retired as Chair of ACIS to take up a position as Director of the Monash Prato Centre. We were fortunate, however, to have Loretta accept our request that she remain as Chair of the Cassamarca Lectureships Committee, thus allowing ACIS to continue in some measure to have the benefit of her long experience and expertise. On behalf of ACIS I would like to thank Loretta most warmly for her strong advocacy of Italian Studies in Australia and for all the time and energy she has given over these many years to ACIS. Loretta’s dynamism, steady hand, and good judgement have been invaluable to the success of ACIS in continuing to effectively manage Cassamarca’s Australia Project and we thus take this occasion to express our deepest gratitude to her.
And 2009 was witness to other major changes within ACIS, beginning with the retirement of Bill Kent, Ros Pesman, Gary Ianziti and Nerida Newbigin from the ACIS Committee. Bill and Ros were both members of the original Committee formed in 2000 and, as such, have been constant and tireless supporters of Italian Studies in this country. To them we owe a most special debt of thanks for, indeed, without their unstinting efforts ACIS could not have grown and achieved all that it has in this short decade of its existence. Gary Ianziti joined the ACIS Committee in 2003 and, together with Bill Kent, served as Chair of the Scholarships Committee. Nerida Newbigin became a member of the Management Committee in 2004 and in the past six years has contributed much valuable knowledge and advice. Having now decided to retire, she has nevertheless generously agreed to serve out another year as Chair of the Scholarships Committee. In 2010 Claire Kennedy, Cassamarca Senior Lecturer at Griffith University and a committee member since 2004, also decided to retire from the Committee.
On behalf of ACIS, then, I would like to warmly thank Loretta, Bill, Ros, Gary, Nerida and Claire for all their support for ACIS and its activities. Their efforts over the years have contributed enormously to the growth in Italian Studies in Australia that ACIS has been able to effect in the last ten years, and they will remain as an example to all of us. We wish them all the very best for the future and look forward to still having their presence at future conferences and official functions.
But as we lose such wonderful talent and expertise in one way, we also gain it in another. I am happy to announce that in April this year John Kinder, Convenor of Italian in European Languages and Studies at the University of Western Australia, Antonia Rubino, Chair of the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Sydney, and Catherine Dewhirst, Lecturer in History at the University of Queensland’s School of Humanities and Communication, all accepted invitations to join the ACIS committee and to help continue the work of our retiring members. We warmly welcome John, Antonia and Catherine and look forward to working with them.
The Fifth ACIS Biennial Conference
The Fifth ACIS Biennial Conference hosted by the Department of Italian at The University of Auckland Campus in New Zealand in February 2009 was a great success.
The Conference focussed on what Hans Magnus Enzensberger has called “the great migration”: the translocation of individuals, communities, and entire populations which began in the 1970s and continues to grow today. The conference explored the effects of this most notable demographic trend of our time on the economy, history, politics, language and culture of Italy. The conference was particularly enriched by a bringing to the fore of the less well-known relationship between Māori and Italian cultures and literatures.
Over four days, 59 delegates from Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Croatia and the USA, 19 of whom were postgraduate students, participated in three parallel sessions on a wide range of topics which included: Migration and Emotion, Italian Writers and Migration, Dialects in Literature and Society, Women Writers, Migrant Writers, Issues in Translation, Images of Italian Society in Contemporary Cinema,
Migration and Detective Stories, Objects and Spaces of Migration, Italian LS/L2, Italian Cinema and Migration, Italians in Australia: Contemporary Political Issues, Narratives of Migration (Australia), Italian Culture from the Middle Ages to the Present, Twentieth Century Italian Writers, Italian Migration to Australia 1885-1965, Migration and Identity, Economics and Business, Experiences of Migration To and From Italy. [ Do we need to put all these in? Perhaps fewer, and group them differently]
The conference was able to attract four internationally-renowned keynote speakers. Graziella Parati, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College, delivered an engaging theoretical paper on migrant literature. Aine O'Healy, Professor of Italian and Director of the Humanities Program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, spoke on the representation of black women migrants in Italian cinema in relation to colonial discourses. The strong connection between Māori and Italian culture and literature featured in the fascinating address by Witi Ihimaera, Professor of English and Distinguished Creative Fellow in Maori Literature at the University of Auckland, and writer Patricia Grace’s presentation on her novel Tu, based on her father’s diary, written during his time in the Māori Battalion in Italy.
Our most sincere thanks to conference organiser, Gabriela Brussino who did an outstanding job in setting up such a successful conference. The Conference also included an ACIS General meeting, during which Loretta Baldassar, as Chair of ACIS, presented her last official report before handing over direction of ACIS to Gino Moliterno.
Shortly after the conference we were delighted to hear that President Dino de Poli had decided to visit Australia with his son, Mauro, in August. His first stop was Perth where the University of Western Australia and ACIS hosted a lunch for Dr de Poli to welcome him to Australia and to show appreciation for his on-going support for the Australia Project. Clearly at home at UWA and happy to be back in Australia, Dr de Poli expressed his personal continuing support, and that of the Cassamarca Foundation, for the Australia Project, despite the inevitable strictures imposed by the Global Financial Crisis. In response, Yasmin Haskel, as the Cassamarca Professor in Latin Humanism at UWA, offered Dr. de Poli all our thanks in a clever Latin poem she composed for the occasion.
During the following week Dr. de Poli visited Melbourne, where the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies hosted an informal lunch during which Dr. de Poli was able to renew his acquaintance with a number of Cassamarca lecturers. He then moved on to Sydney where was a guest at a morning tea at Saint Paul’s College at Sydney University, where he again met a number of the Cassamarca lecturers. Dr. de Poli and his son rang from the airport as they were departing for Italy to thank all who had welcomed them during their brief visit and to again express their support for the Australia Project. Out thanks, too, go to all who helped to organise the various functions he attended.
Despite the Global Financial Crisis, ACIS was able to continue to offer student scholarships in 2009 and 2010. During this time six scholarships were awarded to talented new scholars in the field of Italian studies. In 2009 the Associazione Sarda del Queensland also provided support for a scholarship for a project linked to Sardinia and we thank Joe Murtas and the association for their participation. Our warmest thanks also go to all the members of the Scholarships Committee for their much appreciated efforts.
Organisation is now well underway for the Sixth ACIS Biennial Conference which is being hosted by the University of Melbourne in July 2011 and details can be found on this website.
While the Global Financial Crisis has undoubtedly presented us with a number of serious challenges, ACIS is entering its second decade with a renewed sense of purpose and optimism. Thanks to the continuing support of the Cassamarca Foundation, the future for Italian Studies in Australia looks bright, and ACIS is looking forward to being there to encourage Italianists in Australia in the next decade as it has in the last.
Welcome, and best wishes to all.
Gino
|
|
