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Current Events

A seminar organized by the Rethinking Spatial Humanities Research Cluster of the Centre for the Advanced Study of Languages and Cultures and the Dept of Italian, UCC, on the occasion of the XXIV Settimana della Lingua Italiana nel Mondo on the theme of "L'italiano e il libro: il mondo fra le righe".

As reported by Climate ADAPT (The European Climate Adaptation Platform), European cities face significant impacts from climate change, both now and into the future. This presentation examines how climate change impacts the narrative representations of urban space in contemporary Italian literature, focusing on Alessandra Montrucchio’s novel E poi la sete (2010; And Then Thirst). Using qualitative literary analysis and drawing upon Morton’s theory of hyperobjects, the talk explores how the novel portrays the reshaping of the urban environment in response to local climate change effects like rising temperatures and droughts. By engaging with broader interdisciplinary debates on urban and environmental issues, it highlights Italy’s central position at the crossroads of global climate migration and contributes to the evolving discourse on storytelling, authorship, and aesthetics in the face of climate crisis.

Giulia Bernuzzi received a research Master’s degree in Literary Studies in 2023 at the Universiteit van Amsterdam with a thesis on the relationship between literature and architecture in Calvino’s Invisible Cities. In September 2023, as winner of the Prof. Eduardo Saccone PhD Scholarship in Italian Literature, she started her doctoral studies at UCC with the project Climate Change and Urban Space in Contemporary Italian Literature. She has published on the adaptation of Pirandello’s Enrico IV into a comic book, writing and variations in Milan Kundera’s play Jacques et Son Maïtre and editorial cases in Italian cinema. She is the co-convenor of the “Rethinking Spatial Humanities” Research Cluster, with Dr Barbara Siller and Dr Silvia Ross. Her current research focuses on the evolution of the narrative representations of urban spaces in response to climate change in contemporary Italian literature.