Spiritualism and Italian Cultures XVIII-XX Centuries was an interdisciplinary conference organised by Bart Van den Bossche (KU Leuven), Fabio Camilletti (University of Warwick) and Gennaro Ambrosino (University of Warwick) in Leuven on 29-30 September.

The two-day conference examined the role and spread of Modern Spiritualism in Italian culture and literature since the second half of the 18th century. Modern Spiritualism and parapsychology, the discipline that seeks to explain supernatural events using scientific methods, originated in the United States in 1848 following the experiments of the Fox sisters. From the United States, spiritualism spread rapidly to Europe in the early 1850s, bringing with it the fashion for turning tables, invoking the spirits of the dead and communicating with them through mediumship. This phenomenon exerted a powerful influence on the European popular imagination, inspiring literary texts, occupying the pages of major periodicals and becoming the focus of scholarly debate.

Filling an important gap in the literature on occultism and (pseudo)science and their multiple interactions with Italian culture, the event provided an overview of the phenomenon, analysing it from different and complementary perspectives. While there is a great deal of studies on this subject in other European countries, there is no comprehensive contribution that examines the development and influence of this phenomenon in its entirety in Italy, with the exception of works dealing with the period between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century and Camilletti's Italia lunare. Gli anni Sessanta e l'occulto (2018), which focuses on the 1960s. Italian Spiritualism acquired original and innovative patterns due to the political situation in which it spread, the cultural background of the peninsula and its close relationship with the Catholic Church, making it a unique case study to be studied.

Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and fields (literary studies, art history, history of science and medicine), the conference deliberately covered a wide period, taking into account not only the post-unification period, which, as already mentioned, marks the explosion of this phenomenon up to the First World War, but also the study of the 'supernatural' before the advent of Spiritualism and the Spiritualist literature of the second half of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century.

The first day of the conference opened with Gennaro Ambrosino's analysis of the origins and spread of mesmerism in Italy between 1779 and 1853, focusing on the topoi and aspects that would later feed the Spiritualist rhetoric. Francesco Paolo De Ceglia (University of Bari "Aldo Moro") and Stefano Serafini (University of Padua) then analysed the Spiritualist movement in the second half of the 19th century. The former focused on the famous Italian medium, Eusapia Palladino, describing her career and the cultural context in which she became famous. The latter focused instead on the literary fortunes of Spiritualism from the 1850s to the 1890s and the relationship between science and the occult in this period. After lunch, the conference continued with Fabio Camilletti's lecture, which shed light on the Spiritualist elements in the works of the writer Pitigrilli and described the rise of Spiritualism in the 1940s and 50s. Simona Micali (University of Siena) focused on three novels from three different periods (the 1940s, the 1960s and the 2010s), analysing the different declinations and models of Spiritualism in the three authors (Landolfi, Buzzati and Zanotti). Finally, Corinne Pontillo (University of Catania) analysed the motif of "ghosts" in the literary works of the writer Alberto Savinio, who lived in the first half of the 20th century.

The second day opened with Stefano Lazzarin's (Università Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne) analysis and close reading of Alberto Moravia's short story "Seduta Spiritica" (1960), which has often been neglected by scholars. Martina Piperno (Università di Roma "La Sapienza") proposed a necromantic reading of Ombre dal fondo by Maria Corti, looking at the relationship between philology and necromancy. The last two papers focused on the visual aspect of Spiritualism in Italian culture in the 21st century: Paola Cori (University of Birmingham) analysed the art installation of the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, with particular attention to Breath Ghost Blind (2021), which shows the phantom-like atmosphere of his works; Chiara Zampieri (KU Leuven) dealt with the literary motif of "ghosts in museums" in contemporary literature.

Overall, Spiritualism and Italian Cultures XVIII-XX Centuries was well attended throughout the day, with many lively discussions in the various panels. From early nineteenth-century Mesmerism to the Neapolitan Spiritualist Circle, which included the world's most studied and famous medium, Eusapia Palladino, from Buzzati's writings to Maurizio Cattelan's art installations, the conference was a unique and collaborative opportunity to explore Spiritualism in Italian culture and its influence on the popular imagination. As a result, a proposal for an edited collection is being prepared.

There will be a launch event taking place on Wednesday 6th December from 12.00 - 14.00 in FAB2.25 - we recommend that all potential applicants attend - useful information - free lunch - meet Alison and Sue - ask questions.

Booking for this event is now open - Booking Form

Doctoral Fellowship Competition (warwick.ac.uk)

This conference aims to explore the different forms that the idea of a ‘return of the repressed’ has taken over a broad chronological period ranging from the early 18th century through to the Second World War. The notion of an area, inaccessible to rational consciousness, where memories, thoughts, and images could be ‘stored’ and re-activated without any agency of the conscious mind, is largely credited to Sigmund Freud, whose theoretical model of repression, return and ‘compromise formation’ has been highly influential for a vast part of the 20th century. The idea of the ‘return of the repressed’, however, has a remoter and more ramified history, and its pervasiveness extends far beyond the spheres of psychology and psychoanalysis.

In bringing these areas of research together, this conference ultimately seeks to examine the multifaceted presence of the ‘return of the repressed’ – as a polyvalent metaphor, a philosophical concept, and a theoretical method, or as all three simultaneously – throughout cultural modernity as a whole. In particular, we aim to examine three distinct discourses: that of archaeology, in which the ‘return of the repressed’ applies to the physical exhumation of the past; the discourse of psychoanalysis, covering individual memories; and, finally, that of post-colonial theory, exploring the ways repressed colonized voices are subject to a re-emergence and a haunting return in collective spaces, discourses, and praxes. In doing so, the conference employs the notion of ‘return of the repressed’ as a quintessentially inter- and trans-disciplinary tool, enabling us to cross-fertilize different domains and research practices, provoking questions such as: Does the notion of ‘repression’ change in different historical, geographical, and broadly cultural contexts? To what extent, if at all, can psychoanalysis’s view of the repressed be disentangled from its original cultural context? What role has the repressed played in the legitimation, maintenance, and deconstruction of colonial powers? What was the role of physical excavation in the creation, manipulation, showcasing and exploitation of cultural memory? (e.g. the discovery of ancient ruins and archaeological searches for the garden of Eden)?

Bringing together academics from diverse disciplines and fields (including but not limited to (post)colonial studies, archaeology, literary studies, film studies, media studies, psychology and anthropology), this conference aims to attract the attention of academic staff, postgraduate research students and early-career researchers working in the UK and beyond.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers with different methodological approaches and temporal focuses. Topics may include but are not restricted to:

• Pre-freudian concept of unconscious in literature and media;
• The notion of the civilized/uncivilized in colonial discourses;
• The representation of personal and collective pasts;
• Return of ‘primitive’ beliefs, i.e colonial engulfment;
• Social and cultural repression;
• The uncanny, memory and trauma;
• Archaeology of the mind: mind as colonial territory;
• Exoticism, orientalism and racism in literary/cinematic discourses;
• The return of the surmounted;
• Colonial literature and cinema;
• The role of archaeology in the legitimization of colonialism.

Those interested in presenting a paper should send a short abstract (max. 300 words) and a biographical note (max. 150 words) to apcwarwick@gmail.com by 15 December 2023. Participants may also be invited to publish their contributions in an edited publication as part of the Warwick Series in the Humanities, published by Routledge.

This conference is sponsored by the Humanities Research Centre (HRC) at the University of Warwick.

We look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the organizers, Gennaro Ambrosino and Kerry Gibbons at apcwarwick@gmail.com

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