The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Professor Nicoletta Pireddu (Georgetown University) titled:
The Activism of Imagination: Fictions of Europe Between Utopia and Disenchantment
Against the backdrop of political, economic, and social problems that reinforce the idea of Europe’s existential crisis, this talk redraws the attention to constructive aspects of the Europe-building discourse often muffled by a rising Euroscepticism. In particular, it explores the contribution of literature both as the repository of a European cultural memory and as a forerunner of crucial components of the ongoing European integration design. A selection of modern and contemporary Italian fiction, in dialogue with a broader literary and intellectual discourse at pivotal junctures of the European project, addresses the role of utopia not as a compensatory wishful projection but, rather, as creative thinking propelled by the critical and transformative power of imagination.
Nicoletta Pireddu is inaugural director of the Georgetown Humanities Initiative and professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Georgetown University. Her research revolves around European literary and cultural relations, cosmopolitanism, borders and migration, history of ideas, and translation studies. She has published over eighty articles and numerous monographs and edited volumes, among them Antropologi alla corte della bellezza. Decadenza ed economia simbolica nell’Europa fin de siècle, which received the American Association for Italian Studies Book Award; The Works of Claudio Magris: Temporary Homes, Mobile Identities, European Borders, and most recently, Migrating Minds: Theories and Practices of Cultural Cosmopolitanism (2023 American Comparative Literature Association “René Wellek Prize for the Best Edited Essay Collection”).
The lecture is co-sponsored by the Nanovic Institute.


The Italian Research Seminar, a core event of the Center for Italian Studies, aims to provide a regular forum for faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and colleagues from other universities to present and discuss their current research. The Seminar is vigorously interdisciplinary, and embraces all areas of Italian literature, language, and culture, as well as perceptions of Italy, its achievements and its peoples in other national and international cultures. The Seminar constitutes an important element in the effort by Notre Dame's Center for Italian Studies to promote the study of Italy and to serve as a strategic point of contact for scholarly exchange.

Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.