Yeshiva University
Antiquities, Museums and Historical Writing in the Late Renaissance
2005-2006
William Stenhouse is Assistant Professor of History at Yeshiva University in New York. He studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford, before receiving an MA from the Warburg Institute in Renaissance historical studies and a Ph.D. in history from University College London. He is the author of articles on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century classical scholarship and two books: the volume of the Cassiano dal Pozzo catalogue raisonné devoted to drawings of inscriptions (2002), and Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History: Historical Scholarship in the Late Renaissance (2005), a study of the interpretation of classical inscriptions and sixteenth-century recreations of the ancient world. At the Italian Academy, he will be exploring the connections between museums and the writing of history in the second half of the sixteenth century. He will focus on the ways in which the display of antiquities in Italian collections changed the ideas of scholars across Europe about what constituted historical evidence and how they were to present their own historical scholarship.
2005-2006: Fall
Sissi was born in 1977 in Bologna. She graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti and her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Italy and Holland. In 2001 she contributed a performance work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami. In 2002 she won the Querini Stampalia Award “Furla per l'Arte”. In 2004, her solo show Nidi was exhibited at the the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Rome. Central to Sissi's work are manual ability and the body; sculptural elements, including wool, rattan, scoubidu, are fundamental to her performances and become environments for her body, like a butterfly's cocoon.
Università di Venezia
Ca' Foscari
Political Theologies and Political Religions in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s
2005-2006
Simon Levis-Sullam (Venezia 1974) received a PhD in European Social History from the University of Venice, Ca' Foscari. His main fields of interest are the history of ideas in Europe between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century, with a particular focus on nationalisms and fascisms; the history of the Jews and of Anti-Semitism; the history of the Holocaust. He has studied at the University of Venice, Ca' Foscari, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and he has been a fellow of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi in Turin. He is the author of Una Comunità Immaginata: Gli Ebrei a Venezia, 1900-1938 (Unicopli: Milan 2001), and the editor of Risorgimento Italiano e Religioni Politiche (special issue of "Società e Storia", 2004, 106). He is also the editor, with M. Cattaruzza, M. Flores and E. Traverso, of an international Storia della Shoah, the first volume of which was published by UTET (Turin) in October 2005. He is working on a book on the relationship between the Risorgimento and Fascism through the influence of Mazzini. At the Italian Academy, this year, he is initiating a new research project on "political theologies" in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, based on a comparison between Giovanni Gentile and Carl Schmitt, and aimed at the study of the long-term influence of "political romanticism" in the rise of fascisms in Europe.
Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften
Austria
Radical Natural Philosophy, Politics and Culture in Late Sixteenth Century Naples. The Cases of Bernardino Telesio, Giordano Bruno, Giambattista della Porta
2005-2006
Sergius Kodera received his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Vienna, Austria, in 1994. Since then he has been teaching history of Renaissance Philosophy at the same university. Form 1994 to 1997 he was a Frances Yates and Erwin Schroedinger Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London. He received his Habilitation at the University of Vienna in 2004; during this year he was research fellow at the IFK in Vienna. Kodera has published on and/or translated works by Leone Ebreo, Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino and Giambattista della Porta. Currently, he is working on a book exploring the intellectual culture of late sixteenth century Naples.
Università di Torino
The Three Envies of a Mathematician: of the pen, of the brush, and of the stick
Meetings with Remarkable Minds2005-2006
Piergiorgio Odifreddi has studied mathematics and logic in Italy (Torino), the United States (Urbana and Los Angeles) and the Soviet Union ( Novosibirsk), and has taught it in Italy (Torino), the United States (Cornell) and in various other countries (from China to Australia). His main professional interest is the theory of computation, which studies potentialities and limitations of computers. In this field he has published the 1600 pages of "Classical Recursion Theory" (North Holland, 1989 and 1999), in two volumes. In the last decade he has devoted himself to expository works, writing for many newspapers and magazines, from "Repubblica" and "L'Espresso" to "Le Scienze", and publishing many books: among the latest are "Penna, pennello e bacchetta" (Laterza, 2005), on the relationships between mathematics and the arts, and "Il matematico impertinente" (Longanesi, 2005), a collection of essays on science and the humanities. At the Academy he is working on "Incontri con menti straordinarie," a collection of interviews with Nobel laureates and other extraordinary minds, and on "Perche' non possiamo essere cristiani," a pamphlet against the current revival of Christian fundamentalism in Italy and elsewhere.
Bowdoin College
Italy's Forgotten Refugees
2005-2006
Pamela Ballinger is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College. She holds degrees from Stanford University (B.A. 1990), Cambridge University (M. Phil. 1991), and Johns Hopkins University (M.A. 1994, Ph.D.1998). She is author of History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (2003, Princeton University Press). She has published on topics that include D'Annunzio's occupation of Fiume, Trieste and "imperial nostalgia," the Adriatic "seascape," hybridity, and the repressed memory movement. Her current book project takes the fate of the Italian populations of Istria as a starting point for analyzing the broader topic of the "return" of Italian nationals to peninsular Italy from former Italian possessions after World War II. She is also interested in issues of coastal development in contemporary Croatia, having begun a new ethnographic project that examines meanings of place, the politics of vacation homes, and the reconfiguration of the tourist industry in Istria.
Università di Feltre
Italy
Lacuna: Building the Void for a New Theory of Literary Expression
2005-2006
Nicola Gardini received a Laurea in Lettere Classiche from the Università degli Studi di Milano and a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from New York University. He currently teaches Comparative Literature at the Università degli Studi di Palermo. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, literary translations from various languages, and poems. His second novel is due to be published next year. More information can be found at Nicola Gardini's website.
University of Cambridge
United Kingdom
Gianfrancesco Sagredo: The Virtual Virtuoso
2005-2006
Nick Wilding was awarded his PhD in History from the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy (2000). He has taught at Stanford University and the department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, where he was a British Academy Post Doctoral Fellow (2002-2005). He has published articles on Robert Hooke, Athanasius Kircher and John Wilkins. His interests include the history of science in the early modern period and the history of the book. He is currently working on a new translation of Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems for Penguin and writing a biography of Galileo's close friend, the Venetian natural philosopher Gianfrancesco Sagredo.
2005-2006: Spring
Marcella Vanzo was born in 1973 in Milan, Italy, where she lives and works. After obtaining a degree in anthropology, she graduated from the Accademia di Brera in Milan. Her work focuses on video installations, performance and photography. Her selected group shows include: “Exit,” Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, 2002; “Private Architectures,” Galleria Continua (S. Gimignano), 2003; “Assab One,” Milan, 2004; “Aperto per lavori in corso,” Pavilion for Contemporary Art in Milan, 2005; and “Ecce Uomo,” now showing at Spazio Oberdan, Milan. “Limbo,” her second solo show, is currently on at Studio Guenzani, Milan. She won the Emerging Artist Prize awarded by ACACIA (the Italian Association of Friends of Contemporary Art) in 2004. Her work is part of the permanent collection of the Pavilion for Contemporary Art in Milan, of the Castello di Ama per l'arte contemporanea in Siena, Italy, and the ACACIA fund.
Università di Milano
Iconography as Relic: The Transmission of Medieval Images
2005-2006
Ludovico Geymonat works on the role of images in cultural transmission. His research concerns the formation and diffusion of medieval iconography. He graduated in Art History at the Università di Torino (1996) and will receive a PhD in Medieval Art from Princeton University (2005). As professore a contratto, he has taught History of Medieval Art at the Università di Milano (2002-2004). He is the author of "1233 Byzantinizing the Parma Baptistery" (Miscellanea Marciana, 2002) and "Stile e contesto: gli affreschi di San Zan Degol a Venezia" (in Venezia e Bisanzio, Venezia 2005). At the Italian Academy, his research will focus on medieval means of duplicating images and iconography and on the role of model drawings in cultural appropriation.
Università di Pisa
Computer Networks and Communication
2005-2006
Born in 1950 in Livorno, Italy. Citizen of Italy.
Received the "Laurea in Scienze dell'Informazione" from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1973. She is currently a full professor of computer Science at the University of Pisa.
Since 1973, she was associated as a researcher with the Department of Informatica of the University of Pisa. From 1987 to 1990 she was appointed full professor of computer science at Department of "Informatica e Applicazioni" at the University of Salerno. Since 1990 she joined the Department of Computer Science of Pisa, where she presently teaches courses of "Algorithm and Data Structures" and "Web Algorithms". She was Coordinator of the study programs of the Department of Computer Science of Pisa from 1991 to 1994. During that period the study programs were completely revised.
She has been visiting professor at the National University of Somalia in 1989 and visiting scientist at the Carleton University of Ottawa in Canada in 1991 and at the Ottawa University in 2003. She was also visiting professor at the Botswana University of Gaborone in Botswana in 2004.
In the framework of UNESCO projects of "Informatics for developing countries" she has given basic courses of informatics in many universities of developing countries. As an expert of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she spent several research and teaching periods in Jordan in 1996, 97 and 98 and in Egypt.
She is referee of several international journals and is in the program committee of international conferences. Her research activity, started in the field of data structures and sequential algorithm, has developed in the field of parallel and distributed algorithms and in the relationship between abstract computational models and realistic computers and circuits. The research is attested by around fifty papers published on the main scientific journals. She is co-author of one textbook of large diffusion and of another book on the relationships between algorithmica, other fields of knowledge and normal life.
Recent research papers:
1. P. Crescenzi, A. Del Lungo, R. Grossi, E. Lodi, L. Pagli, G. Rossi, Text Sparsification via Local Maxima, THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE, num. 1, vol. 304, pp. 341-364, 2003
2. A. Bernasconi, V. Ciriani V., F. Luccio, L. Pagli, Three-level logic minimization based on function regularities, IEEE TRANSACTION ON COMPUTER-AIED DESIGN OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, num. 22, vol. 8, pp. 1005-1005, 2003
3. P. Flocchini, E. Lodi, F. Luccio, L. Pagli and N.Santoro, Dynamic Monopolies in Tori, DISCRETE APPLIED MATHEMATICS, vol. 137, pp. 197-212, 2004 4. G. Franceschini, R. Grossi, J.I. Munro, L. Pagli, Implicit B-trees: a new data structure for the dictionary problem, JOURNAL OF COMPUTER AND SYSTEMS SCIENCES INTERNATIONAL, num. 4, vol. 68, pp. 788-807, 2004
5. A. Bernasconi, V. Ciriani, F. Luccio, and L. Pagli, Exploiting Regularities for Boolean Function Synthesis, THEORY OF COMPUTING SYSTEMS, to appear. Books:
6. Luccio F., Pagli L., Algoritmi, divinità e gente comune, ETS, Pisa, 0, 19992005-2006: Fall
Ivana Spinelli is an Italian artist who recently studied at the University of Luton (U.K.) after taking a degree from the Academy of Fine Art in Macerata, Italy. She contributed to The Washroom Projects in London, performing her work in a public space. Spinelli is a versatile artist who has created video installations, environments and performance in addition to painting and Web projects. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in London, Paris, Bologna, and Rome.
Brown University
Critical Edition of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Letters and the Idea of Concordia during the Late Middle Ages
2005-2006
Francesco Borghesi received his degree in Philosophy at the University of Bologna (2000) and his Ph.D. in Italian Studies from Brown University (2004). He visited several foreign academic institutions such as the Seminar für Geistesgeschichte und Philosophies der Renaissance at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (Germany) and the Warburg Institute in London (UK), where he has been a Frances A. Yates Short-Term Research Fellow. His research interests include late medieval and early modern literature, philosophy and theology.
Currently he is preparing a critical edition of Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola's letters and, recently, has begun work on a project addressing the diffusion of the idea of Concordia during the late Middle Ages and aiming at exploring interactions among the literary, philosophical, historical and theological culture of his times.
As his main research project entails the edition of a humanist text, he has developed a strong interest in textual criticism, history of scholarship and philology. Furthermore he is actively collaborating to two on-line projects regarding, respectively, Giovanni Pico's Oration and his 900 Theses, based on a collaboration between the University of Bologna and Brown University. Having entered the somewhat uncharted territory of digital editions, he is also interested in the new philological models to experiment with and in issues that have to do with the function and goals of print versus electronic editions of the same texts.Università di Roma La Sapienza
Italian and European Economic Policies in the Context of Changing US-EU Relationships
2005-2006
Fiorella Kostoris Padoa Schioppa received her Italian degree in the Department of Economics at Bocconi University in Milan. She has a Master of Science from the Graduate School of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now Professor at the University of Rome La Sapienza and teaches a senior seminar at the Department of Economics at Columbia University. She is also Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. She served for two terms on the board of the International Economic Association and has been a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research since 1989 and a Member of the Scientific Committee or the Advisory Board of numerous European institutions, in Brussels, London, and Paris and the Eurogroup of 50.
She is editor of the Economic Book Series for the Publisher Ulrico Hoepli; a Member of the Scientific Board of the Enciclopedia Treccani; one of the 7 members of the Comitato di Indirizzo per la Valutazione della Ricerca; and an editorialist for the daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore and the Radio Radicale broadcast "Lessico dell'Economia".
Among many other distinctions Kostoris is Grande Ufficiale al Merito, nominated by the Italian President of the Republic in 2000, and Officier dans la Legion d'Honneur, nominated by the French President of the Republic in 2001.
She has published more than 100 papers and 20 books. Her research interests include macroeconomics and labour, public finance and European matters, gender equality, social mobility, regional economics, and the cultural heritage.Columbia University
Waves, Rhythms and Oscillations: the pacemaker molecules that enable our body to keep the beat
2005-2006
Bina Santoro completed her studies at the University of Rome, where she was trained as a molecular biologist and received a PhD in Evolutionary Biology. She has since specialized in the study of electrical signaling in the nervous system and the molecules responsible for it, namely ion channels. Her interests particularly concern a class of ion channels responsible for the generation of oscillatory, rhythmic electrical activity in the brain, as well as in the heart (pacemaker channels). She first identified the family of genes that encode pacemaker channels, and is still involved in the study of their molecular expression pattern and cellular organization, a field in which she is considered one of the leading experts. Her work is aimed both at understanding basic mechanisms of brain function, with a specific focus on the neural substrates for learning and cognition, as well as at understanding diseases due to electrical disturbances, including epilepsy and cardiac arrhythmias. Bina Santoro is an Associate Research Scientist in the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University, where she works in collaboration with a group of biophysicists, electrophysiologists and geneticists interested in ion channel function.
Università di Siena
The Art Criticism of Franz Boas and Gladys A. Reichard (1897-1933)
2005-2006
After studies at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza' (Italy), Benedetta Cestelli Guidi received her MA in 1994 at the Warburg Institute, London: both her researches dealt with cultural and visual politics in Renaissance Italy (Venice and Ferrara). A portion of her part time research project dealt with the materials (both written and figurative) that Aby Warburg collected during his 'fieldtrip' during his American journey (1895-1896). From this research came two publications: Warburg's photographs, published in the English-German volume 'Photographs at the Frontier. Aby Warburg in America 1895-1896' co-edited by Cestelli Guidi and Nicholas Mann (Merrell Holberton and The Warburg Institute, London, 1998), and the first comprehensive study of Warburg's Pueblo collection, published in the French volume 'Le Rituel du Serpent. Art et Anthropologie' (Macula, Paris 2003). She co-organized the international conference on the legacy of Aby Warburg including panels on aesthetics, art history and anthropology (Rome, 2001). The collected works of the conference are published under the title 'Lo sguardo di Giano. Aby Warburg fra tempo e memoria'; papers in the collection which concern anthropology were also edited by Cestelli Guidi (Nino Aragno, Torino 2005).
In her Ph.D. she conducts a comparative study between Aby Warburg's Kulturwissenschaft and Franz Boas's research on cultural anthropology as seen in their respective approaches to museum display and the visual arts (University of Siena, Italy, 2005).
Her research at the Italian Academy focuses on Boas and Reichard's framework for art criticism with respect to native art. Boas and Reichard's methodologies concerning native art are compared to European art criticism developed in the 19th and 20th centuries in German speaking countries (G.Semper; A.Riegl; H.Wolfflin; A.Warburg) in order to prove if, and to what extent, the two disciplines - anthropology and art history - have had an influence in methods and analysis.2005-2006: Spring
Antonio Rovaldi was born in Parma, Italy, in 1975. He lives in Milan, Italy, where he graduated from the NABA Academy of Fine Arts. He teaches the Master class for Art and Landscape Architecture, “Paesaggi straordinari,” at the Santa Giulia Academy of Fine Art in Brescia, Italy. Since 2000, Rovaldi has been primarily occupied with landscapes as they relate to physical and mental movement. The tools Rovaldi uses to represent landscapes: photography, video, sculpture, and drawing-are woven into new personal narratives. He has taken part in several solo and group show in Italy and abroad, including: “Notes from the City, Notes from the Land,” LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, 2006; “Marcamenti,” Museo dell'arredo contemporaneo of Ravenna, Italy, 2005; “Cari signori,” MONITOR, Rome, Italy, 2005; “Sopra il luogo,” Alessandro De March Gallery, Milan, 2004; “Videovillage,” Palazzo della Triennale, Milan, 2004; “Junge kunst aus italien,” Documenta Halle Kassel, Germany, 2000; “Homo luden” Video Italiano, Centro Cultural Parque de Espana, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2001; “Transart 2000,” Labin, Croatia, 2000; “Viasatellite,” First International Festival of Photography, Rome, 2002; “Art space 2000,” Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, 2000. Recently he published his first artist's book, titled “Marcamenti,” printed in Italy by “essegi,” with critical text by Emanuela De Cecco and Davide Ferri.
Università di Napoli
Inhibition of EGF Signaling in Human Cancer Cells
2005-2006
Antonio Feliciello (M.D., Ph.D) is an Assistant Professor of Molecular Pathology at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Pathology, University of Naples, Italy and currently is a Fellow at the Italian Academy; he is also a visiting scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Max Gottesman at the Institute of Cancer Research, Columbia University. The main focus of Dr. Feliciello's research is the definition of the molecular mechanism(s) underlying the biological functions of hormones and neurotransmitters. This is relevant to the secretion of hormones in endocrine glands and the development of certain types of human cancers. During his residency at Columbia, Dr. Feliciello will concentrate on the spatial and temporal framework of hormone action and cancer growth. The ultimate goal of this research is to improve our understanding of human cancer and hormone action, and to develop new tools for a targeted therapy.