Fellows 2007–2008

2007-2008: Spring

Silvia Vendramel’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany.

Università degli Studi di Messina

Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry

Are antidepressant effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation mediated by stem cells?

2007-2008

Rosalia Crupi received her Ph.D. in Clinical Neurosciences at the Medical School of the University of Messina after taking a degree in Biological Sciences in 2003 at the same university with a thesis entitled "Cytotoxicity effect of nemathocyste Aiptasia mutabilis capsular fluid on VERO and HEP-2 cells." She currently collaborates as a researcher at CUNY's Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education.

Università degli Studi di Bologna

Iconographies of memory: the geopolitics of "fantasy coffins"

2007-2008

Roberta Bonetti teaches History of Anthropology at University of Bologna; Faculty Arts and Humanities, 2nd Level Degree Course in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology. She graduated from the University of Bologna with a degree in Anthropology. In 2006 she had a Ph.D. degree in "Religious Studies: Social Sciences and Historical Studies of Religions" and in "Anthropologie sociale, ethnographie et etnologie", a joint program of the University of Bologna and l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales of Paris. Her dissertation, entitled Oggetti funerari dell'Africa contemporanea. Modalità di produzione, uso e rappresentazione nei musei etnografici, discusses contemporary art of South Ghana and its circulation and representation in the western world.
She has extensive work experience in the field of museum anthropology, in particular that of Africa.
From 1996-2002 she conceived and curated a series of exhibitions, educational courses, and catalogues. She has conducted research in African and Italian museums, run university seminars on the topic of museum anthropology and anthropology of art.
Two related research interests have emerged and developed in her work as museum ethnographer: On the one hand, the processes involved in the construction of "traditional" and contemporary art; and on the other, the communicative strategies and cognitive processes of reception employed by exhibitions and social actors respectively. More generally, she is interested in the complex relations between the museum (and art) world and society, which are multidimensional and changing spaces. At the moment, she is involved in exhibition experiments in particular in the field of museum education, concentrating on cognitive processes involved in reading images.

Università degli Studi di Pavia

"The other side of philology": stories of literary creation

2007-2008

Mariarosa Bricchi received a Ph.D. from the University of Pavia with a dissertation on Archaic and Literary Vocabulary in the 19th Century Italian Narrative Prose, which was then revised and published as a book under the title "La roca trombazza. Lessico arcaico e letterario nella prosa narrativa dell'Ottocento italiano" (Alessandria, Edizioni dell'Orso, 2000). 

Besides the literary language of the Ottocento (she is currently working on the syntax of Alessandro Manzoni's essays), her areas of interest are: 20th Century Italian and English speaking literature; history of publishing; the process of literary creation, both from the philologists' point of view (the making of a work through manuscript evidence) and the authors' point of view. On these subjects she has published articles, essays and two books, one on Beppe Fenoglio, one on Giorgio Manganelli. 

She is currently professore a contratto of History of the Italian Language at the University of Pavia.

Università degli Studi di Trieste

The economic effects of imperial property in Roman Italy

2007-2008

Marco Maiuro (living in Rome), studies Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology at the Universities of Perugia, Siena, Freiburg (Germany), Trieste and Clermont-Ferrand. PhD Thesis (Trieste and Clermont) on Economic History of Imperial Italy ("La proprietà imperiale in Italia: un'interpretazione storica") soon to be published; collaborates with Universities of Rome and Viterbo (Roman History, professors Lo Cascio and de Romanis) and, since 2006, Field Director at the Archaeological Mission at Villamagna (University of Pennsylvania, BSR, AIAC). Articles published on ancient topography of Rome, on Economic History of the Roman Empire, on cultural change in the Imperial Period. A new archaeological guide of the suburbs of Rome (together with F. Coarelli) is in preparation. Interests focused also on History, Epigraphy and Archaology of the Eastern and African Provinces of the Roman Empire from the Hellenistic Period to Late Antique.

Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza'

Emotions and power: the system of images in Rome from the mid to the late Republican era (3rd-1st century B.C.)

2007-2008

Marco Galli is Doctor in Classical Art and Archaeology (1998, PhD in Classical Archaeology, Univ. of Cologne (D); 1987 M.A. in Classics, Univ. of Bologna) 

CURRENT POSITION: 2003- Univ. of Roma, 'La Sapienza', Fixed Term Professor in Classical Art and Archaeology. 2005- Member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan, Saidu Sharif-Swat (ISIAO Rome). 2002- Research Affiliate of ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la documentazione). PREVIOUS POSITIONS 2002/2003: Teaching Assistant of Prof. P. Pensabene, Univ. of Rome, 'La Sapienza'. 2001-2002: Univ. of Viterbo, Research Affiliate. Research Project "Sculpture and Context". 1999-2001: Research Affiliate of the German Research Society (DFG). Research Project "Domestic Culture in North Italy", Research Program 'Urban Culture in the Roman Empire' directed by P. Zanker, DAI Rome. 1998-1999: Research-Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Düsseldorf, Research Program (P. Zanker, DAI Rome). 1997-1998: Tutor in Classical Archaeology, Archaeological Institute, Univ. of Cologne. GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS: 1997: Junior Research Fellowship, École Fran"aise at Athens. 1994-1997: Junior Research Fellowship, Archaeological Institute of the Univ. of Cologne. Research Program 'Formation and Self-representation of the Urban Elites in the Roman Empire,' directed by H. v. Hesberg, financed by the German Research Society (DFG). 

Research themes: Roman Architecture and Sculpture of the Hellenistic/Republican and Imperial Ages (particularly in Italy and Greece). Terminology of Ancient Architectural Terms (Project ICCD Rome). Evergetism and history of mentality in the Second Century AD: The Phenomenon of the Second Sophistic. Transformations of the Sacred Space during the Roman Period in the Greek East. Phenomenon of the Religious Associations in the Roman Empire. Domestic Space and Material Culture of the Roman House. Graeco-Roman Pattern in Early Buddhist Art of Gandhara. Historiography of Classical Archaeology: A. Riegl and the Biology of Image. 

Recent monographies and articles
-Die Lebenswelt eines Sophisten. Untersuchungen zu den Bauten und Stiftungen des Herodes Atticus (Philipp von Zabern Verlag, Mainz am Rhein, 2002)
-O. D. Cordovana - M. Galli (a cura di), Arte e memoria culturale nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, Catania 2007.
-P. Callieri, L. Colliva, M. Galli et al. (a cura di), Valli della Memoria. Antiche genti Luoghi Immagini nello Swat. 50 della Missione Archeologica in Pakistan. Catalogo della mostra documentaria, Roma, IsIAO 14.12.2006, Roma 2006.
-Hellenistic Court Imagery in Early Buddhist Art of Gandhara, in P. Calieri (a cura di) Atti del XIX International Conference on South Asian Archaeology, Ravenna 2-6 July 2007 (i.s.)
-Riegl e la "Biologia" delle immagini, in Alois Riegl (1858-1905), Un secolo dopo, Convegno internazionale 30.11-2.12-2005, Accademia dei Lincei Roma (i.s.)
- Processi della memoria nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, in O. Cordovana - M. Galli (a cura di), Arte e memoria culturale nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, Catania 2007, pagg. 7-14
- Et Greci quidem eum consecraverunt. La creazione del mito di Antinoo, in O. Cordovana - M. Galli (a cura di), Arte e memoria culturale nell'età della Seconda Sofistica, Catania 2007, 181-203
-Teatro della memoria: mito e paideia sul sarcofago di Velletri, in: M. Angle, A. Germano, F. Zevi (a cura di), Museo & Territorio, Atti del IV convegno, Velletri 7-8 maggio 2004, Roma 2005, 75-90.
-Vasellame domestico e Lebenswelt: nascita della cultura urbana nella colonia romana di Ariminum, in: P. Zanker - R. Neudecker (Hrsg.) Lebenswelten. Bilder und R"ume in der r"mischen Stadt der Kaiserzeit, Palilia Bd. 16, Wiesbaden 2005, 153-173
-Pilgrimage as lite Habitus: Educated Pilgrims in the Sacred Landscape During the Second Sophistic, in: J. Elsner-I. Rutherford (eds.), Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity. Seeing the Gods, Oxford 2005, 253-290
-'Creating Religious identities' paideia e religione nella Seconda Sofistica, in: B. E. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic. Millennium Studies II, Berlin-New York 2004, 315-356

Collège de France

Culture and Religion

Christianity and its images: from acheiropoieta to photography

2007-2008

Officer of the Légion d'honneur
Commander of L'ordre national du Mérite
Commander of the Palmes Académiques
Commander of Arts and Letters
Honorable Academician of the Accademia Clementina
Honorable Academician of the Académie d'Aix-en-Provence
Member of the Accademia dei Lincei (1997)
Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy

Born in Marseilles on 10 June 1932, Marc Fumaroli spent his childhood and adolescence in Fès. His mother was his first teacher. He completed his secondary education and Baccalauréat in Letters at the Lycée Ville-Nouvelle in Fès. He completed his higher education at the Lycée Thiers in Marseilles, at the University of Aix-en-Provence and at the Sorbonne. He passed the Agrégation in Classical Letters in 1958. He did his military service at the École militaire interarmes de Cõetquidan and in the 6th Artillery Regiment in Colbert in the Constantinois between September 1958 and January 1961. He was pensionnaire of the Fondation Thiers from September 1963 to August 1966. He was elected assistant of the Faculty of Letters at Lille at his return in 1965, and Doctor of Letters at IV-Sorbonne in June 1976. During the same month he was elected master of conferences at the Paris IV-Sorbonne, succeeding Professor Raymond Picard. Director of the journal, XVIIe siècle (1976-1986) and member of the editorial board of the journal Commentaire (1978-1995), under the directorship of Raymond Aron until his death in 1983 and thereafter under that of Jean-Claude Casanova. 

In 1986 Marc Fumaroli was elected professor of the Collège de France, to which he was presented by the poet Yves Bonnefoy and the historian Jean Delumeau, and was granted the chair entitled "Rhetoric and Society in Europe (16th-17th centuries)." In 1977 he participated in the foundation of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, over which he presided between 1984 and 85, and organized the Third International Congress at Tours in the last-mentioned year. He served as director of Centre d'étude de la langue et de la literature françaises des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris IV-C.N.R.S.) from 1984-1994. From 1993 to 1999, he was president of the Association pour la sauvegarde des enseignements littéraires (S.E.L.) founded by Mme. Jacqueline de Romilly. After 2000 he succeeded René Pomeau as president of the Society of Literary History of France. He has presided over the Association of the Friends of the Louvre since 1996. In October 2006 he succeeded the Lord Chancellor Gabriel de Broglie as the president of the Interministerial Commission of Technology. 

He was a visiting professor at All Souls College, Oxford in 1983 and a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1984. He has taught and delivered lectures in numerous universities in the United States (most notably at New York University, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Princeton, Houston, Los Angeles). Invited by Allan Bloom, he delivered a series of lectures in the division known as the Committee for Social Thought in Chicago of which he became a member, with the status of a professor of the university 'at large', where he teaches two months a year. He has been invited to lecture at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., most notably in the Fifteenth Anniversary Lecture Series. He returned there in March-April 2000 to deliver the six Mellon Series Lectures of that year. He gave the Casal Lecture at the University of London and the Zaharoff Lecture at the University of Oxford in 1991. Each year in May he gives a series of lectures at the Istituto di Studi Filosofici founded and directed by M. Gerardo Marotta, and participates frequently in the congresses at the Cini Foundation in Venice. He has received invitations from most Italian universities. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Naples (Federico II) in 1994, from the University of Bologna in 1999, from the University of Genoa and the University Complutense in Madrid in 2004, and the University Complutense in Madrid in 2005, and his courses at the Collège de France have twice been given in Italian universities: the University of Rome in 1995-1996; and the Scuola normale superiore in Pisa in 1999-2000. Since his youth he has considered Italy his second homeland, and is proud of counting among his innumerable friends there, Professor Tullio Gregory, Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Rome - la Sapienza. He is a member of numerous learned societies in France and abroad. He is an associate member of the British Academy, member of the American Academy of Science, Letters and Arts, member of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, member of the Accademia dei Lincei (since 1997), and he is president of the Société littéraire de la France, and a frequent collaborator in the Revue. He regularly contributes articles to daily and weekly newspapers in France and abroad. In 1982 he received the Monsieur Marcel prize from the Académie française and in 1992 its Critique award. He received the Balzan prize in September 2001, the Lafue prize in 2002, and the Mémorial and Combourg prizes in 2004. 

On March 2nd 1995 the Académie française elected him to the sixth chair, in which he succeeded Eugène Ionesco. In 1998 he was elected to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in the chair left vacant by Georges Duby.

2007-2008: Fall

Photographer and videomaker, Linda Fregni Nagler was born in Stockholm on October 21,1976, and now lives and works in Milan, Italy. After earning a BFA in painting at the Academy of fine Arts of Brera, Milan, in 2000, she completed the advanced course in Visual Arts with Jimmie Durham at the Ratti Foundation, in Como in 2004. In 2006 she received a diploma in Cinematographic Photography at the Escuela International de Cine y Television (EICTV), in San Antonio de Los Baños, Cuba. She has exhibited her photographs and videos in solo shows at Viafarini Gallery in Milan (2003) and at Olivetti Foundation in Rome (2006). Beginning in 2003 she participated in “Progetto Casina”, an artistic project inside the womens section of the Prison of San Vittore, Milan, and in 2007 she exhibited the related photographic work in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, home of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper”.

Università degli Studi di Udine

Italian mosaic and terrazzo workers in New York: the transplantation of an aesthetic and artisanal heritage.

2007-2008

Javier P. Grossutti was born in Argentina in 1967 and graduated in Political Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires in 1991. Also in 1991, he "returned" to Friuli and attended a specialization course at the Degree course in International and Diplomatic Sciences at the University of Trieste in Gorizia. He received his Doctorate in Political Geography from the University of Trieste (1994-1996). His research thesis, "I 'rientri' in Friuli da Argentina, Brasile, Uruguay e Venezuela (1989-1991)", was published in 1997. His main field of study includes: Friulian emigration, return migration and problems connected to Friulian and Italian communities abroad, where he has conducted numerous surveys for the Universities of Trieste, Trento and Udine. He has carried out research in collaboration with the Universities of Caen (France), Buenos Aires, Quilmes, Cuyo-Mendoza and Patagonia (Argentina) and Itaja" (Brazil). He participated in the projects "Regional Development and Cultural Landscape Change: the Example of the Alps - Evaluating and Adjusting EU and National Policies to Manage a Balanced Change" and "Future in the Alps", collaborating with universities and research centers in Austria, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Slovenia. He has held courses on Italian emigration and return migration for the University of Udine. Currently he is contracted researcher at the University of Udine, Faculty of Economics, and contracted professor at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, also at the University of Udine. His main publications include: Una forma particolare di immigrazione: i 'rientri' in Trentino dall"America Latina 1989-1994 (Milan 1997); Una scelta difficile. Egidio Feruglio in Argentina (Udine 1997); L"emigrazione dal Friuli. Saggio bibliografico (Pordenone 1997); Les coopératives de travail des maçons frioulans en France (Caen 2001); Friulani d"Argentina: l"altra patria oltreoceano 1875-1914 (Roma 2004);Vivir en dos lugares al mismo tiempo. Los enfermeros de Pantianicco (Friuli) en Buenos Aires (siglos XIX-XX) (Buenos Aires 2005); Flussi migratori di rientro e trasformazione dell"economia friulana tra shock petrolifero, terremoto e apertura dell"Est Europeo (San Marino 2007). He was also the scientific editor of the section "Emigration and work" of the Provincial Museum of Country Life "Diogene Penzi".

Columbia University

Associate Fellow

From necropolis to metropolis: the rediscovery of the catacombs in Counter Reformation Rome

2007-2008

Irina Oryshkevich received her Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University in 2003. Since completing her dissertation--a study of the history of the Roman catacombs from late antiquity to the early modern period--she has been a fellow at the Society of Fellows at Columbia University and a recipient of a grant from the American Association of University Women (AAUW).
Since her dissertation, Dr. Oryshkevich has focused on the cult of martyrs and the historiography of the early Church in the Counter Reformation, and their impact on the nascent discipline of 'Christian archaeology'. She will devote her residency at the Italian Academy to what is in effect a sequel to her dissertation, namely, the transformation of the catacombs, which had been viewed throughout the middle ages as mere cemeteries, into 'Roma sotterranea', a clandestine city that sheltered thousands of Christians from imperial persecutions. This transformation, assisted through imagery and rhetoric, provided Christian Rome with physical foundations, thereby reconfirming its primacy at a time when the papacy was under fierce attack on every confessional front.

Università degli Studi di Palermo

Challenges of pluralism and challenges to pluralism: the legal contexts

2007-2008

Giorgio Pino is Associate Professor in Philosophy of Law at the Law School of the University of Palermo; he graduated from the University of Palermo with a degree in Law (1996), then received an LL.M. from the European Academy of Legal Theory (Brussels, 1997) and completed a post-graduate course in Law and Computers at the University of Bologna (2001). Professor Pino also holds a Ph.D. in Human Rights (University of Palermo, 2001). He served for three years at the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, Rome, 2002-2004).
His research interests mainly concern privacy rights, freedom of expression, legal reasoning, and constitutional interpretation. An editor of Diritto & Questioni pubbliche, an international on-line journal on philosophy of law and public policy, Professor Pino has extensively published in Italian and foreign journals, such as Ragion pratica, Analisi e diritto, and Law and Philosophy, and is the author of the book Il diritto all'identità personale. Interpretazione costituzionale e creatività giurisprudenziale (Il Mulino, 2003).

Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza

Critical edition of Leopardi's translation from Greek moral prose and the use of Greek ethics in the early nineteenth century

2007-2008

D'Intino received both his Laurea and his PhD (1992) from the University of Rome "La Sapienza", where he is now Professor of Italian literature and Comparative Literature in the Faculty of Oriental Studies. 

He has been lecturer in Italian literature at the Universities of Amsterdam (NL), Birmingham (UK), and Perugia. 

His first book (1989, 2nd edition 1998) was on L'autobiografia moderna (theory and history of the genre). In the last fifteen years his main research interest has been the work of Giacomo Leopardi, from both a philological and a comparativist point of view. He published the critical edition of Leopardi's Scritti e frammenti autobiografici (1995), an annotated edition of his verse translations from Greek and Latin, Poeti greci e latini (1999) and twenty-something essays on various aspects of his thought. He is working on the critical edition of Leopardi's prose translations from Greek (Isocrates, Epictetus, etc.) and on a book of essays on the Operette morali. 

Other research areas include Pirandello's short narrative (L'antro della bestia, 1992) and literary theory. 

In 1998 he founded, with Michael Caesar, the "Leopardi Centre" at the University of Birmingham. As Director of the Centre, he co-organised the International Conference "Leopardi and the book in the age of Romanticism" (October 1998), and many seminars, lectures and events. He is also chief editor (with Michael Caesar) of the first complete translation (in progress) of Leopardi's Zibaldone into English.

New York University

Regulation of microtubules and actin cross-talk in oriented cell migration: the role of formins, APC protein and unconventional myosins

2007-2008

Francesca Bartolini began her studies at the University of Rome "La Sapienza," where she was trained as a geneticist and received her degree in Biology. In 2004 she earned her Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology at New York University with a thesis on the characterization of two newly identified proteins with similar functions to tubulin-specific chaperones. The same year she moved to the laboratory of Dr. Gundersen at Columbia University, where she was awarded a grant by the "Telethon" Foundation (Italy) to investigate the role of formins, a class of tubulin and actin regulators that are also involved in the onset of a genetic syndrome that causes deafness. She has since focused on the basic understanding of regulated tubulin turn-over and on the cross-talk between the actin and the tubulin cytoskeletons in basic cellular processes such as oriented cell migration and adhesion. More recently, her work is also aimed at dissecting the role of unconventional myosins in the regulation of organelle trafficking through the selective stabilization of the tubulin cytoskeleton downstream of Rho GTPases, and discovering whether this process is also necessary in the establishment of neuronal synapses and long term memory.

2007-2008: Fall

Born in Cremona, Italy, in 1974, Favini received his BFA at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied with Alberto Garutti. The book which most exemplifies his artistic concerns is “The Third Landscape” by Gilles Clement, landscape architect and gardener. Favini has exhibited at Fuori Uso, Mercato Globale (Montesilvano 1997, Former Stellamare Colony), La Ville, la Memoire le Jardin (Rome 1998, Villa Medici), Rough End (Milan 2005, Alessandro de March Gallery), Il mio Papà (Rome 2006, Adriano Olivetti Foundation), and Ettore Favini (Milan, Alessandro de March Gallery).

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Forms of transmission of anatomical knowledge: drawings and three-dimensional models in the age of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Vesalius

2007-2008

Domenico Laurenza earned his doctorate in Historical Studies from the Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici (San Marino, 1996; Ph.D.) after training in medicine at the University of Naples (Laurea, 1991). He devotes his research principally to the relationship between scientific models of nature and the theory and practice of art in Early Modern Europe. In particular, he specializes in the work of Leonardo da Vinci and in Renaissance anatomical illustrations, considering the images from both artistic and scientific perspectives.
He is a researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Florence and collaborates with the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (IMSS, Florence). He has spent periods of research at the Warburg Institute in London (Frances A. Yates Fellowship, 1995), at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London (Wellcome Research Travel Grant, 1994), at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Mellon Fellowship, 2006-7) and, as visiting professor, at McGill University in Montreal (2006-7). He is the author of several books, some appearing in English, French and German translation; select titles include: De figura umana. Fisiognomica anatomia e arte in Leonardo (Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 2001); Leonardo. La scienza trasfigurata in arte (Milano, Le scienze/Scientific American 2000); La ricerca dell'armonia. Rappresentazioni anatomiche nel Rinascimento (Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 2003); Leonardo on flight (Giunti, Firenze, 2005); and Leonardo's Machines: Da Vinci's Inventions Revealed (David & Charles, Devon, 2006). In addition he has published articles in scholarly journals such as The Burlington Magazine, Nuncius, ALV Journal, Raccolta Vinciana, and Micrologus.

Università del Piemonte Orientale

Litigants' duty to disclose: a forgotten example of the Italian legal heritage

2007-2008

Chiara Besso is Full Professor of Law at University of Piemonte Orientale in Italy. Member of the Board of the Review "Giurisprudenza Italiana", of the Doctoral school "European Law, History and Law Systems", of the Doctorate on "Foundations of the European Law and Comparative Method", and of the "Scuola di specializzazione per le professioni legali" (Universities of Torino and Piemonte Orientale), she has been Visiting Fellow at the London Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and at the University College of Oxford.
Her areas of research are law of evidence, discovery, reforms of civil procedure, and irregularity of acts.
She is the author of several articles on civil procedure topics (above all civil procedure reforms, taking of evidence, probability and judicial reasoning), and two books on pre-action discovery and procedural formalism (La prova prima del processo; 2004, La sentenza civile inesistente, 1997).
At the Italian Academy, she will be exploring the evolution of the litigants' duty to discover information. She will focus on the origins of the Anglo-American discovery, starting from its antecedent in Roman-canon law methods, as a tool to understand the present differences between the Anglo-American and the European continental attitudes to the ascertainment of truth and to explore the chances to build a notion of the duty to discover acceptable to both civil law and common law countries.

European University Institute

Dante, Sanudo and Marco Polo: romance, crusade and the perpetuation of travel literature as a genre

2007-2008

Antonio Garcia Espada graduated at the Complutense University of Madrid with a degree in Medieval History. His research about the Medieval Travellers to the Indies started at the Jawaharlal Nehru University of Delhi under an anthropological methodology that proved useful to elucidate some of the most puzzling episodes of the narratives of the 14th century travellers. At the European University Institute of Florence his research entered a new stage deeply influenced by the main concerns of the Modern European Expansion. The relation of the first European travel literature to Asia with commerce and the aggressive ideology of the Church against the Muslims became the centre of his dissertation, which was awarded with the Ph. D degree in May 2006. At the Italian Academy he will continue his exploration of the links between the travel literature and romance, and how the symbiosis between these two genres empowered the transmission to the Modern era of a particular idea of otherness and conquest, born at the end of the 13th century. His main areas of interest are travelogue, crusade, mendicant orders, Mongol expansion, cartography, origins of individualism and comparative literature.

Università degli Studi di Verona

Neurophysiology of emotional memory

2007-2008

Dr. Anna Ipata is at present an Associate Research Assistant at the Mahoney Center for Mind and Brain of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University, with an interest in the study of the neuronal basis of visual and cognitive functions in humans and primates. Her research covers the study of visual functions in children with cerebral damage and single neuron recording in alert monkeys. Dr. Ipata took her medical degree at the University of Pisa, where she also completed her residency in Child Neurology and Psychiatry. During the residency, she performed studies focused on the early diagnosis of visual disorders in children with cortical damage, using psychophysical and neurophysiological techniques. After the residency she moved to the Department of Physiology and Vision of the University of Verona for a Ph.D. program in neuroscience. In Verona she studied the neural basis of visual attention in the visual cortex of non-human primates. After completing her Ph.D., she moved to the sensoriomotor research laboratory of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, where she worked as a postdoc under the supervision of Prof. Michael Goldberg. In 2002 she moved to Columbia University with Prof. Goldberg and set up a new laboratory of neurophysiology. Since her arrival in the US, the main focus of her research has been the study of the neuronal substrates of cognitive functions in non-human primates, in particular the role of the parietal cortex in the exploration of the visual scene in monkeys.

2007-2008: Spring

Andrea Mastrovito has exhibited in the M.A.X.X.I. museum in Rome and the Centro Pecci in Prato among many other institutions in Italy and has had numerous solo shows in Europe and the U.S. His work was exhibited in one man shows this spring at the Foley Gallery and at the Pulse Art Fair, both in New York.

Istituto IUAV di Venezia

Domenichino and the "maniera antica" in architecture

2007-2008

Alessandro Borgomainerio graduated at Venice's University of Architecture (Università IUAV di Venezia) and he obtained his Ph.D. degree there in 2004. He is currently Teaching Assistant at the Department of History of Architecture at University IUAV in Venice. Alessandro Borgomainerio's main research focuses on the value of antiquity in Seicento Art and Theory.
In his Ph.D. thesis (Il cardinal Francesco Barberini il Laterano e l'antichità restituita) he has investigated Cardinal Barberini's programme of restoration of Christian antiquities and the role of architects, scholars and patrons involved in it. This topic is developed in a recent published article that analyzes the value of antiquarian images in Francesco Borromini's late works (Su alcuni motivi in San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane), and in his teaching activities at the University of Venice (mostly seminars). At the Italian Academy he will work on Domenichino's architectural activity and the antiquarian value of his work, due mostly to his relationship with his patron, the scholar Giovan Battista Agucchi and the Roman cultural context.
Although Seicento architecture is the subject of other articles he is writing (ones dedicated to civil architecture in Venice and the Seicento restoration of the Lateran Baptistery in Rome), Borgomainerio is also interested in modern architecture and in particular in architectural theory of Fin de siècle Vienna. He has completed studies of Adolf Loos' writings for a recent exhibition catalogue, and he is now working on an Italian edition of Loos' Selected Writings.