Michele Cometa

Università di Palermo

The challenge of cave art: old and new paradigms in aesthetics and visual culture

2015-2016: Fall and Spring

Michele Cometa is Professor of Comparative Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Palermo. He was a visiting professor at many European universities and recently received the Beinecke Fellowship at the Clark Art Institute (Williamstown).
His research focuses on German cultural history and aesthetics (especially in the age of Goethe), literary theory, and visual culture. Recent publications include works on ékphrasis, literature, and visual culture: Descrizione e desiderio. I quadri viventi di E. T. A. Hoffmann (2005); Vedere: Lo Sguardo di E. T. A. Hoffmann (2009); La scrittura delle immagini. Letteratura e cultura visuale (2012); and Archeologie del dispositivo. Regimi scopici della letteratura (2016).
His book on the Triumph of Death fresco in Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo and his first work on the biological meaning of fiction (La letteratura necessaria. Narrazione e biologia)are in press.
At the Italian Academy he will work on the challenge that paleolithic “arts” and the old and new theories on the origin of human symbolic behaviour issue to contemporary visual culture.

Web page: http://www.michelecometa.it/