Ana Inés Larre Borges is a well-known literary critic and publisher in Uruguay. She works at the Biblioteca Nacional de Montevideo, directs the literary supplement of the weekly magazine Brecha, and directs the publishing house Cal y Canto.

This colloquium will highlight the research of John Lyon (Chair, Department of German), published in his second monograph "Out of Place. German Realism, Displacement and Modernity" (Bloomsbury, 2013) in conjunction with the scholarship of Eric Downing (Professor of German; Frank Borden and Barbara Lasater Hanes Distinguished Term Professor of English and Comparative Literature; Adjunct Professor of Classics, University of North Carolina). William Scott (Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh) will offer a response.

A pre-cursor to the dramatic story-telling of Carlo Collodi's "The Adventure of Pinocchio", Professor Sherberg’s offers a deeper narrative to what is often singularly considered to be a children's tale.

Although Carlo Collodi’s ‘Le avventure di Pinocchio’ is generally considered a children’s tale, like many similarly classified works of fiction, it is actually much more: it is, among other things, a narrative about the memory of a nation that had only very recently attained political unity and independence. According to the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce it is “a tale for adults, centred on the tragic figure of Geppetto, a story where the whole of humanity is inscribed in a piece of wood”, a story that tackles “the relationship between freedom and obedience, between father and son”.

Film Screening and Discussion

Paradigms and universal meta-discourses are in a state of crisis. In particular, theorists frequently question the efficacy that these discourses have on representation, specifically on the theoretical, symbolic and geopolitical levels. On a global scale, critics destabilize the Eurocentric theoretical-critical space as the center of culture, politics and history.

Chair: Professor Susan Z Andrade
Keynote: Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa
Discussants: Frederica Jansz, Arjuna Parakrama

Laura Mulvey is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has written extensively on film and film theory. Her books include Fetishism and Curiosity (1996), Death Twenty-four Times a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006), Experimental British Television (edited with Jamie Sexton, 2007), and Visual and Other Pleasures (2nd edition, 2009). She has co-directed films, including Riddles of the Sphinx (1978) and Frida Kahlo and Tina Malatti (1980), as well as the documentary Disgraced Monuments (1996).

*Reception to follow*