Exploring the Landscape of Cinema and Media Studies in Italy Past and Present, Approaches and Issues
Fifth Edition of the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies International Conference
In Person ONLY
The American University of Rome
11-13 June 2026
Conference Documents
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Conference program (pdf)
Opening Keynote Address
Professor Giorgio Bertellini - University of Michigan (USA)
“A Crucible of Sorrow”: The Question of Pain in Italian Americans’ Screen Life
For over a century, Hollywood has portrayed Italian-American characters as both inclined to perform violent acts, as mainstream criticism has regularly stressed, but also to endure violence. Recognizing this second, no less common, representational strand has significant consequences. In contrast to the notion that immigrants are a problem in need of a solution according to the familiar formula of "crime and punishment," Italian- Americans’ repeated portrayal as “wounded characters” has, since the silent era, addressed one of Hollywood's more troubling needs — showcasing experiences of pain, anguish and defeat.
Giorgio Bertellini is Professor in the Department of Film, Television and Media at the University of Michigan and member of the Advisory Board of JICMS. He is the author and editor of the award-winning volumes Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque (Indiana University Press, 2010), Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader (John Libbey/Indiana University Press, 2013), and The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America (University of California Press, 2019; Italian trans. Le Monnier, 2022). His other books include a monograph on Sarajevo-born film director Emir Kusturica, published in Italian, English, Romanian and Persian.
Closing Keynote Address
Professor Frank Burke - Queen’s University (Canada)
“Like Being in a Fellini Movie”: An Exploration of Altered States in and Around the Work of the Italian Director
The discussion will move through childhood fantasy and Fascist gaslighting to the altered state of Fellini’s reputation today and possibilities for Fellinian reinvention via the challenging “alterity” of AI. The concept of “altered state” will function as an umbrella term to engage biography, history, and Fellini’s work, as well as various and often contrasting inflections of the “altered” such as numinosity, transformation, visionary insight, disfigurement, dissociation, sublimation. “Like being in a Fellini movie” will also embrace what ultimately became Fellini’s two most self-absorbingly altered states: dream (Il libro dei sogni and various films) and death (various films, “Il viaggio di G. Mastorna,” et al.).
Frank Burke is Professor Emeritus from Queen’s University (Canada). He has published five books on Fellini, including A Companion to Federico Fellini with M. Waller and M. Gubareva (Wiley & Sons, 2020), and Fellini’s Films and Commercials: From Postwar to Postmodern (Intellect, Chicago UP, 2020). He has provided the audio commentary, along with the late P. Brunette, for the Criterion Collection’s Amarcord, as well as solo commentaries for Criterion’s Roma and Il bidone. He has also published A Companion to Italian Cinema (John Wiley & Sons, 2017) and (with A. Hough-Dugdale and M. Gubareva) a special issue of the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media (11:1, 2023) on Tonino Guerra. He has also published on numerous Italian and American directors, horror cinema, experimental cinema, the peplum and Canadian cinema.