Branding Modernity

John Freccero Lecture Series

Branding Modernity
Marinetti, Futurism and the Invention of the Avant-Garde

A lecture by
Luca Somigli, University of Toronto

In ENGLISH

Luca Somigli is Professor and Emilio Goggio Chair in Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has published extensively on various aspects of Italian and European modernism and avant-garde, including the volumes Legitimizing the Artist. Manifesto Writing and European Modernism, 1885-1915 (University of Toronto Press, 2003) and Italian Modernism: Italian Culture between Decadentism and Avant-Garde, edited with Mario Moroni (University of Toronto Press, 2004), and essays on various authors of the period such as Marinetti, Pirandello, Savinio, Bontempelli, and Primo Conti. His research on contemporary narrative, and genre fiction in particular, includes numerous essays on Italian detective fiction, a monograph on Valerio Evangelisti, and the edited volume Negli archivi e per le strade. Il ritorno alla realtà nella narrativa di inizio millennio (Aracne, 2013). His recent publications include the co-edited volumes Futurism: A Microhistory (Legenda, 2017) and Oltre il canone: problemi, autori, opere del modernismo italiano (Morlacchi, 2019).

The John Freccero Lecture Series, co-sponsored and co-organized by NYU’s Department of Italian Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, honors the memory of Professor John Freccero, one of the most influential figures in the field of Italian Studies. A world-renowned scholar of Dante, among other subjects, Professor Freccero, after teaching at Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, Yale University, and Stanford University, was Professor of Italian Studies at New York University from 1992 to 2015, where his intellectual and educational vision was instrumental in the founding and growth of our Department of Italian Studies. The John Freccero Lecture Series is supported by a generous gift from Dr. Thomas Bellezza and Mr. John Jensen.