The Venice Center for the Humanities and Social Change presents Stefano De Matteis, Le false libertà. Verso la postglobalizzazione. A dialogue with Franca Tamisari and Francesco Della Puppa
Venice, 20/11/2018 at 3 p.m.
Aula Geymonat, Malcanton Marcorà, Dorsoduro 3484/D
Admission free
Event in Italian
An event in collaboration with the Dimensions of Citizenship program of the USA Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2018
Venice, 18/09/2018 at 2 p.m.
Pachuka Beach. 5-7 p.m.
Via Klinger, 1
Lido di Venezia
Admission free
Citizenship and Belonging
In a world in which 65 million people are constantly on the move, seeking a place to live and to which they can belong, what does citizenship mean in the contemporary context as a legal fiction that is increasingly a flashpoint of nativist reaction, xenophobic legislation, and redefined ideas of who belongs where? But a fluid multi-cultural and polyglot situation is hardly something new. Venice, a city built in-between land and sea, has always been a liminal place where multiple interlocking and fluid identities and communities have been formed, experimented with, and solidified. Venice has always “welcomed,” albeit in very controlled and often self-serving ways, diverse communities into its social structures and physical spaces. What can we learn from this history and from the contemporary experiences of all manner of “Venetians” residing in and visiting the city today about segregation and interaction, of localized and international bonds between competing economies of trade and belonging, commerce and identity? Goods and persons flooded the maritime city, profoundly affecting the way in which people ate, spoke, worshipped, and understood the past.
Full program and photo gallery here
A seminar with Claudio Fogu (University of California Santa Barbara) and Igiaba Scego
Venice, 18/09/2018 at 2 p.m.
Aula Milone, Malcanton Marcorà
Dorsoduro 3484/D, Venice
Admission free
Event in English and Italian
The Venice Center for the Humanities and Social Change presents A Pain in the Neck: Ecocritical Memoir, with Andrea Most (University of Toronto)
Venice, 18/10/2018 at 12.15
Aula 7, Rio Novo, Dorsoduro 3161
Calle Larga Foscari, Venice
Admission free
Event in English
Invited speakers: Prof. Seyla Benhabib (Yale University), Prof. Zeynep Gambetti (Boğaziçi University)
Berlin, 04/07/2018, 6-8pm, Gorki Theatre Berlin
Authoritarian movements and governments resurface globally. They are often presented as a shocking aberration from the progressive norm. But whether we should see authoritarianism as rule or exception to the present world order hinges on how we explain its emergence, referring, for instance, to the fragmentation of public spheres and transnational institutions, as well as to the rise of neo-liberal financial capitalism and inequality.
One common denominator between authoritarianism and neo-liberalism could be seen in the creation of superfluous people, stripped of rights through statelessness, homelessness or other forms of exclusion. How should we reformulate the defenses against exclusion and despotism, such as human rights and citizenship, in order to strengthen pluralist and cosmopolitan modes of democratic participation? And which deeper structures would need to be addressed in order to forgo the lapse into fascist tendencies or autocracy?
Venice, June 25th-29th, 2018
The value of „facts“ in public life today, as well as related notions of truth, authority, and institutional legitimacy, stand in serious question. Two major institutions that are, in principle, defined by the investigation, analysis, and promulgation both of facts and of their value–journalism and the university–currently find themselves not only destabilized but even under attack by sweeping political, cultural, economic, and technological forces.
Contemporary societies, pressured by the crisis of neoliberalism and global political instability, and challenged by unprecedented migration waves, constantly re-negotiate the coexistence and interaction of multiple, competing, and often conflicting value-systems across diverse linguistic, cultural, and religious fault-lines.
The extremes of spiritual vacuum and ideological fundamentalism threaten the democratic ideal of an open, plural, and just society.
Sponsored by Humanities and Social Change, this five-day gathering will bring together leading figures from the worlds of media and the academy not only to assess the current crisis regarding the value of facts–and the fact of values–in contemporary societies but also to articulate constructive responses to that crisis.
Read the follow-up report of the Summer Institute here.
Laurie Anderson in conversation with Shaul Bassi (Director of the Center for the Humanities and Social Change at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) and Enrico Bettinello (Critic and curator).
Venice, 15/05/2018.
Laurie Anderson
All the Things I Lost in the Flood
(Rizzoli Electa 2018)
May 15th, 2018, at 6 p.m.
Auditorium Santa Margherita
Dorsoduro 3689, Venice
The event is in English, italian translation available
Incontro in lingua inglese con traduzione disponibile
Registration is required.
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, May 15th, 2018.
video: Laurie Anderson interviewed by Barbara Del Mercato (in the cover photo: Shaul Bassi, Laurie Anderson, Enrico Bettinello, ph. Flavio Gregori)
Three events with philosopher Hans Ruin
Professor at Södertörn University, Stockholm and author of Being with the Dead: Burial, Ancestral Politics, and the Roots of Historical Consciousness (Stanford U. Press, forthcoming)
Monday, April 30 2018, 4:00 PM
Public Lecture: “The Hearing Eye: Weber and Husserl on Science as Spiritual Calling”
This lecture discusses Max Weber’s 1917 lecture “Science as a Vocation” and compares it with Edmund Husserl’s 1911 essay “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” attempting for the first time to develop the deeper underlying similarities between their approaches to theoria as also a listening to a call, and the parallel attempts to give science in the modern era a spiritual foundation.
Tuesday, May 1 2018, 3:30 PM
Seminar: “Pneumatology in St. Paul and Kierkegaard”
A seminar discussion of Professor Ruin’s essay “Anxious Spirits – Pneumatology in Heidegger, Paul, and Kierkegaard,” in Topos 1 (2014): 39-52. The text is an attempt to interpret the Pauline concept of pneuma as a category of historical life, and as a metaphor for the transmission of tradition.
Thursday, May 3 2018, 3:30 PM
Seminar:“Being with the Dead”
A seminar discussion surrounding the main ideas of Professor Ruin’s forthco- ming book with Stanford University Press, Being with the Dead. Suggested reading: “Speaking to the Dead – Historicity and the Ancestral,” Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 48-49: 115-137. By comparing literature and history as two ways of depicting a journey to the land of the dead, it gives a new perspective on the birth of historical writing.
Location for all three events: Room 4080, Humanities and Social Sciences Building, University of California, Santa Barbara
Copies of the readings may be requested at hsc@hfa.ucsb.edu.
Amitav Ghosh, author of „The Great Derangement. Climate Change and the Unthinkable“, in conversation with Shaul Bassi, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Thomas Carlson, University of California at Santa Barbara.
Venice, 17/05/2017.
Opening remarks
Michele Bugliesi, Rector of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Erck Rickmers, Chairman of Humanities and Social Change International Foundation
The Humanities and Climate Change
Amitav Ghosh, author of „The Great Derangement. Climate Change and the Unthinkable“ (University of Chicago Press, 2016), „La grande cecità. Il cambiamento climatico e l’impensabile“ (Neri Pozza, 2017)
in conversation with
Shaul Bassi, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Thomas Carlson, University of California at Santa Barbara
Please confirm your participation to eventi@unive.it by 15 May 2017
Admission subject to availability of places.
The Center for the Humanities and Social Change presents Edmund de Waal, writer and artist, the author of The Hare with Amber Eyes (2011) and The White Road (2016).
Venice, 31/10/2017.
„I’m both an artist and a writer. These are not divergent practices: they are shared obsessions with how we see and read objects and texts. In this illustrated presentation I’ll talk about recent projects in Vienna, Berlin and LA, how family stories interweave with what I am trying to do, why collecting matters and why white is a difficult colour.“
Auditorium Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro 3689, Venice
Admission free
Event in English language, with Italian translation available.
