When   Thursday, November 19, 2009   Time   5:00 PM - 7:00 PM  
Where   Kresge Hall 2-380 1880 Campus Drive   map it
Audience   - Faculty/Staff - Student - Public
Contact   Beverly Zeldin-Palmer   +1 847 467 3970  
Group   Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities
More Info   http://www.humanities.northwestern.edu

Widely used in relation to the colonial and imperial Anglophone world, the term “postcolonial” is rarely applied to explore "minor empires" such as Italy's imperial past in the Horn of Africa and its link to contemporary times. Even less often is a theoretical understanding of postcolonial studies encouraged which analyzes the specificity of the Italian context away from the more traditional Anglophone paradigm. Yet, in the past twenty years, the arrival of African, Asian, Latin American and Eastern European immigrants has turned Italy from a country of emigration into a nation that now hosts one of the most diverse immigrant populations in Europe. This remarkable social change has given impetus to a consistent body of literary works written in the Italian language by first generation immigrants and, in the last few years, by second generation writers. If no public or academic debate had previously developed which openly and critically confronted Italy's colonial past and its lingering legacy, now these new literary voices are re-awaking the country's collective colonial memory thus also revealing the contradictions of its postcolonial condition.