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Disease and death

David Moss • Mar 19, 2020

‘They fell ill daily in their thousands … many fell dead in the open streets … such was the multitude of corpses there was not sufficient consecrated ground to bury them’.  And: ‘the plague came from afar … that part of the world called Asia’. A historian in 2120 describing the horrors of a century earlier? Extracts from a comparative study of plagues and pestilence? An epidemic seen from the grassroots today? No, Boccaccio and Villani talking of events in Italy as the Black Death and other disasters wreaked their havoc, as quoted by Tim Parks in the introduction to his dispatch from northern Italy, ‘ Milan in a time of coronavirus ‘ in this week’s TLS (March 20, 2020). For descriptions of life in the plague-ridden Florence of 1630, see the review in the LRB (20 March, 2020) of John Henderson’s Florence Under Siege:  Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City (Yale UP 2019).

04 Mar, 2024
Open until 14 April 2024, the exhibition Emerging From Darkness: Faith, Emotion and The Body in the Baroque is presented at Victoria's Hamilton Gallery (on the unceded lands of the Eastern Maar and Gunditjmara peoples), in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Unprecedented, and monumental in scope, Emerging From Darkness brings together an exceptional group of works from public and private collections in Australia. It was curated by Associate Professor David R. Marshall , Principal Fellow in Art History at the University of Melbourne, Dr Lisa Beaven , Adjunct Senior Research at La Trobe University, and Laurie Benson , Senior Curator of International Art at the NGV. Here two curators explain some of the project’s background and aims.
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In Italy this year there has been no shortage of Manzoni celebrations, particularly in Milan . And in Australasia? Dr Stefano Bona , Lecturer in Italian Studies at Flinders University, Adelaide, on the lands of the Kauna nation, has lately been involved in creating a ‘special miniseries’ of radio programmes about Alessandro Manzoni. Now available for listening on demand are two longform interviews with Stefano Pratola at Radio Italiana 531 AM. Here Stefano Bona shares some background to this podcast project.
14 Sep, 2023
Announcing, with great pleasure, the winners of the 2023 ACIS Publication Prize for an established scholar, and the 2023 Jo-Anne Duggan Prize. ACIS awards both prizes every two years . In this case, each winning publication addresses the theme of mobility – a fast-evolving direction in Italian Studies research – and each brings forward a topic with clear contemporary significance.
04 Sep, 2023
The 12th Biennial Conference of the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies will be held at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, from Wednesday 3 July to Saturday 6 July 2024. The conference theme is ‘Italian Studies for Global Challenges: Transdisciplinary Conversations’.
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Two promising early career scholars – Lauren Murphy and Julia Pelosi-Thorpe – were the recipients of ACIS Save Venice Fellowships. Delayed due to COVID travel restrictions, they were finally able to access their Fellowships in 2022. Here they both reflect on their time in Venice and the benefits of the Fellowship to their respective research projects.
By Catherine Kovesi 29 Mar, 2023
ACIS is delighted to announce that Professor Andrea Rizzi has been appointed the new Chair of the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies. He leads a renewed Management Committee with several new appointees who start their terms of office this year.
By Catherine Kovesi 30 Jan, 2023
After a hiatus of three years due to travel restrictions, ACIS is delighted once again to be able to offer its Postgraduate Scholarships for Research in Italy. Two promising postgraduate students have been awarded scholarships in the current round: Brigette De Poi and Laura Di Blasi.
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