Elena Ferrante: Toxic Environments and the Damaged Planet

In one of her columns written for The Guardian, world-renown Italian novelist Elena Ferrante confesses to be terrified and “obsessed” by the sign of climate change. And yet, ecocritical approaches to her work are missing. In this talk, Dr. Stefania Porcelli seeks environmental attentiveness in My Brilliant Friend by looking at the toxicity of the family environments and the way it spills over, so to speak, infiltrating not only the porous reality of Naples, but ultimately damaging the entire globe.

After the lecture, we will serve wine, soft drinks, and buffet-style appetizers prepared by Amalfi Ristorante Italiano & Bar.

About the presenter:

Stefania Porcelli is Visiting Assistant Professor at Miami University, Ohio, where she teaches Italian language and culture classes, as well classes on food cultures, environmental issues, and sustainability. She holds a doctoral degree in English from Sapienza University of Rome and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her publications explore wartime writing, the concept of political action as developed by Hannah Arendt, the representation of violence and other exclusionary practices, and the language of political discourse. She has also written on Elizabeth Bowen and Shakespeare.

Dr. Porcelli is now working on a book, tentatively entitled Intensity Theory: Women, History, and Emotions in the Italian Novel in which she draws from women’s studies, moral philosophy, linguistics, and the expanding fields of history of emotions and affect theory to demonstrate the interconnectedness of emotions, historicity, narrative form, and language in Elsa Morante, Goliarda Sapienza, and Elena Ferrante.

Date: Monday, April 24, 2023

Time: 6:30 – 8:00 PM

Price: Free event

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