[Commlist] CFP: JICMS 2026 conference in Rome

*Call for Papers*

**

*Exploring the Landscape of Cinema and Media Studies in Italy *

*Past and Present, Approaches and Issues*

*Fifth Edition of the /Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies/ 
International Conference*

*In Person ONLY*

*The American University of Rome*

*11-13 June 2026*

*Keynote Speaker*

*Giorgio Bertellini ***

*University of Michigan (United States)***

**

*'A Crucible of Sorrow’: The Disregarded Question of Italian American 
Cinema***

For over a century, Hollywood has portrayed Italian American characters 
not only as inclined not just to perform violent acts, as mainstream 
criticism has always noted, but also to endure them. Against the notion 
that immigrants are a problem in need of a solution, in this talk I 
examine how and why Italian Americans' media representation has 
variously addressed one of Hollywood's more troubling needs — that of 
showcasing experiences of pain, anguish and defeat.

*Giorgio Bertellini* is Professor in the Department of Film, Television 
and Media at the University of Michigan and member of the Advisory 
Board of /JICMS./ He is the author and editor of the award-winning 
volumes /Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the 
Picturesque /(Indiana University Press, 2010), /Italian Silent Cinema: A 
Reader/ (John Libbey/Indiana University Press, 2013), and /The Divo and 
the Duce: Promoting//Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s 
America /(University of California Press, 2019; Italian trans. Le 
Monnier, 2022). His other books include a monograph on Sarajevo-born 
film director Emir Kusturica, published in Italian, English, Romanian 
and Persian.

*Film Screenings*

*/Il mestiere di vivere / The Stressful Art of Living /**(2024)*

*Directed by Giovanna Gagliardo*

*Giovanna Gagliardo *started as a journalist for /Il/ /Giorno/, /Il/ 
/Messaggero/, /la Repubblica/ and /Espresso/ and worked as a screenplay 
writer for RAI television series. In the 1970s, she worked in cinema as 
a screenwriter for Alberto Lattuada and Miklós Jancsó. Her debut film 
/Maternale/ (1978), was a psychological and symbolic representation of 
the relationship between mothers and daughters. She then produced 
/Bellissime: Parte I /(2004) and /Parte II /(2006),a documentary 
consisting of /archival footage that depicts the evolving conditions of 
Italian women/ during the twentieth century.In 2009, Gagliardo directed 
/L’abito di domani/. /Storia della moda nel tempo/, a documentary about 
the sociocultural and economic history of Italy through fashion.//A 
poignant documentary, /Vittime/ – ‘/Gli anni di piombo/’ (2009), 
revisits the /lead years/ through the stories of the survivors and the 
victims’s families. In 2012, Gagliardo directed /Venti anni/, a 
docu-fiction starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall and ending with 
the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Then, in 2016, she produced the 
documentary**/Le Romane. Storie di donne e di quartieri/, in which she 
pairs four female characters with four neighbourhoods in Rome.//Two 
documentaries set in the Mediterranean are:/Il mare della nostra storia/ 
(2018) about the history of Italian colonialism in Libya from the 
perspective of the Italian and the Italian-speaking Jewish communities 
in Tripoli; and /Good Morning Tel Aviv /(2021) covering history, life 
and culture in the titular capital city. Her most recent film /Il 
mestiere di vivere/ portrays Cesare Pavese through his work as poet, 
prose writer, translator, editor and screenwriter.

*//*

*/Finale allegro /**(2025)//*

*Written and directed by Emanuela Piovano*

*Emanuela Piovano*is an author, director, producer and distributor. She 
worked for several years for Paolo Gobetti’s Archivio Nazionale 
Cinematografico della Resistenza, Rai and the film journal /Il nuovo 
spettatore/. Piovano started her career as the producer of/Processo a 
Caterina Ross/ (1982) by Gabriella Rosaleva. In 1988 she founded her own 
production company KitchenFilm to promote international independent 
cinema by young and women filmmakers. Together with Anna Gasco and 
Tiziana Pellerano, she also directed the documentary /Le rose blu/ 
(1989) about the fire that destroyed the Le Vallette women’s prisonin 
Turin and killed eleven inmates on 3 June 1989.Her feature debut, /Le 
complici/ 
<http://www.mymovies.it/dizionario/recensione.asp?id=45020>(1998), was 
the adaptation of Maria Rosa Cutrufelli’s novel /Complice il dubbio/ 
(1992). This was followed by the romantic drama /Amourfù/ 
<http://www.mymovies.it/dizionario/recensione.asp?id=34730>(2003),  the 
drama /Le stelle inquiete/ 
<http://www.mymovies.it/dizionario/recensione.asp?id=63260>(2010) on 
Simone Weil and Gustave Thibon, /L’età d’oro/ (2016) an homage to 
filmmaker Annabella Miscuglio, and the docu-film /Con voce di Nilde/ 
(2023) on Nilde Iotti, one of the founding mothers of the Italian 
Constitution and President of the Chamber of Deputies. Piovano’s most 
recent film /Finale allegro/ is an adaptation of /Margherita Giacobino’s 
novel L'età ridicola (2018)./

**

**

**

*Closing Keynote Speaker*

*Frank Burke*

*Queen’s University (Canada)*

*Reflections on the 2026 JICMS Conference with 50 Years of Hindsight***

**

*Frank Burke *is Professor Emeritus from Queen’s University. He has 
published five books on Fellini, including /A Companion to Federico 
Fellini /with M.Waller and M.Gubareva (Wiley& Sons, 2020), and 
/Fellini’s Films and Commercials: From Postwar to Postmodern 
/(Intellect, Chicago UP, 2020). He has provided the audio commentary, 
along with the late P. Brunette, for the Criterion Collection’s 
/Amarcord,/ as well as solo commentaries for Criterion’s /Roma/ and /Il 
bidone/. He has also published /A Companion to Italian Cinema/ (John 
Wiley & Sons, 2017) and (with A. Hough-Dugdale and M. Gubareva) a 
special issue of the /Journal of Italian Cinema and Media /(11:1, 2023) 
on Tonino Guerra. He has also published on numerous Italian and American 
directors, horror cinema, experimental cinema, the /peplum /and Canadian 
cinema.

*Organizing Committee*

Flavia Laviosa, Wellesley College, United States

Catherine Ramsey-Portolano, The American University of Rome, Italy

**

*Conference Committee*

Giorgio Bertellini, University of Michigan, United States

Milly Buonanno, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Frank Burke, Queen’s University, Canada

Jim Carter, Boston University, United States

Stephen Gundle, University of Warwick, United Kingdom

Bernadette Luciano, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Paola Panarese, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

This conference will be centred on the relationship between Italian film 
and media studies and the disciplines of the arts and humanities and the 
social sciences. We welcome contributions that position Italian media 
products and practices of past and present in relation to the 
methodologies and/or thematic concerns of disciplines including (but not 
limited to): History, Geography, History of Art, Theatre Studies, 
Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Sociology, Gender 
Studies, Political Science, Psychology, Business Studies, Economics and 
Criminology. Also welcome are contributions which locate Italian media 
products and practices in relation to sub-areas of Film and Media 
Studies, such as Production Studies, Star and Celebrity Studies and 
Adaptation Studies.

The aim of the conference is twofold: first, to consider how an 
awareness of and engagement with Italian media products can enrich 
debates across the humanities and social sciences; and second, to 
explore ways in which different forms of cross-disciplinary dialogue 
might enliven Italian media studies and introduce new methods and themes.

*The conference includes the following themes:*

Narratives of time: Italian cinema and media between nostalgia and 
anticipation. Rethinking time in Italian media,with a focus on how 
contemporary Italian cinema and media address temporality—from the 
return of retro aesthetics and the proliferation of nostalgic narratives 
to speculative and anticipatory forms. This theme may include studies of 
remakes, memorial reworkings and new visual genealogies of the past and 
future.

Artificial intelligence, computational aesthetics and Italian cultural 
production.Analysing how the use of intelligent technologies (generative 
AI, deepfakes, speech synthesis, machine learning) is transforming the 
creation, distribution and enjoyment of Italian cinema and media. Areas 
of inquiry can also include algorithmic inequalities, data biases and 
emerging forms of posthuman authorship.

Rebranding the nation: imaginaries of Italy between cinema, media and 
cultural marketing.Investigating how cinema interacts with the cultural 
industry and media communication to narrate and promote Italy as a 
cultural brand today: through festivals, the enhancement of audiovisual 
heritage, ‘export-oriented’ seriality, editorial and museum operations, 
institutional campaigns.

The media professions: the hidden infrastructure of Italian cultural 
production.Exploring the labour and professional roles underpinning 
Italian cinema and media outside authorship. Areas of research may 
include editing, costume design, sound technique, dubbing, translation, 
distribution, cultural mediation or festival curatorship. An opportunity 
to rethink cultural work and the construction of the Italian media 
industry from lateral and interdisciplinary perspectives.

The media professions/media constraints: how budgetary constraints 
impact (for better or worse) cultural production. This could address 
alternative creative methods such as radically changed scripts, 
animation or AI.

The conference will host presentations of recently published/forthcoming 
books, edited volumes or academic works in progress, so we invite 
authors and editors to contribute in ‘Meet the Author’ roundtables.

**

With this CFP, the conference organizers invite proposals from scholars, 
independent researchers, cinema and media professionals and graduate 
students for single papers, pre-constituted panels and roundtables.

*Possible topics include, but are not limited to:*

• Feminist re-writings of media history: women’s authorship in Italian 
film and television

• The emerging field of location studies: reconfiguring spatial identity 
in contemporary Italian media production

• How co-productions are increasingly changing the geographical 
landscapes of Italian cinema

• Rebranding the nation: how the Netflix aesthetic is visually impacting 
Italian cinema and television

• Production dynamics in Italian cinema: ranging from a director's 
on-set style (collaborative, hierarchical) to the roles of creatives or 
technical crews, to the influence of technology

• Digital cinema

• Web seriality

• (Auto)biographical cinema

• Crime cinema and television

• Representations of violence against women in cinema and TV: victims, 
witnesses and perpetrators

• Representing honour crimes in cinema and media

• Ageism and gender exclusion in the Italian film industry, both on and 
off screen

• Representations of ecology and climate change in Italian film and media

• LGBTQ+ authorship and representation in Italian film and television

• How censorship and regulation shape filmmaking practices

*****

The conference will include the screening of 2-3 films with filmmakers 
in attendance.

The languages of the conference are English, Italian and Spanish. 
*Proposals for virtual papers will not be considered.*

Please send an abstract of 250 words for single papers,or 250 words per 
contribution for pre-constituted panels (3 speakers max) or roundtables, 
plus a short bio of 100 words (stating academic title and affiliation, 
research interests and major publications [publisher/year], not titles 
of articles or chapters). Please submit in a word.doc format, *not pdf*. 
We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations(inclusive of film clips).

Abstracts for consideration should be submitted to Flavia Laviosa at 
(flaviosa /at/ wellesley.edu) <mailto:(flaviosa /at/ wellesley.edu)>.

*EXTENSION *The deadline to submit abstracts is*20 January 2026*. 
Notification of acceptance will be sent out to authors by *25 January 
2026.***

Conference registration fee includes: coffee every morning, 3 buffet 
lunches, and closing reception.

*   € **200 regular rate (professors and post-doc)*

*   € **150 student rate ***

The registration fee will be paid to AURthrough their website which will 
be available in January 2026.

The deadline for inclusion in the conference program is *15 March 2026*. 
Please, make every effort to pay conference fees before this date.

In case of withdrawals from the conference, the registration fee will 
*not* be reimbursed.

In case of cancellation of the conference, the registration fee will be 
reimbursed.


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