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Professor Paolo Bartoloni’s new book Objects in Italian Life and Culture: Fiction, Migration, and Artificiality, (Palgrave, 2016) was launched on Tuesday, October 11th by Professor Derek Duncan from the University of St. Andrews.‌‌   ‌

Wednesday 10th February, 5pm, G011 Hardiman Research Building Eric Haywood, UCD Why is it you are a Fascist if you admire Fascist art but a person of discernment if you admire Renaissance art? Is it because Italians, as claimed by a former mayor of Rome, do not know how to deal with the greatness of the past? Or is it because none of us know how to do so? And in any case how “great” and worthy of celebration is the past? In an attempt to elucidate these questions – with reference to the Italian Renaissance, and in the year that marks the 500th anniversary of what is considered to be one of the greatest of Italian masterpieces (Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso) – Eric Haywood will try and get answers from the man who “invented” the Renaissance, the Swiss would-be banker and pastor Jacob Burckhardt, and his The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, first published on the eve of Italian unification. Eric Haywood. Born and brought up in Switzerland, Eric Haywood is a graduate of Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, who also studied at the European University Institute in Florence. A former President of the Association of Teachers of Italian, he taught Italian language and literature at UCD for close on 40 years, specializing in the culture of the Renaissance. His research has focused mainly on Renaissance geography and descriptions of Ireland, the culture of Renaissance Naples, and Machiavelli’s comedy Mandragola. Currently he is working on: female humour in Mandragola, Petrarch’s rewriting of the last tale of Boccaccio’s Decameron (Griselda), the birth of the myth of Arcadia, the Irish in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and dreams of Hellenism in the writings of Antonio De Ferrariis Galateo (died 1517). In 2014 he was knighted (Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia) by the President of Italy.    

The Rory Kavanagh Bursary was established in 1998 through a generous endowment by Des and Mary Kavanagh as a testimony to their son Rory's  passion for and achievements in Italian language and culture. The Bursary, of the value of €2540, is awarded each year to one of the students in Italian embarking on the Erasmus year abroad in Italy. This year the 17th Bursary was awarded to Lily Lundon, an Arts student. Lily studied at the University of Verona in 2014. The Ceremony was introduced by The Registrar, Professor Pól Ó Dochartaigh, and Professor Paolo Bartoloni, Head of Italian, and featured a presentation by Lily Lundon on her experience abroad.

Paolo Bartoloni's new book, Sapere di scrivere. Svevo e gli ordigni di La coscienza di Zeno (Edizioni Il Carrubo), was launched on April 16, 2015 in the Moore Institute Seminar Room by Dr Giuseppe Stellardi, Oxford University. In the photo, from left to right, Professor Daniel Carey (Director, Moore Institute); Professor Paolo Bartoloni; Dr Giuseppe Stellardi (Oxford University). Image by Andrea Zipoli published by concession of the author.

On Thursday, September 24th, Italian at NUI Galway hosted an evening with Italian poet and novelist Valerio Magrelli. The event was also attended by Clarissa Botsford, translator of Magrelli's book of prose Nel condominio di carne, 2003 (Condominium of the Flesh, 2015). First image from left: Mario Inglese (Magrelli's Scholar and PhD in Italian), Prof. Paolo Bartoloni (Head of Italian), Clarissa Botsford, and Valerio Magrelli.