CONTACT:
Rick Whitaker
212 854 1623
rw2115@columbia.edu

 

 

THE ITALIAN ACADEMY FOR ADVANCED STUDIES AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESENTS

ITALY AT COLUMBIA

A SERIES OF FREE PUBLIC LECTURES BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS

 

THURSDAY MARCH 12 AT 2:00 P.M., FRANCESCO BENELLI ON DONATO BRAMANTE
(at the Italian Academy)

 

TUESDAY APRIL 7 AT 6 P.M., PAOLO VALESIO ON VISCONTI'S DEATH IN VENICE (WITH A SCREENING OF THE FILM)
(at the Italian Academy)

 

THURSDAY APRIL 16 AT 11 A.M., KENNETH FRAMPTON ON GIUSEPPE TERRAGNI AND ITALIAN RATIONALISM 1918-1938
(at 113 Avery Hall)

 

 

New York, NY— February 5, 2009— Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America presents three public lectures by prominent professors in the humanities. Two of the three lectures will be held at the Italian Academy. The final lecture by Kenneth Frampton will take place in Wood Auditorium in Avery Hall (room 113) at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation.

Francesco Benelli’s scholarship and teaching on history and theory of architecture reflect his background as an architect. His interests range from the study of the mentality and practice of the architect with a special attention to the tool of the architectural drawing - meant as a tool of transformation of his ideas into a practical process of building -  to the analysis of the buildings and the way they are built. He is also interested in the use and interpretation of the classical language versus the notion of “invention” in architecture during the Renaissance. Benelli is experienced in archaeological surveys, building material and techniques of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque architecture.

Kenneth Frampton is the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia. He studied architecture at Guildford School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. Subsequently he worked in Israel, during which time he was also a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art, tutor at the Architectural Association (1961-63) and Technical Editor of the journal Architectural Design . Frampton has also taught at Princeton University and the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. He has been a member of the faculty at Columbia since 1972, and that same year he became a fellow of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and a co-founding editor of its magazine Oppositions. His books include Modern Architecture: A Critical History and Studies in Tectonic Culture. In 2002 a collection of Frampton's writings over a period of 35 years was collated and published under the title Labour, Work and Architecture.

Before joining the Department of Italian at Columbia, where he became the Giuseppe Ungaretti Professor in Italian Literature in 2005, Paolo Valesio retired as an emeritus professor from Yale University, where he taught for more than a quarter century, and where for most of this period he was Chair of the Italian Department. Prior to that he taught at New York University, after having studied general linguistics and literature at Bologna University and Harvard University. He has been a Fellow of the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University, a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. He has also been honorary president of the American Association of Italian Studies. The author of numerous critical essays and articles, Valesio has published five books of criticism, fourteen collections of poetry, two novels, one collection of short stories, a novella, and a drama in verse which has been staged in Italy.  He founded and directed the journal Yale Italian Poetry (YIP) which is now published at Columbia and the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University with a new title, Italian Poetry Review. Valesio's areas of teaching and research include the literature of the 19th and 20th century, rhetoric in its connection with literary analysis and with spirituality, as well as comparative approaches to contemporary Italian literature, and the theory and practice of creative writing.

Admission to all lectures is free.
Reservations are not required.
For more information, please contact
Rick Whitaker by calling 212 854 1623 or
email rw2115@columbia.edu or see our
website: www.italianacademy.columbia.edu.