Nora Siena
Kurzvita
Seit 2019, Ph.D. Candidate in Romance Studies (Italian), Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University
10.2023/08.2024, DAAD Einjähriges Forschungsstipendium
10.2022/06.2024, Visiting Scholar, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge
2019, M.A. Philosophie, Summa cum laude, Università degli Studi di Pavia
01.2017/06.2017, Visiting Student, Barnard College of Columbia University
2016 B.A., Philosophie, Summa cum laude, Università degli Studi di Pavia
2013/2018, IUSS Fünfjahres-Stipendium
Publikationen
“The Invisibility of Rape in Boccaccio’s Decameron,” Heliotropia, 18-19: 121-44
Beiträge
“La donna, gli altri e la trasgressione. Una lettura di Veronica, i gaspi e Monsignore di Marcello Barlocco,” Lavoro Culturale
“Walter Benjamin e il valore filosofico dell’inutile,” Lavoro Culturale
“Kafka e l’invisibilità dell’osceno,” Lavoro Culturale
Audiobeiträge
“Walter Benjamin e la radio,” Podcast-Episode von Abecedari, USMAradio
Vorträge
2023, “Inoperative Brevitas: The Role of Short Literary Forms in Giorgio Agamben’s Philosophy”International Conference in Aesthetics. “Arts, Literatures, Languages.” Department of Philosophy, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Pisa (IT)
2023, “Rethinking Posture to Neutralize Positionality: Nanni Balestrini and the Cut-up Technique Before, During, and After 1969”OBERT Conference 2023, “Narrating Labour: Posture and Positionality.” Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille (FR)
2023, “The Text out of its Context: The Role of Short Exemplary Forms in Giorgio Agamben’s Philosophy.” Italian Graduate Conference 2023, “Cultural Environments: The Text and its Context.” Faculty of MMLL, University of Cambridge, Cambridge (UK)
2023, “The Invisibility of Rape in Boccaccio’s Decameron.” RSA Conference 2023, “Dramatizing Consent in The Decameron.” San Juan, Puerto Rico (US)
2022, “Inoperative Brevitas. The Contamination of Short Literary and Philosophical Forms in Giorgio Agamben’s Work.” Transatlantic Research Colloquium Small Forms: Aesthetics—Media—Modernity 2022. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (US)
2022, “Boris as a Hypermodern Portrait of Italian Trash Aesthetics.” NeMLA Conference 2022, “Italian Television Studies.” Baltimore, Maryland (US)
2021, “A Reading of 18th Century German Aesthetics in the Light of Roberto Esposito’s Immunitas: The Construction of the Beautiful/Disgusting Body as an Immunological Dispositif.” GAFIS Symposium 2021, “Obscenity and Censorship.” University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin (US)
Untätige Brevitas: Die Kontaminierung kurzer literarischer und philosophischer Formen und das italienische Racconto des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts
Mein Projekt analysiert die ästhetischen und epistemologischen Auswirkungen der Unterbrechung der historischen Verbindung zwischen Brevitas und Exemplarität im 20. Jahrhundert. Ich rekonstruiere die Genealogie der Interdependenz zwischen Brevitas und Exemplarität in einem Korpus von mittelalterlichen Exempla und Novellen. Auf der Grundlage von Giorgio Agambens Konzept der Untätigkeit – einer Potenzialität, die sich in ihrer Verwirklichung nicht erschöpft – definiere ich eine Kategorie philosophischer Texte des 20. Jahrhunderts als „untätige Brevitas“. Diese Texte weisen die Gattungskonstanten der Brevitas auf, entziehen sich jedoch ihrer exemplarischen Funktion. Darüber hinaus behaupte ich, dass der Begriff der „untätigen Brevitas“ eine Tendenz des italienischen Racconto des 20. Jahrhunderts beschreibt, die sich ansonsten jeder kritischen Definition entziehen würde. Ich lese Kurzgeschichten von Italo Calvino, Tommaso Landolfi, Giorgio Manganelli, Primo Levi, Luigi Malerba und Anna Maria Ortese, um zu zeigen, wie diese Autor:innen – trotz ihren heterogenen literarischen Strömungen und Absichten – traditionelle Brevitas gebrauchen, um die Unzulänglichkeit des literarischen Mediums poetologisch produktiv zu machen.
Inoperative Brevitas: The Contamination of Short Literary and Philosophical Forms and the Twentieth-century Italian Racconto
My project analyzes the aesthetic and epistemological significance of the twentieth-century disruption of the historical tie between brevitas (a formal/ rhetorical structure rooted in textual brevity and codified to prompt an unambiguous allegorical reading) and exemplarity. I reconstruct the genealogy of interdependence between brevitas and exemplarity through a corpus of medieval exempla and novellas. Relying on Giorgio Agamben’s concept of inoperativity (a potentiality that is not exhausted in its actualization), I define as “inoperative brevitas” a category of twentieth-century philosophical texts that exhibit the genre constants of brevitas while withdrawing from its exemplifying function. Furthermore, I maintain that the notion of inoperative brevitas illuminates a tendency of the twentieth-century Italian racconto that would otherwise elude any critical definition. I read short stories by Italo Calvino, Tommaso Landolfi, Giorgio Manganelli, Primo Levi, Luigi Malerba, and Anna Maria Ortese, to show how despite the authors’ heterogeneous literary movements and intentions, in these racconti the use of traditional brevitas is aimed at turning the inadequacy of the literary medium into a poetics.