Academic Year 2022/2023

• Prof. Francesco Vitale, professore ordinario di estetica presso il Dipartimento di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale dell’Università di Salerno

• Dott. Roberto Revello, Direttore editoriale e Responsabile legale MIMESIS Edizioni

• Prof.ssa Livia Cavaglieri, Professore Associato presso il Dipartimento Italianistica, romanistica, antichistica, arti e spettacolo (DIRAAS) dell’Università di Genova

• Dott. Dario Pappalardo, autore e giornalista, La Repubblica

• Dott. Francesco Guglieri, scrittore e editor per Einaudi

• Dott.ssa Anna Casalino, storica dell’arte, editor e responsabile della progettazione digitale presso Carrocci editore

• Dott. Paolo Simoni, Direttore d’Archivio Fondazione Home Movies

• Dott.ssa Patrizia Cacciani, Responsabile Mediateca, Archivio Storico Luce, Cinecittà spa

• Prof. Henry Keazor, Universität Heidelberg ZEGK – Institut für Europäische Kunstgeschichte

• Dott. Fabrizio Venerandi e Dott.ssa Roberta Iadevaia, hanno tenuto un incontro dal titolo: Alla ricerca del segno perduto. Generi e pratiche della letteratura elettronica contemporanea

• Prof. Andrea Mazzucchi, Professore Ordinario di filologia della letteratura italiana Dipartimento di Studi umanistici Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

• Barbara London, Curator and writer specializing in new media and sound art. Founder of the video-media collection at The Museum of Modern Art.

• Prof. Lambert Wiesing Professor für Philosophie mit Schwerpunkt Bildtheorie und Phänomenologie Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, FSU

• Prof.ssa Giovanna Fossati, Film Heritage and Digital Film Culture, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

• Prof. Joshua Yumibe, Film and Media Studies, Faculty of Film Studies -Michigan State University

• Maryline Desbiolles, poetessa e scrittrice

• Martin Gayford, Writer and art critic for the Spectator Magazine

• Dott.ssa Paola Galimberti, Dirigente Responsabile - Direzione Performance, Assicurazione Qualità, Valutazione e Politiche di Open Science - Università degli Studi di Milano

 

 

 

Academic Year 2021/2022

 

 

 

• Franco Moretti , Emeritus Professor at Standford University, held an Open Lecture entitled "Falso movimento. Il quantitativo come promessa e come problema" and a seminar entitled "Eccezioni, norme, casi limite e Carlo Ginzburg";
• Tonino Griffero, Full Professor at Università Torvergata Roma, Dipartimento di Ricerche Filosofiche, held a seminar entitled "La svolta atmosferica e l'estetica patica"
• Dario Pappalardo , editor and journalist, La Repubblica, held a seminar entitled "Scene dal Quarto Potere";
• Ester Fuoco , Research Fellow, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, held a seminar entitled "La ricerca creativa attraverso le nuove tecnologie. Intelligenza artificiale, realtà aumentata e robotica nella performance teatrale contemporanea";
• Roberto Diodato , Full Professor of Estetics at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, held a seminar entitled "Un'idea di estetica del virtuale";
• Lorenzo Casini , Full Professor at Scuola IMT Alti Studi di Lucca, of Administrative Law, he teaches Global Law and Cultural Heritage and Law.
• Franco La Cecla , tenured teacher, IULM University, Faculty of Arts and Tourism, Department of Humanities, held a seminar entitled "Media and visual medias as ersatz of presence. An Antropological approach to media users and producers";
• Mari Velonaki , Professor of Social Robotics at Art & Design, UNSW, Founder and director of the Creative Robotics Lab (Art & Design UNSW) held a seminar entitled "Social Robotics:Towards Human-Centric Systems- a continuing journey";
• Manuel Orazi, Professor at Accademia di Architettura – Università della Svizzera Italiana, Editor and Writer for Quodlibet;
• Roberto De Gaetano , Full Professor at Università della Calabria held a seminar entitled "Il problema delle immagini”;
• Daniele Barbieri , Full Professor at Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, held a seminar entitled "Tecnologia, arti visive e fumetto”;
• Paul Dumouchel , Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, held a seminar entitled "Production and dissemination of images using digital technologies. How these technologies themselves change our image of the world";
• Giorgio Zanchini , journalist, essayist and radio host of di Radio Rai, held a seminar entitled "il giornalismo culturale e le nuove tecnologie: quali cambiamenti e quali sfide”;
• Francesco Casetti , Yale University, Professor of Humanities and Film and Media Studies at Yale University, held a series of seminars entiled "The Projection/Protection Complex";
• Alice Barale , adjunct professor, at Università Statale di Milano, held a seminar entitled "Con gli occhi della macchina": arte e intelligenza artificiale;
• Vittorio Gallese , Full Professor at Università di Parma, Dipartimento Medicina e Chirurgia.
• Leonardo Caffo , Adjunct Professor, Ontology and Design Theory, Politecnico di Torino, held a series of seminars entitled "Visione, Comunità, Ecologie nelle nuove forme tecnologiche";
• Mario Negri , emeritus professor at Università IULM, held a seminar entitled "Angoli, triangoli e la percezione del mondo”;
• Claudio Emanuele Felice , Full Professor at Department of Business, Law, Economics and Consumptions Università IULM, held a series of seminars entitled "Tecnologia, etica e diritti umani: le sfide di oggi";
• Paola di Gennaro , Adjunct Professor of English Literature at Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, held a seminar entitled "Tra scienza e letteratura: DH, letteratura, elettronica e postgenomica";
• Ioana Ocnarescu , Strate Research & RbD Lab Director, Design Researcher at Strate Design School (Paris, France) in the Research and Innovation Department, held a seminar entitled "Design & technologies through history: design approaches & implications in relation to emerging technologies with a focus on social robotics";
• Clementina Cantillo , Full Professor at Università di Salerno, Department Cultural Heritage Science, held a seminar entitled “Concetti e linguaggi della musica”;
• Ruggero Eugeni , Full Professor of Media Semiotics, at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Department of Science of Communication and Performing Arts held a seminar entitled “ I dispositivi di realtà estesa e gli statuti delle immagini algoritmiche”
• Gennaro Carillo Full Professor of Filosofia teoretica e Storia del pensiero politico presso il Dipartimento Scienze Umanistiche – Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, held a seminar entitled “ Scene di metamorfosi. Prefigurazioni mitiche del postumano”;
• Nathalie Heinich , École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales: Paris, held a seminar entitled “ Contemporary art as a new paradigm”;
• Michele Emmer , emeritus professor of Mathematics, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, held a seminar entitled “ Spazio e forma: arte, matematica, media”;
• Gianfranco Maraniello , tenured teacher at IULM University, Deparment of Communicaton, Arts and Media, held a seminar entitled “Simultaneità. Contributo all'archiviazione del presente”;
• Bartolomeo Pietromarchi , Director of MAXXI Art, National Museum of the 21st century Arts. , held a seminar entitled “ Il museo del futuro alla prova degli sviluppi tecnologici e digitali tra nuove forme di creazione artistica e strategie culturali sperimentali”

Academic Year 2020/2021

 

• Ester Fuoco, contract professor at the Department Diraas of the University of Genoa, held a seminar on Revolutions in contemporary performance practice: from digital technology to robotics, during which she posed the following questions: what happens to the performing body when technological devices are involved on stage? What aesthetic process of remediation and "democratization" undergoes the corporeality typical of live performance? Through contemporary national and international examples, we have defined some of the different statements of the performative corporeity, of the actor and/or the spectator, following - in particular - three categories that involve the relational and expressive level, considering their alteration and implementation through the use of new technologies. The present in the here and now (immediate proximity), the present at a distance and the absent/virtual. A theme that during the pandemic has become increasingly topical and has proven to be an alternative to the blocking of live performances. Spatial fading, temporal trespassing and human absences are the result of new creative processes that show not only human actors on stage but also avatars and androids. We will try to overturn the perspective of canonical theatrical analysis and consider that the point of analysis should no longer start from the body but from its movement and the process it undergoes in the light of the interaction and integration of the technological device.

• Richard Saint-Gelais, professor at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Laval (Canada), held a seminar entitled Trompe l'œil as a (meta)semiotic device

• Claire Bishop, Professor of Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York held a seminar entitled Interventions on April 15, 22 and 29. Over the course of the three sessions she will attempt to reflect on the concept of "intervention" understood as an artistic strategy of working in public space. Although interruption and refusal have been central to the avant-garde throughout the twentieth century, this seminar proposes a more circumscribed definition of intervention, one that triangulates with public gestures, political temporality, and media circulation.
   
• Dr. Joerg Fingerhut -Investigator of the Research Group: Philosophy and Cognitive Science of Media, Cultural Artifacts, and Art within the EU Horizon 2020 Consortium Project: ARTIS: Art and Research on Transformations on Individuals and Societies - held a seminar entitled Embodied Cognition of Media and Visual Culture.

 

• Dr. Riccardo Falcinelli, Professor of Psychology of Perception at Isia Roma Design and owner of Studio Falcinelli & Co. specialized in editorial design, gave a lecture on Design as representation of representations
   
• Marie Rebecchi, Professor at the Department of Arts of Aix-Marseille Université, held a seminar on The living revealed and documented by the technique
   
• Antonio Somaini, Professor of Cinema, Visual Cultures and Media Theory and Director of the Department of Cinema and Audiovisual Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, gave two lectures entitled Time Machine: Cinematic Temporalities. From Exhibition to Film
   
• Liat Lavi, Director of the Master in Design (M.Des) Program in Visual Communication at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem gave a seminar on A Philosophical Approach to Visual Analysis: What do Metaphysical Assumptions Look Like?
   
• Andrea Minuz, associate professor at the Department of History Anthropology Religions Performing Arts of the University La Sapienza of Rome, held a seminar on Screenwriting studies. Adaptation policies, rewriting practices and media franchises
   
• Valerio Magrelli, professor at the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Entertainment, University of Roma Tre, held a seminar on Poetry, Silicon, Links
   
• Mauro Carbone, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, held a seminar on Returning to screens: from the body that makes shadow to the body organs that make display
   
• Emmanuel Alloa, professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Fribourg, gave a seminar on The illiterates of the future. The Legibility of Images
   
• Michele Guerra, Professor of Cinema, Photography and Television at the University of Parma, held a seminar on "Action": for an archaeology of our media interactions.
   
• Simone Arcagni, associate professor at the Department of Culture and Society at the University of Palermo, held a seminar on The eye of the machine and on Cinema Futuro
   
• Francesco Caglioti, Professor of Medieval Art History at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, held a seminar on the following topics: Sacred topography, liturgical staging and funerary self-celebration - I: Donatello's bronze scrolls in San Lorenzo in Florence and then Sacred topography, liturgical staging and funerary self-celebration - II: Guido Mazzoni's Lamentation over the Dead Christ in Santa Maria di Monteoliveto in Naples
   
• Alessandro Piperno, writer and researcher at the Department of History, Cultural Heritage, Education and Society of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, held a seminar on Writers read writers: from Nabokov to Flaubert (backwards)
   
• William Mitchell, Professor at Chicago University, gave a seminar on Present Tense: The Iconology of Time

 

Academic Year 2019/2020

 

 

• Stefano Lombardi Vallauri, associate professor at Iulm Department of Communication Arts and Media, held a seminar on Uni multi inter hyper trans: mediality of music
   
• Franco Moretti, professor emeritus at Stanford University, held a seminar on Simulating entanglement: a new model for the study of literature?
   
• Massimo Fusillo, full professor at the Department of Human Sciences, University of L'Aquila, held a seminar on Per una comparatistica transmediale. Disseminations, diffractions, focalizations
   
• Carla Barbati, full professor at the Department of Business, Law, Economics and Consumption IULM, gave a lecture on the theme of Cultural Law
   
• Paolo Giovannetti, full professor at IULM Department of Arts, Media and Communication, held a seminar on Transmediality (and intermediality) in time: the female pathos of Romanticism and the 'case' Romanzo criminale
   
• Stefano Bartezzaghi, associate professor at IULM Department of Humanistic Studies, held a seminar on Rhetoric of creativity: exercise of style, variation, enigma
   
• Riccardo Manzotti, associate professor at Iulm Department of Business, Law, Economics and Consumption, held a seminar at the Phd in Visual and Media Studies on The problem of the ontology of images from phenomenology to digital media.

 

 

 

Academic Year 2018/2019

 

• Gianfranco Noferi: Deputy Director Rai Cultura Palinsesti e Piani, held a seminar at PhD in Visual and Media Studies on 10 June 2019 at 14.00. The title of the speech is L'esperienza di Rai Cultura nella evoluzione della comunicazione in Italia (Rai Culture experience in the evolution of communication in Italy)

 

• Arturo Galansino: General Manager of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi held a seminar entitledPalazzo Strozzi: New Renaissance for Florence

• Paola Dubini: Professor at Bocconi University, held a seminar entitled Measuring the value of culture
   
• Makoto Sekimura, professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy at Hiroshima University, held a seminar entitled Spatiality and human beings in Japanese cultures. Click here to download the abstract and the short bio
   
• Emanuele Zinato: Associate professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Padua, he held a seminar entitled Starting with Huysmans: the aesthete, the objects and the technical reproducibility. Theoretical and methodological issues. Click here to download the abstract and the short bio
   
• Pierluigi Pellini:Director of the Department of Philology and Criticism of Ancient and Modern Literatures at the University of Siena, he is full professor of Contemporary Italian Literature. He held a seminar Statutes of the symbol between naturalism, symbolism and modernism. Click here to download the abstract and the short bio
   
• Bart Van Den Bossche: Professor of Italian Literature at KU Leuven University, he held a seminar on 26 February at entitled Images and words: the use of literature in the modernist period Click here to download the abstract, the short bio and the bibliography
   
• Antonio Pizzo teaches Performance Dramaturgy at the DAMS of the University of Turin. He held a seminar on 29 January entitled The forms of digital performance between theories and praxis Click here to download the abstract and bibliography
   

• Massimiliano Rossi: Full Professor of History of Art Criticism and Museology at the University of Salento since 2003. He held a seminar on 17 January entitled Poetics and rhetoric for images: literary artists and literary clients in the early modern age Click here to download the abstract and bibliography

• Paolo Coen: Associate Professor in History of Modern Art at the University of Teramo. Prof. Coen held a seminar on 21 January entitled From Primo Levi, with Primo Levi, to Primo Levi. Art and museums of the Holocaust, silent but not silent witnesses of Memory  Click here to download abstract and biography.

• Nicola Dusi: Professor of Intermediate Languages and Critical Analysis of Film at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Department of Communication and Economics. Click here to download abstract and biography.

Academic Year 2017/2018

• John Crawford: associate Dean with the Academy of Arts at the University of California Irvine. Prof. Crawford gave a lecture entitled "Exploring the use of processed digital media and computer-based interactivity in live performance".

• Tom Konyves: one of the founders of the collective The Vehicule Poets held two lessons entitled: Approaching Videopoetry: Origins, Constraints, Categories - Evaluating Videopoetry: Selection, Modification, Juxtaposition.

• Prof. Boris Groys: Professor of Aesthetics, Art History and Media Theory at the Center for Media Art and Theory in Karlsruhe, Germany, and Global Professor at New York University in the United States. He is considered the leading scholar of media theory and has given two lectures entitled: An alternative history of modernism I: Kandinsky and art as the medium of affects - here you can find the poster; An alternative history of modernism II: Malevich and Cosmic imagination.

• Carlo Fontana: Theatre Director and President of A.G.I.S. (Associazione Generale Italiana dello Spettacolo) from 12 September 2013. Carlo Fontana gave a lecture entitled Working in Culture: History of Operations and Institutions

• Prof. Joshua Yumibe: Associate Professor of Film Studies at Michigan State University. Prof. Yumibe will be the guest of the PhD on May 3 to give a lecture entitled: Chromatic Modernity: Silent Cinema and the Legacies of Color

• Prof. Federico Vercellone: Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Turin. Vercellone gave a lecture entitled "Modern Revolutions of Katechon. Starting with Anselm Kiefer"

• Prof. Christine Macel: since 2000 she has been Chief Curator of the Musée national d'art moderne - Centre Pompidou in Paris, where she is responsible for the Department of "Création contemporaine et prospective" that she founded and developed. She has been curator of the French Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2013 (Anri Sala), of the Belgian Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2007 (Eric Duyckaerts), and director of the Biennale d'Arte 2017 Viva, arte viva!... He gave a lecture entitled: "The Experience of the General Director of La Biennale Arti Visive Venezia 2017.

• Prof. Richard Dyer: Emeritus Professor at King's College London gave a lecture entitled "Is It Their Song? The Use of Song in Film Melodrama".

• Prof. Giancarlo Alfano: Associate Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Naples Federico II held a lecture entitled With the face page. Narration, photography and typography in Sebald's work.

• Prof. W.J.T Mitchell: Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago

• Prof.ssa Cristina Baldacci: Fellow at ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry gave a lecture entitled: The Wandering Archive as a Metaphor and Symptom in Contemporary Art.

• Michele Cometa: Professor of History of Culture and Visual Culture at the University of Palermo, he held a seminar On the origins of make-image. The Visual Culture of the Palaeolithic 

• Riccardo Falcinelli: one of the most appreciated visual designers on the Italian graphic scene and author of Cromorama,. He gave a lecture entitled Colour as a mass medium. Design, perception, communication

• Prof. Salvatore Silvano Nigro: Emeritus Professor of Italian Literature

• Prof. Emilio Sala: Associate Professor of Music at the University of Milan.

• Prof. Michele Dantini: Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University for Foreigners of Perugia and Visiting Professor at IMT Scuola di Alti Studi Lucca. He gave a lecture entitled Continuity|Discontinuity. Visual arts, society and politics between fascism and neo-avant-garde.

• Prof.ssa Anna Maria Lorusso: associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and Communication of the University of Bologna, where she teaches Semiotics, Semiotics of Culture and Semiotics of Journalistic Texts. Controversial images, between information, denunciation and self-representation. He gave a lecture entitled: Controversial images, between information, denunciation and self-representation.

• Prof. Guglielmo Pescatore: Full Professor of Cinema, Photography, Television at the University of Bologna. He gave a lecture entitled Narrative ecosystems. A new approach to serial narratives

• Prof. Carole Talon-Hugon: Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nice-Côte d'Azur
   

Academic Year 2016/2017

• Paolo Baratta: President of the Venice Biennale.

• Francesco Casetti: Professor of Humanitics and Professor of Film Studies at Yale University.

• Franco Farinelli: Full Professor of Geography Director of the Department of Philosophies and Communication - University of Bologna.

• Francesco Valagussa: Professor of Aesthetics and forms of doing and Metaphysics of the practices of the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele

• Chus Martìnez : Director of the Art Institute of the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, Switzerland

• Boris Groys: Professor of Aesthetics, Art History, and Media Theory at the Center for Media Art and Karlsruhe Theory, Germany Global Professor at New York University

• Prof. Arturo Mazzerella: Full Professor of Literature and Visual Arts and Theories and Techniques of Narrative Department of Philosophy, Communication

 

 

 

 

 

Annual PhD Conference in Visual and Media Studies

Since 2017, the Doctoral School of IULM University has been organizing an annual conference to share and make visible the results of studies conducted by doctoral students and lecturers. The most innovative research topics are discussed in a critical encounter with authoritative scholars, both Italian and foreign, in order to intensify study and find new keys to interpretation. The conferences are open to the public.

20 November 2019 Le forme del simbolo. Discorsi e pratiche del contemporaneo  - Phd in Visual and Media Studies
The conference aims to re-discuss in a contemporary key the relationship between symbol and artistic practices in multiple media contexts. The speakers illustrated the way in which contemporary culture, from the 20th century to the present day, on the one hand has defined its identity through the elaboration of new artistic and literary codes, and on the other has taken up the challenge of a direct confrontation with tradition.

Click here to download the programme of the Conference and here to download the poster.

21 November 2018 Intrecci mediali. Articolazioni dell'iconico nella cultura visuale contemporanea - PhD in Visual and Media Studies
The second conference of the IULM Doctoral School was an opportunity to intensify study and discuss the following question: how can we rethink the concept of media today? Doctoral students and scholars in the field discuss it from three interdisciplinary perspectives: aesthetics and politics of staging, multidimensional relationships between image and word, dynamics of sensitive affection.

Click here to download the programme of the Conference and here to download the poster.

15 November 2017 Questioni di intertestualità - Phd in Visual and Media Studies
Intertextuality issues is the title of the first conference promoted and organized by IULM Phd School for Communication Studies.
The PhD students proposed a day of reflection on the theme of intertextuality, analyzed from three different perspectives: that of Visual Arts with a focus on "rewriting the look"; that of Film Studies focused on "traumatic visions in contemporary non-fiction" and that of Writing, Translation, Creativity oriented towards the concept of "estrangement as a critical interface".

Click here to download the programme of the Conference and here to download the poster

IULM University offers interdisciplinary courses aimed at developing the skills necessary for a researcher in training: communication, design and technical research funding, protection of intellectual property and skills in innovation and digital communication - the strength of our University.

The implementation of these training courses takes place according to the European recommendations on the development of doctoral education: in 2011, the European Commission includes the "Transferable Skills" among the basic principles for innovation of doctoral training courses.

The aim of the interdisciplinary courses is the development of skills that encourage, beyond the academic career, also the inclusion in roles of high responsibility in bodies, institutions, research centres and companies.

English Academic Writing

The course provides practical tools related to:

• Elements that make up an academic text
• Call for papers submission: the construction of the abstract
• Writing a paper
• Quoting, paraphrasing, referencing techniques
• Presentation of a research paper
• Construction of an academic bio short

Copyright

The course provides an introduction to the themes of intellectual property and legal protection of creative activities. The themes of copyright on products of university research and some problematic aspects of the application of rules on intellectual property to activities and works characteristic of the contemporary art scene are the subject of in-depth study.

Theory and practice of European design for cultural and creative enterprises

Training objectives:

• Acquisition of skills in the analysis of European Union research and development policies for "Cultural and Creative Industries - CCI";
• Acquisition of the design logic required for participation in European Union Calls for Proposals;
• Research and analysis of good practices in the field
• Acquisition of a forma mentis of research oriented to the consideration of the concrete benefits for the whole society, not only for the specific scientific community of reference, in relation to the fruits of its research work.

Contents:

• EU direct funds for research and development in the field of Cultural and Creative Industries CCIs
• The logic of European design: the Logical framework approach
• The matching between the objectives of the European programme and the objectives of the project
• Project evaluation: the point of view of the European external evaluator
• Needs analysis and definition of objectives
• Expected results and result indicators
• European added value and partnership building
• Risk analysis
• Dissemination and use of results
• Impact and sustainability of the project
• Project management and reporting
• Drafting of the project draft
• Monitoring of calls for CCI grants

 

Teaching methodologies, techniques and strategies

The course aims to provide the doctoral student with basic methodologies and techniques regarding the organisation of university courses, with the aim of outlining ways of developing autonomous learning processes capable of promoting and/or enhancing interest and motivation in students in order to build meaningful and lasting learning. The doctoral student is introduced to the teaching-learning process through theoretical elements and practical exercises. A number of teaching methodologies are presented, focusing on the procedural and processual methods activated through adequate planning by the teacher, aiming at a meaningful and stable acquisition of knowledge centred on the teaching process. The complexity of teaching and training is shown in its compositional nature linked to the structuring of contents, methods, operational techniques, and strategies as well as implicit and explicit values. Specifically, the expository method, the operational method (workshops), the investigative method (experimental research), the heuristic-participative method (action-research); the individualised method (mastery learning) are presented. In parallel, the techniques of simulation; situation analysis; operational reproduction; cooperative production (e.g. action mazes, circle time, didactic debriefing, debate, jigsaws, peer education, service learning, storytelling, spaced learning, tinkering, tutoring) are explained. The difference between expository and heuristic-participatory strategies is clarified. The doctoral student will acquire a comprehensive view of the role of the teacher as a facilitator of learning processes and will be able to put these into practice through targeted exercises.

 

Quaderni di Visual and Medi Studies aim to be a place of convergence of theoretical knowledge and operational strategies related to the study of media and visual languages in an interdisciplinary perspective, offering PhD students a space that brings together and makes visible the best results of their work.

Intrecci mediali. Articolazioni dell'iconico nella cultura visuale contemporanea

Widespread spectacularization, aesthetic capitalism and visual hypertrophy are just some of the distinctive features of an everyday environment characterized by increasing forms of interactivity, intermediality and immersion. In order to respond to the challenges imposed by this new cultural scenario, the volume questions the continuous reconfiguration and remediation of the relationship between words, things and images. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the emerging articulation of the iconic configure three intertwined perspectives: aesthetics and politics of the staging, multidimensional relationships between image and word, dynamics of sensitive affection in the audiovisual.

Questioni di intertestualità inaugurates the series created as part of the PhD course in Visual and Media Studies.

The volume alternates between work by young scholars and reflections by renowned professors specialised in the theme of rewriting, analysed here from three perspectives: that of Visual Arts, with a focus on rewriting the vision, that of Film Studies, focused on "traumatic visions in contemporary non-fiction" and that of Writing, Translation, Creativity, oriented towards the concept of "estrangement as a critical interface".

 

Transmediality and Crossmediality. New Perspectives (2022)

Reflections on the relationship between the arts and the corresponding codes of expression have played a prominent role in the history of the Western canon. Transmediality and crossmediality explores an interdisciplinary debate on transmigration and the resulting hybrid morphogenesis of meanings in the recent past and the contemporary. Beginning with the similarities and differences between multimedia and their more recent evolutions in the modern and postmodern eras, traversing theories and practices of intertextuality and rewriting, and ending with hybridisations between artistic languages, devices and new interfaces, the publication investigates a wide range of topics starting from the complexity of multi-, trans- and cross-media processes. 

 

The Forms of the Symbol. Contemporary Discourses and Practices (2021)

Reflecting - within a community of study - on the meaning and function of the "symbol": in other words, of the symbol as a theoretical and, at the same time, operational concept of the contemporary creation of aesthetics. At IULM University, professors and students of the PhD school in Visual and Media Studies have followed this path for a year, examining it in many of its possible interpretations. From this work a convention was organised, The Forms of the Symbol. Contemporary Discourses and Practices, which took place on 20 November 2019 and of which this publication is the culmination. What dominates, without any doubt, is the concept of 'symbolic form' derived from the thinking of Ernst Cassirer and the many others (first and foremost Erwin Panofsky) who have followed in his footsteps. And yet the highly contemporary approach of almost all the contributions shifts the axis of the discourse, emphasising issues (such as that of identity) that enable many of the issues in play to be implemented in other ways. The symbolic (and semiotic) construction is replaced - if not by a deconstruction - by something like a defiguration, a critical redefinition of the symbol intended to undermine its traits of totality and self-sufficiency of expression. And under discussion is not only the dialectical opposite that has been repeatedly evoked in the literary field, namely allegory as a critique of the codified relationship between signifier and signified. There is more. The contemporary (the postmodern?) has less and less faith in the complete verticality of meaning and instead puts its bets on the 'nomadic' proliferation of signifiers, finding specific evidence when the process occurs in transmedia, postcolonial, gender-oriented environments, which assiduously propagate the fires of aesthetic discourse.

 

Best thesis:

Regarding the theses submitted and discussed by PhD students in Visual and Media Studies, from the XXXI cycle onwards, the Doctoral Board of lecturers each year identifies the best works that will become part of the collection 'Quaderni di Visual and Media Studies'.

I romanzi del futurismo. L'avanguardia per tutti

Vincenzo Pernice

Does a “futurist novel” exist? This essay aims to answer this question by adopting a particular point of view, that of the relationship between the avant-garde and the public. The movement's narrative production is here divided into three categories, ordered by degrees of formal complexity: from the most experimental novels to the most available, from verbovisual contamination to feuilleton. In a journey through the works of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Benedetta Cappa, Paolo Buzzi, Mario Carli, Bruno Corra, Fillia (Luigi Colombo) and others, a surprising and kaleidoscopic picture of futurist literature emerges, wrongly reduced to mere words in freedom. Instead, the protagonists of these pages are intermedial tales, lyrical prose, genres such as erotica and science fiction. The result is a futurism that, through the novels, appeals now to a few, now to many, potentially to each group of readers. An avant-garde for all.

The exhibition as a medium. History and theory

Vincenzo Di Rosa

What does it mean to consider an exhibition as an artistic medium? Which authors have explored the expressive possibilities of this practice? What has led to the progressive convergence of artistic and curatorial activity? Since the end of the 1960s, numerous artists, filmmakers, philosophers and writers have curated exhibitions that can be considered true works of art. These are complex, plural works in which different media and languages converge. Working at the intersection of exhibition studies and visual culture, Vincenzo Di Rosa describes the media statute of contemporary art exhibitions and identifies the fundamental characteristics of exhibition-works. The author traces the history of this particular phenomenon by analysing exhibitions such as those of Andy Warhol and Martha Rosler, the Group Material and Fred Wilson, up to the more recent projects of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Francesco Vezzoli, Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe.

 

Crime, guilt and testimony. On documentary performativity.  

Giulia Scomazzon

From post-television serials to podcasts, true crime is imposing itself in the contemporary media landscape as a mass narrative genre. This publication investigates the ethical and political issues related to the representation of guilt and the guilty, in the light of the linguistic transformations of cinematic non-fiction and the commercial emergence of crime docuseries. What are the intentions and problems of cinema documenting criminal guilt? How does non-fiction interact with and feed the public debate on justice? This work attempts to answer these questions, defining an interdisciplinary perimeter within which documentary performativity can be analysed in relation to the demand for truth and justice of bearing witness.

 

For a history of Italian electronic literature

Roberta Iadevaia

Poems written in programming languages, interactive multimedia works, stories that unfold between virtual and physical reality. These are just some of the genres that can be traced back to 'electronic literature', a cross-sectoral phenomenon characterised by the creative use of the properties of digital media. In this book, the first to attempt a historical reconstruction of Italian electronic literature, Roberta Iadevaia takes us on a journey that starts with the mainframes of the 1950s, passes through the home and personal computers of the 1980s, dives into the Net of the 1990s and follows its development up to the present day, characterised by increasingly 'intelligent' and ubiquitous devices. Accompanying us on this journey - one of many possible in a world still largely to be explored - is the conviction that electronic literature, being constitutively hybrid, can be one of the most fertile and necessary phenomena of our time.

 

 

Classes timetable for a.y. 2024/2025

The opening lecture will take place on the 22th of October 2024

Calendario attività didattica ottobre-novembre dicembre 2024

Classes timetable for a.y. 2023/2024

The opening lecture will take place on the 23th of October 2023

Calendario attività didattica ottobre-dicembre 2023

Calendario attività didattica gennaio 2024

Calendario attività didattica febbraio 2024

Calendario attività didattica marzo 2024

Calendario attività didattica aprile 2024

Calendario attività didattica maggio 2024

Past academic years 

• Calendario Attività didattica 2022-2023
• Calendario Attività didattica 2021-2022
• Calendario Attività didattica 2020-2021

Educational Activities for a.y. 2024/2025:

THE ARTIST in the age of his technical reproducibility: human and artificial creativity

Paraphrasing Walter Benjamin's renowned essay on the artwork in the age of its technical reproducibility, the same question is asked but extended to the artists themselves and not only to their works. The arrival and rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revived discussions about the nature of human capabilities, with a particular focus on creativity and thus art and aesthetic value.

Traditionally regarded as an exclusively human bastion, creativity is now being questioned by the emergence of generative artificial intelligences capable of analyzing large datasets, both textual and visual, to extract structural rules capable of generating content similar to that observed. This process is not limited to simple replication, but discovers 'recipes' to create content that retains the essence of the original, leading to the production of endless variations on the given theme.

Is this generation creativity, or is creativity and thus, artistic value, something beyond mere content generation? What are they, indeed?

Facing this dizzying change in the technological base, provocative questions emerge: can content generation operated by AI be considered a true form of creation? Is there real value added in these processes? And human creativity, is it perhaps so different? These questions are not only theoretical, but illuminate fundamental aspects of human cognitive functioning and its creative potential.

In this new era, the interaction between artificial intelligence, art and creativity reflects a broader dynamic, that between culture and technology, marking a deep transformation taking place in our society. Analyzing these relationships not only helps to understand current cultural change, but also lays the groundwork for future reflections on the role of humans and a new perspective for aesthetic values.

Educational Activities for a.y. 2023/2024: 

Activities program

Defiance to silence. Arts and media between narration and anti-narration

 

There are countless forms of narrative in the world. First of all, there is a prodigious variety of genres, each of which branches out into a variety of media, as if all substances could be relied upon to accommodate man’s stories. Among the vehicles of narrative are articulated language, whether oral or written, pictures, still or moving, gestures, and an ordered mixture of all those substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fables, tales, short stories, epics, history, tragedy, drame, comedy, pantomime, paintings [....]; indeed narrative starts with the very history of mankind; there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narrative.

 R. Barthes, An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.

 In what terms can we talk, today, of narration in the field of visual and media studies?

The narration is considered a universal phenomenon and a man’s primary need which has been incarnated over time in different media (from the cave artifacts to the most advanced technologies’ products as VR, AR, NFT, Metaverse, Podcast, IA) (M. Cometa, 2017). Nevertheless, at least up to the Nineties, it was the victim of a distance from the arts and aesthetic theories of the twentieth century – i.e. abstractions and conceptualisms that often intended the work of art as pure experience, independent of historical, political, social conditioning – or nostalgic, sometimes hedonistic, postmodern citations emptied of authentic vital energy (J. Elkins, 1991 and 2015).

After the year Two Thousand, the progressive resort to intermedial perspectives, transmedia, cross-media and multimedia in the languages object of interest of visual studies and media studies, the growing centrality given to the content dimension (think about street art, participatory practices, public art, artist exhibitions and mega-installations, documentaries, NFTs), the success of themes half between fiction and testimony (particularly, in the riverbed of a reborn real cinema), the hunger for stories to which television series, videogames, literary texts try to give an answer, the invasion of reconstructions and real and fake anecdotes transmitted every day through the web and social networks, are just some of the testimonies of a new form of attention to the narrative and anti-narrative possibilities and aspirations of our time (M. Rieser, A. Zapp 2002; N. Spector, 2020; V. Trione, 2019 e 2022).   

We are facing what could be considered a defiance to silence, shared by many visual, media, literary productions. Maybe, the consequence of the diffused necessity of telling themselves, the own community or the world (the wars, the pandemic, the climate change, the migrations, the minorities, the diversity, the solitude, the activism) or the urgency of proposing social, historical, generational, identitarian counter-narrations fed by the simplicity of calling on an immense audience, thanks to thousands of devices (B. Czarniawska, 2004; M. Kreiswirth, 2005). With the awareness of a more authentic freedom in choosing to respect, measure and transgress, if necessary, the linearity of the narrative, dilating it, fragmenting it and then recovering it, without the obligation to reject it (W. Wolf, 2003; M. Hyvärinen, A. Korhonen, 2006; K. Speidel, 2017 e 2018).

In the new millennium, furthermore, the artistic and cultural heritage is more and more a protagonist of visual, immersive, auditive narrative extensions. To be proposed, in the environments of the museum, the archive, the archaeological site, the exhibition, are experiences that are lived by moving physically and conceptually, based on the order of discourse prepared by the artist, curator, director or programmer, in real space or in the space made virtual/hybrid by technologies (M.-L. Ryan, 2004).

Lastly, internet. Which represents a boundless territory in which to build one's own narration or listen to those of others, conveyed by the multiple shareable formats (such as stories, reel, audio) or generated by IA answers, more and more autonomous in handling the human language in a reproductive and generative manner.

The XXXIX cycle of the Visual and Media Studies PhD proposes to identify the main lines of recovery and development of the narration in the field of the visual and media studies in a historical and theoretical manner. Through meetings with influential voices on the national and international research scene, with scholars and directors of archives, cultural institutions and museums, an attempt will be made to reconstruct the complex horizon of reference, marked by different degrees of narrativity and anti-narrative, taking into account the processes related to specific languages, their hybridization and technological impact.

Educational Activities for a.y. 2022/2023

Activities program

• Academic year 2022/2023 The Heritage: an ordering and sense-making dispositif

The issue of cultural and artistic heritage, a subject traditionally related to the European identity, revolves around the conservation and protection of a treasure of ruins, on which is based the sense of belonging and a connection with History – of a place, a territory, a community – but also the transmission of a culture’s values among generations.

The Heritage is a priceless legacy: a document/monument of past magnificence, to be celebrated and honored, yet also to be promoted, reviving its meaning through the renewal of those creative gesture that shapes a world. Moving from a monumental culture, that celebrates the vestiges of a past to be perpetuated rather than questioned, we now consider the Heritage as an extraordinary source of innovation, open to the future (P. Sacco, 2018).

The economic nature of those terms often associated to heritage – the goods, the value, the treasure – already denotes the interests connected to it and its possible exploitation—subjected to an extremely intense debate (S. Settis, 2007 e 2012; T. Montanari, 2015) aimed at defending the common good: the fundamental right of the democratic access to and sharing of Knowledge and Beauty.

The cult of what remains goes with and, in many ways, translates a fear for the loss, which appears irreparable for the artistic heritage. As much the violence of time as that of men endangers the obligation to preserve the memory and its vestiges, and also the integrity of a place that was left to us in inheritance first and foremost as a common good to be preserved – landscape and natural environment define yet another aspect of the heritage and of its role in shaping our identity.

The consumption of the environmental heritage can potentially be beyond remedy, thus calling for heritage etics, more than esthetics– and politics – of its sharing. The destructive wrath today seems to exert mainly on the artistic heritage, on the symbols of History’s beauty, in a new barbarism that finds in the iconoclastic gesture the expression of a desire to annihilate the idea of time and of his legacy, in a triumph of the authority of the present time (P. Matthiae, 2015; M. Bettetini, 2006 -2016).

As opposed to a general loss of the connections with the past within the here and now of a breathless present, in recent year celebrations, museums and memorials dedicated to precise historical events have multiplied, thus stimulating the necessary action of remembering. The past few decades have registered a significant increase of the number of archives devoted  to collect documents, objects and even ephemeral traces of the history of territories, people and events, or of the everyday life and workplace life: all evidences of long gone worlds, of a recent past chronologically close yet very far from us.

The “archival fever”, partly solicited from the possibilities granted by the emerging digital technologies, goes with a redefinition of the cultural heritage borders, no longer confined to the works or documents of the great historical and artistic tradition. If the selection and the choice of what deserves to be preserved, displayed, studied, brings to action the opposite gestures of preservation/distruction; memory/oblivion; recognition/marginalization, which mark every cultural and identity-based process, on the other hand the present times seem to look for new ways to define the cultural heritage and its borders, that should be analyzed. There are numerous studies on heritage as a ordering dispositif, a system on which is based the cultural acknowledgement (and exclusion) [Kalay-Kvan-Affleck, 2007; R. Harrison, 2012; D. Byrne, 2014; S. Verde, 2017], as well as those concerning the cultural values’ attribution processes, the social actions and the cultural politics which define or even “invent” the heritage (A. Iuso, 2022).

Nowadays the Heritage Studies are an interdisciplinary field, involving anthropologists, ethnologists, arts and culture historians, economy and law scholars, and also digital humanities scholars and experts of postcolonial studies.

The PhD in Visual and Media Studies -  XXXVIII cycle - aims to investigate the wide range of problems elicited by heritage studies, with an historical and theoretical perspective, through seminars and classes with those scholars and archives’ directors, museums and cultural  institutions whose work is devoted to design the most effective ways to investigate and exhibit our cultural heritage.

Academic calendar: a.y. 2022/2023

• Academic year 2021/2022 Visual, Media and New Technological Forms

The recent digitization’s processes and the spread of new technologies produce a pervasive visual continuum acting as cognitive backbone and as mediator in social relations. In this complex enviroment, thanks to production, archiving, processing and image transmission tecniques, the global perspective and unusual performance ways are on stage.

The techno-medial dimension of images imposes hence a reflection both on the medium and the device, according to a genealogical and archeological point of view, which shows its evolution. This involves an alteration in our sensorium, which defines a new techno-aesthetic perspective (Simondon; Montani) demanding a different images consumption method.

The contemporary individual is involved both as creator and receiver. This distinction becomes more and more evanescent, through the manipulation and re-mediation processes the images are undergoing, such as in reenactment, restaging and foundfoutage practices.

What is hence the impact these new technological expressions have on creativity? Which new kind and hybridizations are produced? How to represent the fluidity among different media in artistic creation – whether it be connecting to visual arts, cinema, or literature? Which are the new fruition’s forms of digital environments? At last, which is the A.I. effect on images’ production techniques? Can the generative process of an A.I. system be defined “aesthetic” and “creative”, such as some contemporary art events seem to show?

This year’s subject will be the impact of technology on visual, medial, and literary dimension, trying to identify the main vanishing lines in the tecno-global scenario we are surrounded by, thanks to the participation of national and international important voices, who will guide us through contemporary visual scene.

Academic calendar: a.y. 2021/2022

 

• Academic year 2020/2021 Transmediality and crossmediality, new perspectives

Reflection on the relationship between the arts and the corresponding expressive codes played a central role in the history of the Western canon well before aesthetics was established as an autonomous discipline. From classical antiquity to the fertile experiments of comparative poetics of German Romanticism, this line of study has crossed the various epochs, proposing in ever new ways the ancient dilemma regarding the specificity of the Muses and their languages.

Looking back at the twentieth century, it is no less evident that alongside long-term issues - such as the relationship between narrative (telling) and exhibition (showing) modes - new problems have gradually arised such as the materiality of individual media and their specific potential, as well as the emergence of new types of use, not least the unprecedented interaction with the user made possible by digital technologies .

The XXXVI cycle of the Doctoral program in Media and Visual Studies aims to investigate this broad horizon of themes from a dual historical and theoretical perspective, offering Phd students a comprehensive overview of multi-, trans- and cross-media processes.

In accordance with this objective, the educational project will focus on various topics related to the above issues, including:

- definition of the similarities and differences between multimedia and its most recent evolutions in the modern and postmodern era (trans- and cross-media)
- adaptation policies and theories of rewriting
- media archaeology
- media reinventions
- hybridizations between artistic languages in different epochs and geographical contexts
- theories and practices of intertextuality
- visual remedies
- rebuilds, devices and new interfaces

 Academic calendar: a.y. 2020/2021