Mediterranean Studies Symposium
Schedule
Alghero, 6-7 June 2026
SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE
6 JUNE
8:00 am REGISTRATION and WALKING TOUR (& folkloristic dancers)
11:00-11:10 am Welcome by Drs. Pollicino and Summerfield
11:15-12:15 pm Folklore in/of Sardinia I (Pollicino, Schuchman, Pescatori)
12:15-1:15 pm Folk Storytelling I (Sottilotta, Maggi, Widy-Behiesse)
LUNCH ON YOUR OWN
3:30-4:30 pm Folklore and Cultural Memory I (Karagoz, Hafez, Barlas & Koksal)
4:30-5:30 pm Women and Folklore (Insana, Minieri, Tumini)
5:30-6:45 pm Folklore and Religion (Summerfield G., De Francisci, Gonzalez, Haraguchi)
7:30 pm WELCOME DINNER @ HOTEL
7 JUNE
8:30-9:00 am REGISTRATION
9:00-10:00 am Folk Storytelling II (Ferri, Davies, Deguilhem)
10:00-11:00 am Folkloric Characters (Pizzinato, Summerfield J., Gemboni & Fabris)
11:15-12:15 pm Folklore and/in Cinema (Borja, Faucherre-Buresi, Baracco)
12:15-1:15 pm Folklore in/of Sardinia II (Carolan, Bilotti, Watson -with local wine tasting)
LUNCH ON YOUR OWN
3:30-4:45 pm Folklore and Cultural Memory II (Licata, Guzzardi, Broilo, Brown)
4:45-6:15 pm Visual Folklore (Boll, Zanini-Cordi, Monzone, Carbone)
7:00 pm CLOSING RECEPTION @ HOTEL (& Mediterranean Folktales)
COMPLETE SESSIONS AND TITLES
6 JUNE
11:15-12:15 - FOLKLORE IN/OF SARDINIA I
- Between Folklore and History: The Accabadora in Literature and Film
ROSARIO POLLICINO, University of South Carolina, Columbia - From Collector to Creator: Grazia Deledda’s Transformation of Sardinian Folktales
ANNE SCHUCHMAN, Independent Scholar - Narrative Threads: Sardinian Folklore as a Linguistic and Storytelling Pedagogy
ROSSELLA PESCATORI, El Camino College
12:15-1:15 - FOLK STORYTELLING I
- Seekers of Wonder: Women Writing Folk and Fairy Tales in Nineteenth-Century Italy and Ireland
ELENA SOTTILOTTA, University of Cambridge - The Brothers Grimm’s Retellings of Basile’s Tales in the 1822 Edition of Their Kinder-und Haus Märchen
ARMANDO MAGGI, University of Chicago - Between Objectification and Agency: The Thousand and One Nights in Western Narratives
MARTA WIDY-BEHIESSE, University of Warsaw
3:30-4:30 - FOLKLORE AND CULTURAL MEMORY I
- Mediterranean Crossings: Myth and Oppositional Cultural Memory in Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s Antigone Power
CLAUDIA KARAGOZ, Saint Louis University - Dis-Encountering Others as Strangers: Goha and Giufà as Mediterranean Culture
SHERINE HAFEZ, University of California Riverside - Reinventing Gallipoli: Myths, Nation-Building, and Local Memory in Modern Turkey
DILEK BARLAS and YONCA KOKSAL, Koç University
4:30-5:30 - WOMEN AND FOLKLORE
- “‘…colmare Messina di benefizi’ or, Fata Morgana: How to Do Things with Legends”
LINA INSANA, University of Pittsburgh - The ‘Romance’ of an Abduction: Blanca of Navarre and the Legend of Sexual Violence in Modern Sicily
JESSICA MINIERI, Binghamton University (SUNY) - Voices of Lament: The Tradition of the Praeficae and Its Legacy in Italian Literature
ANGELA TUMINI, University of South Carolina
5:30-6:45 - FOLKLORE AND RELIGION
- “Viva Sant’Agata”: Faith and Folklore, the Sacred and the Profane
GIOVANNA SUMMERFIELD, Auburn University - Passion Day
ENZA DE FRANCISCI, University of Glasgow - Eating the Sacred: Material Piety and Devotional Immediacy in Lebanese Folk Religion
BORJA F. GONZALEZ, Necmettin Erbakan University - Performing the Legends of Female Saints in Seventeenth-Century Florence
JENNIFER HARAGUCHI, Brigham Young University
7 JUNE
9:00–10:00 - FOLK STORYTELLING II
- Folkloric and mythological motifs in the poetry of Ludovico Pasquale
ANE FERRI, Independent Scholar - The Hakawati: The Traditional Storyteller and the Transmission of Culture in Islamic Lands
RANDI DEGUILHEM, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) - Trickster Survivance: The Heroic-Liberational Tales of Messenian Aristomenes
SARAH DAVIES, Whitman College
10:00–11:00 - FOLKLORIC CHARACTERS
- “Genie, Make a Wish”: the remaking of the jinn from Aladdin’s genie to South Korean drama
ANDREA PIZZINATO, Geneva Graduate Institute - Mediterranean Mastodons
JOHN SUMMERFIELD, University of Maryland Global Campus - Mare Monstrum: New Mediterranean Routes
GIUSEPPINA GEMBONI, Carnegie Mellon U and ANGELA FABRIS, Universität Klagenfurt
11:15–12:15 - FOLKLORE AND/IN CINEMA
- Southern Italian Folklore in Luigi Di Gianni’s Documentaries
ETAMI BORJA, University of Zagreb - Sounding Sardinia: Folklore, Identity, and the Sonic Imagination on Screen
HELOISE FAUCHERRE-BURESI, Université Lyon 3 - Haunting the Screen: Folkloric Beings and Collective Memory in Sardinian Cinema
ALBERTO BARACCO, University of Torino
12:15-1:15 - FOLKLORE IN/OF SARDINIA II
- Grazia Deledda’s Virgin Mary
MARY ANN MCDONALD CAROLAN, Fairfield University - In Search of the Soul of the (Sardinian) Folk: Enrico Costa and Emilio
DOMENICO BILOTTI, Università degli Studi "Magna Graecia" di Catanzaro - Drinking with the Anziani, from the Nuraghi to the Blue Zones: The Global Reframing of Sardinian Wine (presentation with local wine tasting)
ROBERT WATSON, University of Texas at San Antonio
3:30-4:45 - FOLKLORE AND CULTURAL MEMORY II
- Reimagining Folklore in Contemporary Spain through Sites of Afro Traditions
STEFANIA LICATA, Converse University - The Knot at the Center of a Network: Mediterranean Sicily between Mythical Memory and Languages for the Future
ANNALISA GUZZARDI, Queens College, CUNY - The Living Myth of Shahmaran in Mardin: From Shared Folklore to Contemporary Resistance
FEDERICA BROILO, W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research - (Dis)placing Balkan Folklore
KRISTINA STEFANIC BROWN, Wofford College
4:45–6:15 – VISUAL FOLKLORE
- How to ’Splain Your Dragon: Folklore & the Urban Fabric of Barcelona
JESSICA BOLL, Carroll University - Textured Identities: Mythical Roots in Maria Lai’s and Antonio Marra’s Visual Storytelling
IRENE ZANINI-CORDI, Florida State University - Tradition and Memory in the Mediterranean Folklore: the prefica in the Sardinian and Sicilian cultures.
CHIEL MONZONE, Roma Tre University - Contested “Folkore”: Categorial Tensions in Discourses on Sardinian Heritage
MARCO B. CARBONE, University of Cagliari