On Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, the study conference, “Work and the Sea in Italian Literature” sponsored by the Ignazio Buttitta Foundation under the patronage of the City of Bagheria, will be held at the “Monsignor Muratore” theater in Villa Butera.
The Ignazio Buttitta Foundation, continuing on its path of promoting initiatives aimed at fostering the meeting of scholars and specialists from different disciplinary fields, in collaboration with the Municipality of Bagheria and the Department of Humanities of the University of Palermo and under the patronage of the Superintendence of the Sea of the Sicilian Region, the Department of Cultures and Society of the University of Palermo, the Verga Foundation, the Center for Sicilian Philological and Linguistic Studies and the Sicilian Gramsci Institute, is organizing the Conference “Work and the Sea in Italian Literature,” which will be held between Bagheria and Palermo on Nov. 6-7, 2024.
The initiative aims to examine and deepen the work of men of the sea as the subject of literary texts that documents labor processes and contributes to textual signification, even to the point of becoming, at times, its supporting axis. The subject has been little explored by critics and less investigated by the social sciences than the oral and religious culture, living conditions and material culture of rural workers, and therefore deserves to be the subject of both ethnographic and literary critical study.
The conference will be held on Nov. 6 in the “Monsignor Muratore” Theater Room of Palazzo Butera, Bagheria; and on Nov. 7, in the Seminar Room, Ed. 12, of the University of Palermo. Both days will see not only the intervention of scholars aimed at the critical analysis of literary texts, but also the intervention of writers addressed to the storytelling and self-analysis of their own literary production that has as its subject work and the sea.

Program
Study Conference
Work and the sea in Italian literature
Bagheria, Sala Teatro “Monsignor Muratore” of Palazzo Butera
Nov. 6, 2024
Palermo, University of Studies, Ed. 12, Seminar Room
Nov. 7, 2024

Nov. 6, 2024
Bagheria, Sala Teatro “Monsignor Muratore” of Palazzo Butera
9:30 a.m.
Inaugural greetings
10 a.m.
Introduction
Giovanni Ruffino, Center for Sicilian Philological and Linguistic Studies, The Lexicon of the Sea from Sicily to the Mediterranean
10.30 a.m.
Chaired by Ignazio E. Buttitta
Rosario Castelli, University of Catania, The Man of Trezza: the Tragedy of ‘Ntoni Malavoglia
Domenica Perrone, University of Palermo, The Sea of Women. Female Writings of the New Millennium
11.30 Coffee break
Roberta Morosini, University of California Los Angeles, ‘Naples is Left Without a Sea’. Notes on humanism and the blue economy of Dante, Boccaccio and Domenico Rea
Sergio Todesco, Independent Researcher, ‘Contra gladium, per gladium’. Swordfish hunting in literature
3.30 p.m.
Chaired by Matteo Di Gesù
Alessio Giannanti, Archivi della Resistenza, Contadini in mezzo al mare. Writings from eastern Liguria
Roberto Fioraso, Ilcorsaronero. Rivista Salgariana di Letteratura Popolare, Salgari’s ‘workers of the sea’: sailors, fishermen, pirates
4.30 p.m. Coffee break
Alessia Traina, Lecturer in Literature, I.C. Francesco Riso, I pellisquadre dello scill’e cariddi in Horcynus Orca
Sebastiano Martelli, University of Salerno, Il mare nelle rappresentazioni letterarie del viaggio di emigrazione tra Ottocento e Novecento (The sea in literary representations of emigration travel between the 19th and 20th centuries)
Davide Camarrone, Journalist and writer, Lampaduza

7 November 2024
Palermo, University of Studies, Ed. 12, Aula Seminari
9.30 a.m.
Chaired by Emanuele Buttitta
Salvatore Ferlita, University of Enna ‘Kore’, Like a new Moses? The job of the smuggler in the ‘monstrum’ sea
Silvana Grasso, Writer, A ‘sea’ beyond the Sea
Conclusions