Agora Cultural Centre

Via delle Trombe, 6 (Piazza dei Servi, Centro Storico)
55100 Lucca Tuscany, Italy
 

 

 

Lucca is one of the most beautiful cities of Tuscany, a treasure of beauty, culture and history, preserving exquisitely the signs of past kingdoms and dominions, the beauty of nature and the works of many renown architects and artists. Dante spent a part of his exile in Lucca. Located between Florence and Pisa, Lucca is the home town of Giacomo Puccini and Luigi Boccherini. Is a town where each of the streets has a story to tell. The city walls are the best preserved Renaissance walls in the world, offering the opportunity of a relaxing and enchanting ‘passeggiata’ (promenade) or a bike ride with amazing views over the surroundings. Piazza Napoleone -one of the main squares – was built in the time of Napoleonic conquest when the city was led by Napoleon’s sister Elisa Bonaparte. It is rivaled in beauty by Piazza del Amfiteatro, built to maintain the shape of the Roman Amphitheater built during the I and II centuries that could accommodate over 10,000 spectators. A city of 100 churches, Lucca is labyrinth of small streets that hide secrets to be discovered.

Lucca is very easy to reach both by bus as well as train from both Pisa and Florence, making it perfect for anyone getting around solely on public transportation. The train station is right outside the southern walls, with an entrance below the balcony of San Colombano that brings you right behind Lucca’s cathedral and into the heart of the small walled town.

When arranging your travel by plane, book a flight to Florence (Petrola) or Pisa (Galileo Galilei) airports. The easiest way to reach Lucca is from Pisa airport that requires a 25 minutes public bus or train travel right from the airport. From Florence the travel by bus or train takes about 50 minutes. Make sure that your flight arrives earlier during the day as after 22.00 buses or trains to Lucca are no longer available. Taxis are available in Pisa airport and will cost around 50 Euro until your destination in Lucca. If your flight arrives later in the night, book a room for the night in either Florence or Pisa, and start your travel to Lucca in the morning since buses and trains are available from 5.30.

 
 
See an interactive map:

HERE

Conference participants are fully responsible for arranging the accommodation and travel to Lucca.

Conference Program

The Conference Agenda is available in the right sidebar of this page.

The extensive conference program with abstracts and available draft papers is accessible below by clicking on the panel number tabs and individual presentations.

Asking Big Questions Again: Bridging the Gap Between Critical Theory, Culture, Politics and Social Praxis

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  Carles José i Mestre, Department of Philosophy, University of Barcelona, Spain
  A (Really) Big Question: Which Is The Proper Political Subject? he aim of this paper is to gain clarity (and charity) about the following controversy: Given the scenario in which a not misleading set of citizens of a territory of a sovereign state intends for the secession of the territory at stake, while the fundamental law of the state does not permit the unilateral democratic secession of any territory of the state, is it due the prominence of democracy or the prominence of law?

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  William H. Bridge, University of Rochester, USA
  A Brief History of the Inhumanities and Contemporary Humanities Studies What is needed, then, is a supplement to the history of the humanities: contemporary humanities studies, or studies that articulate why the principles of humanistic study are preferable, in this present moment, to those of the inhumanities. This paper provides an East-West (Zhang Longxi) approach to the history of the inhumanities, and concludes with thoughts toward contemporary humanities studies.

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  Olaug S. Lian, University of Tromsø / The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
  Biomedical Hegemony: A Critical Perspective on the Cultural Imperialism of Modern Biomedical Perspectives on Human Life Modern biomedical perspectives are currently moving towards a cultural hegemony, granted by society at large. In Gramscis words, it is “the 'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group” – in this case medical doctors – that leads to cultural hegemony. To evaluate the legitimacy of the moral crusade of biomedical system, critical perspectives on medical dominance is needed.

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  Roger Davis, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Red Deer College, Canada
  Autophagy: Science, Technology, Economics, Arts, Metaphor The paper will trace how different disciplines adopt autophagy as a metaphor of positive growth or health. The disciplines then make a further metaphorical leap to scale up the processes and effects of autophagy—essentially moving from a cellular to a larger structural level—to show how each discipline is similarly beneficial in terms of “growth” or “health.”

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Performing Identities: Performativity of the Body, Gender, and Sexuality and the Relationship between Identity and Performance in Performing Arts, Literature, and Social Narratives

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  Isabel Fontbona Mola, Theories of Contemporary Art Group, Universitat de Girona, Spain
  Performing Femininity by Building a New Corporal Prison. The Female Bodybuilding Body on Stage This paper addresses the muscular woman’s body, and if it can be considered a subversive act trying to break the patriarchal structure internalized by our society. A structure that in the sphere of passivity limits non-action, submissiveness and so on from women’s perspective. Looking for this new identity becomes a transgressive act, due to building a new body with which to be identified by stepping into a territory limited to the male.

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  Isabel Fontbona Mola, Theories of Contemporary Art Group, Universitat de Girona, Spain
  Intervention – Working the Body Short intervention about the discipline of working the body in female bodybuilding competitions by Isabel Fontbona Mola. With a sports career as a natural bodybuilder competitor she will illustrate the discipline of performing the sculptural body in female bodybuilding competitions.

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  Anuradha Gobin, University of Calgary, Canada
  The Body on Display: Visualizing and Constructing Criminal Identity in the Dutch Republic My paper examines examples of images that recorded the liminal spaces outside the city walls and considers the manner in which the criminal body came to be framed in relation to the land. In so doing, it shall interrogate the use of unsanctioned actions at the gallows as a means by which civic identity could be negotiated or transformed.

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  Lisa Garner Santa, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA
  The Fluency of ‘Self’: Classical Yoga Philosophy and Performance Identity Through the scope of their work, the artist-performers may assume the identity of activist, advocate, or peacemaker. The freedom to assume any given identity is facilitated through the practice of classical yoga, the intentional direction of one’s consciousness through which the experience of an ultimate identification with intrinsic Self arises.

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  Aleksandra Ubertowska, University of Gdańsk, Poland
  Exoticism, Nature, and Homosexual ”Coming out”. Exile and the Establishing of New Subjectivity in the Works of Witold Gombrowicz The paper is an examination of how the experience of exile/migration was reflected in the diaries and novels of Witold Gombrowicz. I focus on two of Gombrowicz`s strategies for coming to term with the feeling of ‘being removed’ from his home country Poland (which was subjected to extremely traumatic historical oppression: Nazi terror, holocaust, Soviet deportations): a)homosexual „coming out” (in the novels „Trans-Atlantyk” and „Pornografia”) as well as b) admiring the exotic Latin American nature („Diary Rio Parana”).

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  Bianca Jewel Phillips, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa
  A Satrean Account of the Role of Social Narratives in the Identity-Formation and Self-Conception of the Queer and Intersex Subject This paper will show the two to be inextricably interlinked, and in so doing endorse Judith Butler’s view that the material comes to us already seeped in social meaning. The interactive relationship between the discursive and the material will be illustrated by examining the phenomenon of intersexuality, in which the prevailing narrative of a dichotomized two-sex system has, through surgical, hormonal, and psychological procedures, become written into the flesh of non-binary individuals.

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Thinking Contemporary Culture and Education: Post-Truth, Multiculturalism, Relativism, Difference and Models of Youth Education and Integration in Contemporary Societies

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  Tyler Denmead, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK
  Troublemakers: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly The basic premise of my talk is that summoning young people towards the dominant position of the “good troublemaker” is reproducing uneven symbolic and material effects in the lives of young people, and more broadly, urban life. In particular, I demonstrate how these representations of youth are key to manufacturing new urban consumer economies that traffic in the look and feel of youth, which privilege the aesthetic preferences of upwardly mobile consumers being hailed back to the city.

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  Saskia Kroonenberg, Philosophy and Italian Literary Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  It’s Not Youth, It’s Us. Youth Suicides and Rosi Braidotti’s Post-human Ethics This paper starts from the alarmingly high suicide numbers amongst the youth in current Western societies, arguing that feelings of loneliness and personal responsibility of our hyper-individualistic neoliberal societies are taking their tolls. This phenomenon sheds a worrisome light on our present-day world: if the youth doesn’t want to live in it, is there a future?

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  Wolfgang Marx, University College Dublin, Ireland
  Post-Truth, Relativism and Music It has become common to “blame” postmodernism and post-structuralism for our new age of post-truth, alternative facts and relativism. Expertise now appears to be discredited, gut feeling at least as important as facts, and facts themselves no longer valid and reliable. But how did we really get to this point? This early-stage research project pursues the hypothesis that this development has actually been much longer in the making.

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  Tor Erik Jensen, University College of Southeast Norway, Kongsberg, Norway
  The Role of Critical Thinking in Multicultural Management Programs I will discuss problems related to teaching critical thinking in multicultural classes. Management and managers already influences Europe in almost every field of expertise and discipline. Thus, it is important critically reviewing how managers are educated. I suggest a balanced multidisciplinary approach in order to improve the level of critical thinking within management programs, finally reflecting upon whether European higher education will succeed in distributing necessary resources if to approve.

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Art, History, Cultural Diplomacy and Critical Assessments of Politicized Representations of Identity in Arts

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  Matilde Cartolari, Technische Universitaet von Berlin, Germany
  Old Masters Exhibitions and Fascist Propaganda: Italian Masterpieces in London, Paris and Belgrade (1930-1938) This paper will investigate the Old Masters exhibitions promoted by the Fascist government during the Thirties, i.e. Italian Art 1200-1900 (London 1930), L’Art Italien de Cimabue à Tiepolo (Paris 1935) and the exhibition of Italian portraits organized in Belgrade in 1938. Italian cultural policy will be considered in relation to its dynamic alliances and rivalries, in order to shed light on the context that involved both physical and symbolical displacements of artworks for propaganda purposes.

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  Sean N. Kalic, Dept of Military History, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, USA
  Spitting on Incapables, Madmen, and Cheats: The NSDAP’s War on Degenerate Art Drawing on paintings from the period 1918-1945, combined with primary source documents from various Weimar artists and their guilds, juxaposted against official documents from the NSDAP, I explain how the NSDAP used all assets of the State to use art as a vehicle to advance NSDAP propaganda for their political and military programs. My research provides critical insights into how the NSDAP used art as a tool to manufacture public support for their war effort. Furthermore, my paper explores the question how an artificial truth can become manufactured and perpetuated.

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  Amélia Siegel Corrêa, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  Postcolonial Art and Critical Discourses at the São Paulo Biennial I am interested in looking at how the most important contemporary art event of the Global South allows us to think of new power configurations, as for instance, bringing feminist discussions and post-colonial debates to a wider audience. Furthermore, I also argue that Biennials in general contribute to the redefinition of the canon, adding diversity to the contemporary art world.

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The Eurozone Crisis: Transformative Impact on the European Project and Model(s) of Capitalism

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  Ian Alexander Lovering, University of Sussex, UK
  Not So Ordoliberal after All? Public Management and the Transformation of European Governance By drawing on the lineage of public management, the paper argues that we should understand the nature of Europe governance today not just as constricting national state action through the deepening of rules (as implied by ordoliberal theory), but rather the reverse: the centralisation of increasingly discretionary power away from established democratic centres and into technocratic and executive bodies.

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  Diana Bozhilova, New College of the Humanities, London, UK
  Financial Crises snd Plurilateral Discourses This paper analyses impacts of the Eurozone crisis on the global standing of the European Union (EU) through the failure of the EU interregional approach in the EU-ASEAN plurilateral discourse. It appropriates theoretical models of socialisation, in order to explain the dearth of cooperation in the EU-ASEAN plurilateral partnership during the Eurozone crisis.

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  Ariane Aumaitre Balado, College of Europe, Brugge, Belgium
  From the SGP to the TSCG through the Lenses of European Integration Theories Which were the driving forces and key actors of this deepening in economic integration? Are they found at a national or at a supranational level? These are the questions that this paper aims to answer, through the study of the strengthening of the fiscal and economic pillars of EMU. The analysis will be done through the lenses of the two grand theories of European integration: Neofunctionalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism; as well as a more recent theory: the New Intergovernmentalism approach.

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  Dominik Vuletić, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, Croatia
  Challenges of Modern Extraordinary Insolvency Procedure in Europe Given that the nature of these companies makes them relevant on the verge of their collapse, the author focuses on the legal and economic aftermath of their failures with the case study of the European Union newest member state: Croatia. The analysis was conducted on the basis of insolvency law, with an emphasis on the legal limits of the legislator’s remedies for market imperfections.

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  Catherine MacMillan, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey
  Haven of Peace and Prosperity or Neo-Nazi Nightmare? A Discourse Mythological Analysis of the AKP’s Discourse on the EU The paper aims to analyse depictions of the EU in the discourse of the Turkish AKP government using the discourse mythological approach, developed by Kelsey (2013, 2014, 2015). This approach combines critical discourse analysis (the discourse historical approach in this case) with political mythology.

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Identity and the City: Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in Urban Image Construction (Section 1)

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  Joseph M. Costanzo, Independent Researcher, Geneva, Switzerland
  The Integrative Power of Non-Representationalism in Urban Spaces: Creative Collaboration and Local Identity among Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in Brussels y interest here is in the non-ethnically representational spectacle of cities. In other words, events that, instead of re-presenting a history of a people, culture or place, are born out of the people and culture in place today—a (temporary) contemporary expression of local diversity and local identity. Here, as in Brussels’ Zinneke Parade, the emphasis is on creating and presenting (not re-presenting) the contemporary local.

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  Giovanni Polifroni Lobo, Universidad del Atlantico, Barranquilla, Colombia

  Delma Esther Rocha Alvarez, Universidad del Atlantico, Barranquilla, Colombia
  The Influence of the Immigrants in Atlantic, Colombia for the History Art, the Culture and Urban Identities in the XVIII-XX Centuries This article provides a brief description of the historicity that presents the city of Barranquilla, taking into account the set of situations that cause the historical facts and the predominance of the settlements, customs and vicissitudes with multi - trends that have influenced the conduct of its current inhabitants, as a result of the consistency of the different preferences in all areas of human coexistence.

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  Enrico Pietrogrande, University of Padua, Italy

  Andreina Milan, Department of Architecture, University of Bologna, Italy
  Eternal Rebirth: The Difficult Development of Urban Identity Between Destruction, Reconstruction and New Formal Layouts – The Case of Argenta (Ferrara, Italy) The purpose of the paper is to draw critical assessments on regeneration and urban development phenomena that have addressed post-war reconstruction in agro-industrial contexts. In this sense, formal and identifying characteristics emerge of a community that boasts settlement continuity dating back millennia. The case study refers to the city of Argenta located in the territory of Ferrara.

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Critical Contemporary Economics and Politics: From Local to Domestic and International Dimensions

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  Susanne Berthier Foglar, Université Grenoble Alpes, St Martin d'Hères, France
  New Frontiers in Indigenous Economies: The Example of the United States This paper proposes to discuss indigenous economies in the context of the United States and will attempt to provide answers to questions as to whether it is legitimate to consider indigenous minorities as different from other deprived minorities. When an Indigenous nation succeeds in creating a functional economic development, are they still considered as being different from the mainstream?

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  Jaap W. Bos, School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

  Runliang Li, School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
  Understanding the Trembles of Nature: How Do Disaster Experiences Shape Bank Risk Taking? This paper examines the impact of natural disaster experiences on banks’ business practices. Using earthquake and banking data for California, we find that banks that have had stronger earthquake experiences change their practices, both as a result of the natural disasters’ effects on local deposit supply and through changes in banks’ risk perceptions.

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  Shannon Maree Torrens, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, Australia
  Understanding the Discrepancy between Aims and Practice in International Criminal Justice: A Critical Perspective This paper finds that this discrepancy between aspiration and practice does exist and seeks to understand why it occurs, identifying the influence of geopolitical factors and hegemonic intent. This analysis is undertaken through the creation and application of a methodological framework comprised of an understanding of international criminal justice as defined through a justice progression.

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  Mengqian Yuan, Nanjing University, China

  Chu-Jie Chen, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
  Rethinking China’s Revolutionary Identity in Transformation: Memory, Reflection, and Cultural Politics Taking the memory of a former Red Guard Qian Li who committed revolutionary violence during the CR as a case, this research employs the methods of oral history and discourse analysis to examine the following issues: which traumatic memory Mr. Li has experienced and how he has witnessed the history; how he has expressed his regret and reflection on the collective violence of the Red Guards; what the meanings of the cultural politics have been constructed through the practice of memory and reflection.

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The Sequential Arts: Comics as Critical Cultural Nexus

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  Mitchell Miller, Glasgow School of Art, University of Glasgow, UK
  Dialectograms and The Architecture of Comics In this paper, I will discuss how their architectural iconography behave as comics panels except in a non-linear fashion – similar to Chris Ware’s experiments in the graphic novel Building Stories (2012) or Joe Sacco’s The Great War (2014). Through this example of my own practice I will explore Scott McCloud’s argument in Understanding Comics that in comics, ‘time and space are one and the same’ (McCloud, 1993: 100). I will look at graphic narratives as a form of display that shares common traits with the logic of museums and exhibition.

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  Tiffany Hong, Department of Languages, Linguistics, & Literatures, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan
  Monstrosity, Uncanny Replication, and Family Values in Tom King’s and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s The Vision Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta's 2016 twelve-issue limited series The Vision situates the Avenger’s legendary synthezoid and his family in the suburbs of Arlington, Virginia. The dissonance between this sinisterly mundane setting and the increasing fragmentation of his synthezoid children and wife - who instinctively and defensively murders a human attacker in the first issue - serves as the unsettling tempo of a graphic narrative that interrogates the representation of humanity as only sequential art can.

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  Carolina Martins, FCT Programme in the Materialities of Literature University of Coimbra, Portugal
  Readers through Augmented Spaces By reflecting on the reconfiguration of comics in the actual space or their combination of codex space with actual space, this paper aims to identify the movements of the reader between spaces, places, and objects as a way of connecting the spaces of discourse. This is, I will consider space not as a static device, but as an agent in which architectural structure and characteristics should be considered in their full potentialities, especially in their capacity of housing or surrounding objects and readers.

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  Manasee Jog, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, India
  The Insignificant Girl This paper highlights the gender polarity and the disparity in story proportion given to the female character vis-à-vis the male. In doing so it addresses how comics were in support of all things patriarchal, and helped propagate a way of thinking that we now understand to be not just dangerous, but destructive. Finally, it considers contemporary female characters from Indian comics now and contemplates the winds of change over generations as India moves from being a ‘third world country’ to a ‘superpower’.

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Identity and the City: Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in Urban Image Construction (Section 2)

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  Paco Mejias Villatoro, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China
  LONELINECTED: The Progress of Isolation in a Connected Word This paper tries to analyze the components of this reality and its possible consequences, especially the ones related to the built environment. The connection of this paradoxical phenomenon with other running paradoxes, such as global-local or democracy-autocracy and their problematic readings, will be explored. The paper concludes with a two directional reflection. From one side, the consequences that this situation could have in the built environment, and from the other, the possibilities that architecture and urbanism have for shifting this trend.

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  Joana Ribeiro Santos, University Porto, Portugal
  Metamorphoses in the City and the Place of Collective Memory: What Challenges? The reflection presented in this summary derives from a sociological and qualitative and ethnographic study (2015-2016) about the impacts of urban rehabilitation on local social recomposition, focusing on Rua das Flores, located in the Historic Center of Porto. The dynamics associated with the sociabilities and daily lives of local social actors are profoundly adapted, under the urban transformations and the emergence of more diverse and international publics, as well as more dispersed.

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  Seung Jin Choi , Independent Researcher
  Reviving Social Connectivity and Tradition in South Korea through Urban Development Le Corbusier’s proposed standardization of architecture in harmony with the economic and social aspects of urban life thus raises new questions of how the Western modernist city could be integrated with Korean vernacular architecture to encourage interactions between neighbors without the concrete walls that segregate apartments from society at large.

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