Events
Apart from its regular seminars, the ISI hosts a number of related activities. We are delighted to invite eminent figures for our Annual Lecture, which supplements and corresponds to our seminar in any given year; sometimes this takes on other formats, such as a symposium or panel presentation. We also host other panels and presentations from time to time, and co-sponsor other events on campus. Details on current and past activities are below.
The ISI is a cosponsor of this year's African Cinema Symposium and festival, held from April 5-8 across the 5 College campuses. The event brings together leading filmmakers, festival programmers and scholars from Africa, Europe, and the United States. The schedule includes feature film screenings, question and answer sessions with African filmmakers, and scholarly panels. More information about the schedule can be found on the
On March 23 from 4:00-5:30 p.m. in ILC N400 the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute will sponsor a workshop for faculty and graduate students led by this year’s ISI resident, Professor Daniel Kanstroom. The workshop is open to all scholars and graduate students with an interest in incorporating collaboration with community-based groups into their scholarship and teaching on immigration policy issues. 
On February 15, Professor Alessandra Di Maio will give a lecture at 4:30 p.m. in Herter 601. Her talk, "AfroItalia: Voices and Images Across the Mediterranean," is related to her most recently edited poetry collection, Migrazioni/Migrations, and addresses the migrations, connections, and--in connection with this year's ISI theme--trespassings that have marked the relationship between Italy and the African continent. The recent arrival in Italy of migrants from Africa, while sparking controversy and igniting a heated debate on immigration to the EU, has urged Italians to reconsider their historical connections with the African continent and assess new cultural relationships. Among the first communities who crossed the Mediterranean and found a new home in Italy are Nigerians. In Migrazioni/Migrations, renowned Italian and Nigerian poets, headed by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, join their voices in telling the choral story of how Africa and Italy have always been united by a common sea and a shared experience of migration.
The ISI is excited to cosponsor a workshop, open to UMass graduate students and faculty, led by Stewart Motha on February 13. The interdisciplinary workshop with Professor Motha will explore how memory and belonging can be studied from the perspectives of post-colonial studies and critical legal studies. A pre-circulated text drawn from Professor Motha’s book Archiving Sovereignty (forthcoming with University of Michigan Press) will form the basis for discussion. Reworking the notion of the ‘archive’, Motha explores the memorial and ‘as if’ function of modern law as it is elaborated through juridical case studies, and literary and other artistic works drawn from Australia, South Africa, and the Indian Ocean region. The workshop will be of interest to doctoral students and faculty studying topics that touch on sovereign violence, history, interpretation and language. The seminar is capped at twenty; if you are interested in attending, please write to isi@umass.edu to reserve a spot.