In his presentation, Professor Alessandro Portelli takes as a text a poem by Emily Dickinson, "A word is dead - when it is said", as an introduction to the presence, life and death of the word and its relationship to oral history (and he history of oral history, the tension between activist and academic research), archive, memory, performance, imagination.
Over the past 50 years Professor Alessandro Portelli has made his name as one of the leading lights in the field of oral history, studying the delicate interplay of time and memory through subject matter ranging from the songs of Black Power in 1960s America and the struggles of Appalachian miners made famous by the 1976 documentary Harlan County USA; to the means by which individuals strive to make memories in order to make sense of their lives, related in the now-classic text The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories. Beyond his work as a scholar, Professor Portelli has made valuable contributions to the study and promulgation of both American and Italian music, most notably of protest songs.
Please register in order to get a seat or the ZOOM link. For any further information please contact Brian O'Connor.