CONFERENCE PROGRAM

All the events are held at the Scuola Normale Superiore - Piazza dei Cavalieri, 7 - Pisa (Italy)


June 4th

Sala Azzurra
2:30-2:50 p.m. Welcoming

2:50-3:00 p.m. Introductory Remarks

3:00-4:30 p.m. Philosophy and Politics in Dark Times (In Memoriam of Karin A. Fry)

Fina Birulés | Universitat de Barcelona

Miguel E. Vatter | Deakin University

Chair: Simona Forti | Scuola Normale Superiore

4:30-4:45 p.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)

4:45-7:15 p.m. Round Table: Reading Arendt’s The Hungarian Revolution and the Totalitarian Imperialism Today

Peg Birmingham | DePaul University

Jennifer Gaffney | Loyola University Chicago

Olivia Guaraldo | Università degli studi di Verona

Anne O’Bryne | Stony Brook University

Angela Taraborrelli | Università degli studi di Cagliari

Dana Villa | Notre Dame University

Chair: Valentina Moro | Stony Brook University and Gabriele Parrino | Scuola Normale Superiore

7:30 p.m. Reception

June 5th

Sala Azzurra

9:30-10:45 a.m. Session 1 - Capitalist futurity and the Anthropocene

Chair: Laura Cremonesi | Scuola Normale Superiore

Thiago Dias | UNICAMP - FAPESP 
World Alienation and Capitalist Temporal Disruption: Reassessing Arendt’s Phenomenology of Appearance through Contemporary Temporal Regimes

Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen | University of Jyväskylä
Conditions of Appearance: Reimagining Critical Political Theory with Arendt in the Anthropocene

10:45-11 a.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)

11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Session 2 - Historicity and Causality

Chair: Sofia Elena Merli | Scuola Normale Superiore

Michalis Dagtzis | University of Athens
Radical Novelty in History: Institution and Contingency with Arendt and Merleau-Ponty

Chiara Agnello | Università degli Studi di Palermo
“Rosen ohne Warum”: Hannah Arendt and the ‘Death Factories’

12:15-2:15 p.m. Lunch Break

2:15-3:45 p.m. Session 3 - Exile and Storytelling

Chair: Lapo Ferri | Scuola Normale Superiore

Anna Argirò | Istituto italiano per gli Studi Storici
“We Refugees”: Hannah Arendt and Rachel Bespaloff on Exile and Beginning

Roan Costa Cordeiro | Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro – CNPq
The Incantatory Power of Storytelling: Thinking Narration with Hannah Arendt

3:45-4:00 p.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)

4:00-5:15 p.m. Session 4 - Reassessing Natality

Chair: Jo-Anne Dillabough | University of Cambridge

Francesco Guercio | European Graduate School
Saving the Phenomena, Loving the World: Love and Natality in Hannah Arendt and Reiner Schürmann

David Inczauskis | Loyola University Chicago
Hannah Arendt’s Challenge to Critical Phenomenology: Critique from the General Conditions of Natality and Plurality

5:15-5:30 p.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)

5:30-7:00 p.m. New Directions in Arendt Studies: A Focus on Contemporary Scholarship

Chair: Dawn Herrera Helphand | Loyola University Chicago, Elvira Roncalli | Carroll College

Peg Birmingham (DePaul University) - Hannah Arendt and Political Glory (2025) and Andrea Timàr (Eötvös Loránd University)
Reading with Hannah Arendt: Literature, Criticism, Theory (2026).

8:15/30 p.m. Social Dinner

June 6th

Sala Azzurra

9:30-10:45 a.m. Session 5 - Democracy and the “in-between”

Chair: Maria Giuliana Lo Piccolo | Scuola Normale Superiore

Lihi Paul | École Normale Supérieur
Inter-est: Arendtian Ethics In-between Distance and Proximity

Natascia Tosel | Università degli Studi di Verona
Constitutio Libertatis: a Happy, Vicious Circle? Hannah Arendt and Karl Loewenstein on the Life of the Constitution in Contemporary Democracies

10:45-11 a.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)

11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Session 6 - Ethics and Technology

Chair: Maria Robaszkiewicz | Paderborn University

Katherine Brichacek, co-authored with Thor Christoffersen Hochman, Jayanti Jha, Jennifer Liu, and Naina Panjwani | USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Arendt on the “Dangers of Stochastic Parrots”

Nicholas Poole | York University 
Justified and Vindicated: The Heautonomy of Arendt’s Judgment

12:30-2:00 p.m. Lunch Break and Business Meeting (Chiostra - Sala Stemmi)

2:30-3:45 p.m. Session 7 - Building and Staging the Public World

Chair: Daniele Bassi | Università degli studi di Verona

Baku Momoki | Kansai University
Between Public and Private: Reassessing Riken Yamamoto’s Architecture through Arendt’s Political Theory

Lucy Benjamin | University of Edinburgh
The Theatre of Portbou

3:45-4:00 p.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)

4:00-5:15 p.m. Session 8 - Arendt and Literature

Chair: Yasemin Sari | Seattle University

Silvia Lorusso | Sapienza Università di Roma
The Spaces of Critique in Dark Times. Hannah Arendt’s cross-reading of Benjamin and Kafka

Sasha Simon | Western University
Action and its Perversions: Arendt, Lessing, and Emerson on the Understanding Heart in Dark Times

5:15-5:30 p.m. Closing remarks