International Conference "Postcolonial Pirandello: Grotesque Plays/Fiction, Postnational Narratives, Ethnic Discourse"

The annual two-day conference of the Society for Pirandello Studies aims to embrace a wide variety of methods and approaches to Pirandello's œuvre, and to bring together theatre professionals, critics and scholars representing a range of disciplines. Both in-person and online/from-home 20-minute papers are welcome. This year's conference sheds light on Pirandello's awareness of colonialist/nationalist hegemony and its relation to more recent practices of (fiction/theatre) storytelling. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Pirandello's work critiquing war and fascism despite his formal membership to the latter;
• Pirandello's theatrical and literary representation of national and ethnic identity/-ties;
• Pirandello's uncovering of colonial discourse & hegemony at play in the north/south and mainland/island (Sicily) cultural narratives;
• Pirandello's metafiction: narratology, theory and practice;
• Pirandello's influence on later theories of metafiction;
• Metafiction and neighbouring categories, such as Romantic mise-en-abyme, the absurd, and the grotesque;
• Characters in twenty-first-century literature, cinema, and other media;
• Authorship, umorismo, and gender;
• Metafiction and authorship across disciplines, including sociological, psychological and anthropological perspectives.