Join us for a dialogue with top American politics experts and insiders on November 12-13 at Villa Sassetti.

Watch the livestreaming

Beyoncé Knowles has managed to redefine global culture in the 21st century through her music, videos, films, tours and entrepreneurial ventures. Her cultural power, though, has as much to do with her relationship to her fans as it does to her record sales and awards. “A People’s History of Beyoncé” rethinks the official histories of global pop from the point of view of the “people” who help create and sustain stardom.

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Feminist theory has been criticized for failing to consider the intersections among patriarchy and other forms of inequality in social and political relations. The term intersectionality arose out of critical race theory to propose an analysis of “relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relations and subject formations” (Kimberlé Crenshaw). Expanding on the conversation started last year in the conference Resetting the Table: A Symposium on Feminist Art and Herstory we will explore the intersections of feminism with various other fluid and multidimensional markers and aspects of identity—including race, class, and gender identity - in approaches to art history, curating and practice, and the opening of opportunity in other institutional cultural spaces. We will begin with a discussion of the legal theory of intersectionality with NYU Law Professor Paulette Caldwell followed by a discussion with art historians Kalie Brooks and Maria Antonetta Rinaldi, curator of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum Carmen Hermo and and artists Patricia Cronin and Lorato Shadi.

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Tonight NYU Florence Executive Director Ellyn Toscano will introduce the Resignifications: European Blackamoors, Africana Readings exhibition in Palermo curated by Awam Ampka to students at Villa La Pietra at 6:00pm followed by refreshments (event opened to NYU Students only). NYU Florence students interested in joining the Office of Student Life´s trip to Palermo to visit the exhibition should contact the Office of Student Life for more information.

Through NYU Florence´s Fall 2018 "EU in Focus Series" students will learn more about what the EU is, how it works, its role as an international actor, and some of the main issues it faces today. Join us to be part of the discussion at this critical moment in Europe’s history.

Students can apply to participate in a working group linked to the series in order to develop a deeper understanding of how EU policy-making works through the study of two specific policy areas: Immigration and the Eurozone. For the working group, the series will culminate in a trip to Brussels to visit the European institutions on the ground and meet with actors and experts.

For more details refer to the online program and attend Professor Nicolo Conti´s Introductory session on September 10.

Students can apply to be part of the working group until September 17, 2018 by emailing lapietra.dialogues@nyu.edu and briefly explaining why they would like to participate and how it would enhance their studies at NYU Florence.

For more information write to the LPD Assistant Micol Visciano at mv92@nyu.edu.

Acclaimed Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam, who presented his work Hejara’s Family at La Pietra in November 2015, was arrested on Monday August 6 in Bangladesh while covering the series of mass protests that have paralyzed Dhaka over the last two weeks.

Read more at Time magazine and see this report at Human Rights Watch.

Applications for La Pietra Dialogues Learning Internships are now open.The deadline to apply is Tuesday September 4 at 3pm. For more information visit the NYU Florence Learning Internships website. If you have questions please contact Enrico Buonincontro, NYU Florence Community Engagement and Leadership Develop Coordinator at enrico.buonincontro@nyu.edu

Find out more about how to get involved in LPD on the LPD Students page. Tomorrow, Tuesday September 4 we will host an Open House between 12:30 and 2:00pm in the LPD student space in Villa Sassetti. Come by to find out more about projects and events and to ask any questions you may have.

The Critical Collaboration Working Group led by Pato Hebert will meet at La Pietra next week to continue their investigation of the relationship between creativity and social change. The project, sponsored by NYU´s Global Institute for Advanced Study, is particularly interested in how critical collaboration might contribute to change at interpersonal, social and structural levels. It engages young practitioners from the Tisch Art & Public Policy alumni network, along with NYU faculty members and practitioners local to five GNU sites (Abu Dhabi, Buenos Aires, Florence, Shanghai, Sydney. Read More...

This meeting is not open to the public. 

New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, NYU Florence La Pietra Dialogues, the NYU Institute of African American Affairs, Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and the University of Palermo are pleased to present ReSignifications: The Black Mediterranean. This conference, held in Palermo on June 6-9, joins a series of international conversations, including Black Portraitures, breaking new ground in the fields of African and African Diasporic art, literature, cultural theory, history, and political practice. Scholars, writers, artists, and cultural activists from around the world gather in the heart of the Mediterranean to reason together about issues of representation, migration, diaspora, slave-trade, border, mobility, citizenship, and human rights.

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Conference program

Happening from April 10th to 15th this year. The 2018 edition reveals, through an unusual observation lens, the contemporary Middle East, with its theme this year, #MiddleEast. The festival wants to shift the attention, for the first time, on the storytelling that millions of individuals - from the Palestinian mother to the jihad fighter, from the professionals of the great urban realities to the young people curious about new life experiences. Middle East Now deals with cinema, art and contemporary culture , focused on strong themes of the contemporary world, as a powerful tool for knowledge of reality and cultural integration in the Middle East.