Welcome to POSTCOLONIAL HORRORS, the third edition of the University of Padova’s International Summer School “ENTANGLEMENTS,” taking place from July 6 to 10, 2026.
The Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies is inviting undergraduate and master’s students, PhD candidates and young researchers to take part in an immersive cultural experience focused on postcolonial horror in multiple languages, and featuring dialogues with exceptional international guests.
The School guarantees the acquisition of 4 academic credits (ECTS).
Registration is now closed. Thank you!
Overview
At its third edition, in 2026 the Entanglements summer school is centered on Postcolonial Horrors and aims to explore horror as an aesthetic, political, and epistemological symbol through which postcolonial literatures stage the traumatic memories of colonization, identity tensions, diasporic movements, and the re-emergence of the spectral within global modernities. The goal is to interpret horror not only as a genre, but as a critical and deconstructive tool capable of destabilizing ethnocentric categories of subjectivity, body, sovereignty, and knowledge.
Plenary talks by leading international scholars hailing from different spheres of knowledge will be followed by workshops enabling participants to put the acquired insights into practice. The lingua franca of the School will be English, although workshops will be provided in Spanish and Italian, as well.
The four-day attendance will serve as an introduction and a facilitated access (Summer Term) to the Postcolonial, Afro-descendant and Global South Cultures programs offered by the Master’s Degree Course in European and American Languages and Literature (LM-37).
The School, in its second year, falls within the third line of action addressing the phenomena of literary transculturation in the global era as envisaged by the 2023-2027 ‘Digital and cross-cultural TRANSmission of TEXTs (TRANSTEXT)’ Project of Excellence, which the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies received funding for from the Ministry of Culture.
Guest Speakers
Gaia Giuliani – Institute of Contemporary History NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities / IN2PAST
Keynote: Monday 6 July 2026, 5:30 PM
Dr. Gaia Giuliani is a political philosopher & cinema studies scholar. She is an associate researcher (permanent position)/Investigadora Auxiliar (carreira) at the Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities / IN2PAST — Associate Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Heritage, Arts, Sustainability and Territory. Her fields of expertise include: Postcolonial studies, Critical race theory, Cultural studies, and Gender studies across Political philosophy, Contemporary history, Visual studies & Cinema. Among her more recent publications: Zombi, alieni e mutanti. Le paure dall’11 settembre ad oggi (Le Monnier/Mondadori education 2016), Race, Nation, and Gender in Modern Italy: Intersectional Representations in Visual Culture (Palgrave Macmillan 2019), Monsters, Catastrophes and the Anthropocene. A Postcolonial Critique (Routledge 2021)
Priya Sharma – writer
Lecture: Tuesday 7 July 2026, 10 AM
Priya Sharma is a contemporary British writer best known for her horror and weird fiction stories, characterized by an evocative and often deeply emotional style. Born in the United Kingdom and of Indian descent, her cultural identity significantly influences the themes of her fiction, which frequently explores a sense of belonging, loss, desire, and human relationships through a fantastical and unsettling lens. Sharma first made a name for herself in the world of short fiction, publishing stories in prominent fantasy magazines and anthologies. Her work has received widespread critical acclaim, leading her to win major awards: She is the recipient of several British Fantasy Awards and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as a World Fantasy Award. She is a Locus Award and a Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire finalist. Her work has appeared in venues such as Tor.com (now Reactormag.com), Interzone, Black Static, and Weird Tales. Among her best-known works is the collection All the Fabulous Beasts, which showcases her ability to blend horror elements with lyrical and intense prose. Priya Sharma’s writing is acclaimed for its psychological depth and her ability to create evocative atmospheres in which the supernatural intertwines with authentic human experiences. Today she is considered an original and influential voice in contemporary horror fiction. She lives in the UK, where she works as a medical doctor.
Giovanna Rivero – writer
Lecture: Wednesday 8 July 2026, 10 AM
Giovanna Rivero (Bolivia) holds a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from the University of Florida. She is the author of the short story collections Para comerte mejor (2015), Tierra fresca de su tumba (2020)—chosen by critics and writers as the best Bolivian book of the first quarter of the 21st century, and whose English translation was a finalist for the Queen Sofía Prize. She also authored Un resplandor (2025), as well as the novels 98 segundos sin sombra (2014), adapted for the screen by Juan Pablo Richter, and Alma oscura del alba (2025). She was selected by the Guadalajara International Book Fair as one of the “25 best-kept literary secrets of Latin America” (2011). She is an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, where she teaches literature and creative writing.
Roberto Mazzini – teacher
Workshop: Thursday 9 July 2026, 10 AM
Roberto Mazzini, founder of Giolli (1992) and a former elementary school teacher, has gained experience in various theatrical disciplines, ranging from Third Theater to mime and Commedia dell’Arte, as well as in nonviolent, bioenergetic, and psychodramatic training.
He holds a degree in Psychology and later trained in biosystemic therapy with Jerome Liss. He leads workshops using the methods of Boal (Theater of the Oppressed) and Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed), and coordinates and supervises various Giolli projects.
He has written articles and contributed to books on the Theater of the Oppressed method and its applications in various fields.
As a trainer, he has worked in psychiatry, prisons, and schools, both with disadvantaged groups and with the staff of these institutions.
He has also served as coordinator for several European projects led by Giolli, such as Fratt (against racism), Fotel (against early school leaving), Fhofij (for the inclusion of LGBTI people in the labor market), Vivien (on violence against women), The TIP (on Islamophobia), CaaD (creative method against discrimination), Migreat! (counter-narrative on migration), and three local participatory projects in the province of Parma.
Daniele Comberiati – Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry
Lecture: Friday 10 July 2026, 9:30 AM
Daniele Comberiati is Associate Professor in Italian Studies. His research interests include Migrant and Postcolonial Italian Literature and Culture, Contemporary Italian Literature, Italian Science Fiction, and Italian Comics. He published with Simone Brioni Italian Science Fiction. The Other in Literature and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and Ideologia e rappresentazione. Percorsi attraverso la fantascienza italiana (Mimesis, 2020). On Italian Comics, he published the book Un autre monde est-il possible? Bandes dessinées et science-fiction en Italie, de l’enlèvement d’Aldo Moro jusqu’à aujourd’hui (1978-2019) (Quodlibet, 2019). With Barbara Spadaro, he co-edited Transnational Italian Comics (Routledge, 2026). As a writer, he published with the photographer Eugenio Barzaghi L’uomo dall’altro mondo. Fantascienza di un’Italia (im)possibile (DeriveApprodi, 2025).
Marco Malvestio – Università degli Studi di Padova
Lecture: Friday 10 July 2026, 11:30 AM
Marco Malvestio is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Padua. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto and an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Padua and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published four monographs: The Conflict Revisited: The Second World War in Post-Postmodern Fiction (Peter Lang, 2021); Raccontare la fine del mondo: Fantascienza e Antropocene (nottetempo, 2021); The Ecology of Italian Science Fiction (University of Toronto Press, 2025); Ruin Ecology. An Exercise in Environmental Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
Schedule
MONDAY 6 JULY, 2026
10:00 am – 13:00
Workshop: Introductory Pills
@ Meeting Room
12:30 – 2:00 pm
Lunch
@ Chiostro
2 – 5 pm
Workshop: Introductory Group Activity on the Keywords of Postcolonial Horror
@ Meeting Room
5 – 5:30 pm
Coffee Break
@ Chiostro
5:30 – 7:30 pm
Keynote speaker – Gaia Giuliani
@ Room 1
Monsters, catastrophes and the Anthropocene. For a postcolonial critique of bio- and necropolitical horrors.
In my lecture, I will address a critical examination of the dominant narratives of the Anthropocene, and reconsider the intersections of power and the enduring influence on them of colonial and racist discourses. My analysis begins with a reflection on the relationship between the bio- and necropolitical horrors of racial capitalism, on the one hand, and the modern and contemporary colonial archives of race, on the other. This approach seeks to reveal how discourses produce material violence, and how, in turn, material violence enacted upon people and environments reproduces racist narratives. One of the bio/necropolitical performative devices enabling such violence is the border—understood as a social and historical construct emerging from acts of bordering and Othering. My argument is that today, a specific border separating “places of disaster” from places for disaster” on a global scale, functions to reproduce colonial and racist categories, imaginaries, and narratives that distinguish a “We” to be saved from catastrophe from a “They” (including nature) to be sacrificed for the benefit of that “We.” Finally, through a historicized analysis of the modern and contemporary figure of the fugitive as a “monster”— a figure that generates moral panic and serves to delegitimize certain human and non-human forms of life—my reflection seeks to contribute to current debates on monstrification, necropolitics, racial capitalism, and their epistemologies.
8 pm
Welcome Party
@ La Forma del Libro
TUESDAY 7 JULY, 2026
10:00 am – 12:30
Anglophone Literatures
Lecture – Priya Sharma
@ Room 2
Immigration Stories: Writing Family Histories in Horror and Speculative Fiction
My talk will explore how personal and family history has shaped my fiction, particularly the ethnicity and cultural factors that have acted as a counterpoint to the homogenised perception of migrant groups. I will discuss my experience as a medical doctor and its synergy with my work as an author, as well as health inequalities, ethnicity, Empire Windrush, and the UK’s National Health Service. I will also touch upon the city of Liverpool and examples of how it has addressed its postcolonial legacy. Horror and speculative fiction are a valuable space to examine the otherness of the immigrant experience. I will demonstrate how my fiction uses subverted bodies, hybridisation, and monstrosity to explore otherness, be it via disability, illness, reproductive issues, family dysfunction and abuse. The main focus of this will be on A Short History of My Mother, a story of cultural otherness, and how identity functions in transition from place to place, and its syncretic nature.
12:30 – 2 pm
Lunch
@ Chiostro
2 – 3:30 pm
Anglophone Literatures
Workshop Part I: Postcolonial Horror Movies – Francesca Furlan & Alice Salion
@ Room 13
3:30 – 4 pm
Coffee Break
@ Chiostro
4 – 5:30 pm Anglophone Literatures
Workshop Part II: Postcolonial Horror Movies – Francesca Furlan & Alice Salion
@ Room 13
WEDNESDAY 8 JULY, 2026
10:00 am – 12:30
Latin American Literatures
Lecture – Giovanna Rivero
@ Room 1
Restos de vida en lo hórrido o la microscopía como subsistencia
12:30 – 2 pm
Lunch
@ Chiostro
2 – 3:30 pm
Latin American Literatures
Workshop Part I – Gabriele Bizzarri & Francesco Fasano
@ Room 13
3:30 – 4 pm
Coffee Break
@ Chiostro
4 – 5 pm
Latin American Literatures
Workshop Part II – Gabriele Bizzarri & Francesco Fasano
@ Room 13
THURSDAY 9 JULY, 2026
10:00 – 12:30
Theater of the oppressed workshop Part I – Roberto Mazzini
@ Carichi Sospesi
12:30 – 2:00 pm
Lunch
2 – 5 pm
Theater of the oppressed workshop Part II – Roberto Mazzini
@ Carichi Sospesi
FRIDAY 10 JULY, 2026
9:30 – 11:00 am
Comparative Literatures
Lecture – Daniele Comberiati
@ Room 2
The “Unexpected” Horror: Postcolonial Memories in Contemporary Italian Literature
The horror genre, with its monsters, specters, and ghosts, easily lends itself to a postcolonial reading. But what happens when the conventions of horror “invade” apparently realist narratives? In my presentation, I will discuss four postcolonial Italian novels —Sabrina Efionayi’s Padrenostro (2024), Mohamed Maalel’s Baba (2023), Emanuela Anechoum’s Tangerinn (2024), and Nadeesha Uyangoda’s Acqua sporca (2025)— to show how, despite presenting themselves as realist narratives, these texts draw on numerous conventions of classic horror. For each of these novels, we will present one or more horror conventions: the isolated room, the figure of the double, the closed door, the liminal space between the living and the dead. The aim is to analyze how, even in a context apparently far from the supernatural, the systemic violence revealed by postcolonial, intersectional, and ecological perspectives lead the reader into a space that necessarily transcends classical realism.
11 – 11:30 am
Coffee Break
@ Chiostro
11:30 – 1 pm
Comparative Literatures Part II – Marco Malvestio
@ Room 2
Mourning in America. The Ruins of Detroit in Contemporary Horror Cinema
This paper takes into account a privileged subject in contemporary representations of ruins, the city of Detroit, whose progressive urban decay, due to a combination of infrastructural collapse and de-industrialization, has become the epitome of mournful ruminations on the decline of the American empire, even in official contexts. Detroit’s ruins have been metabolized in our imagery to such an extent that they can function as the backdrop for horror movies like Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), It Follows (2014) and Don’t Breathe (2016), repurposing the Gothic component of ruins – with the crucial difference that here vampires and monsters do not find refuge among the derelict remnants of a long-gone world, but in everyday houses and buildings, as can be found in most American towns. This spectral take on a post-industrial environment is also reflected in the work of photographers Andrew Moore and Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, whose depictions of ruined areas of Detroit reflect and adjourn Romantic and Gothic aesthetics.
Organising Committee
Annalisa Oboe – Università degli Studi di Padova
Annalisa Oboe è professoressa di Letterature Anglofone e Studi Postcoloniali presso il DiSLL dell’Università di Padova. È fondatrice e direttrice della rivista scientifica From the European South: a transdisciplinary journal of postcolonial humanities e fondatrice e direttrice del Centro di studi e politiche di genere “Elena Cornaro” dell’Università di Padova. La sua ricerca è incentrata su culture e letterature postcoloniali, studi sull’Atlantico Nero, scrittura femminile anglofona, narrativa sudafricana e dell’Africa occidentale, romanzi storici e metafiction storiografica, letteratura, etica e futuri collettivi. Ultima pubblicazione: Chris Abani, CONTEMPORARY WORLD WRITERS (Manchester University Press, 2022).
Gabriele Bizzarri – Università degli Studi di Padova
Gabriele Bizzarri insegna letteratura ispano-americana all’Università di Padova ed è direttore di Orillas. Rivista d’ispanistica. La sua ricerca si concentra sulla costruzione dell’identità culturale latinoamericana, in una prospettiva cronologica che mette in dialogo l’epoca delle grandi teorie identitarie e delle macrofondazioni narrative di metà Novecento con le derive decostruzioniste di fine secolo e con le battagliere riattualizzazioni del presente (con una serie di lavori dedicati, per esempio, alla “visione latinoamericana” di Bolaño). Anche il suo interesse per gli studi queer si declina in questa direzione nel suo ultimo libro (Performar Latinoamérica. Estrategias queer de representación y agenciamiento del Nuevo Mundo en la literatura hispanoamericana contemporánea, 2020), dove si segnala la resurrezione performativa della resistenza localista in autori come Pedro Lemebel, Diamela Eltit e Roberto Bolaño. Attualmente sta lavorando a un libro sulla nuova narrativa weird latinoamericana.
Luigi Marfè – Università degli Studi di Padova
Luigi Marfè è professore associato di Critica letteraria e Letterature comparate all’Università di Padova. I suoi interessi di ricerca includono la scrittura di viaggio, la cultura visuale e le teorie della traduzione. È autore di Oltre la ‘fine dei viaggi’ (Olschki 2009), Introduzione alle teorie narrative (Archetipo 2011), ‘In English clothes’. La novella italiana in Inghilterra (Accademia 2015), e Un altro modo di raccontare’. Poetiche e percorsi della fotoletteratua (Olschki 2021). Ha tradotto diversi volumi dall’inglese (W. Shakespeare, Tito Andronico, Bompiani 2015; R.L. Stevenson, Canti di viaggio, ETS 2019). È nel comitato direttivo di Cosmo: Comparative Studies in Modernism.
Francesco Fasano – Università degli Studi di Padova
Francesco Fasano è ricercatore di letteratura ispanoamericana presso l’Università degli Studi di Padova. È laureato in Medicina e Antropologia. Tra le sue linee di ricerca la rappresentazione della malattia in letteratura, il fantastico della globalizzazione e il weird ispanoamericano contemporaneo, nonché la narrazione della fine del mondo da una prospettiva periferica. Una delle costanti della sua ricerca è l’intersezione tra studi postcoloniali, queer e postumani dal Sud globale. Si occupa inoltre di pedagogia della letteratura. Ha pubblicato la monografia “Malattia come identità. La transizione epidemiologica nella letteratura ispanoamericana ultracontemporanea”.
Alice Salion – Università degli Studi di Padova
Alice Salion è dottoranda in Studi Letterari all’Università di Padova con un progetto che esplora memoir di autrici Indigene e Black nella letteratura canadese anglofona contemporanea attraverso una lente femminista decoloniale. I miei lavori su autrici Indigene sono pubblicati in FES – From The European South e NiCHE, Network in Canadian History & Environment. Da dieci anni insegno lingua inglese in corsi di laurea magistrale in materie scientifiche all’Università di Padova e mi occupo di traduzioni letterarie dall’inglese e dallo spagnolo. Tra i miei lavori più recenti Naufraghe. Racconti di Emilia Pardo Bazán (Avagliano 2022), La Biblioteca Infinita. Raccontare i Libri degli Altri (Nova Delphi 2025) e Tutto Ciò Che è Stato Per Sempre Una Sola Volta. Poesie di Eduardo Espina (Ensemble 2025).
Francesca Furlan – Università degli Studi di Padova
Francesca Furlan è dottoranda in Studi Letterari presso l’Università degli Studi di Padova, dove svolge la propria ricerca nell’ambito del progetto di eccellenza Transtext. Il suo progetto di dottorato indaga le intersezioni tra processi di formazione e transculturazione nella narrativa contemporanea della diaspora africana, con particolare attenzione alle modalità attraverso cui identità, appartenenza e soggettività si costruiscono attraverso l’incontro tra culture diverse. I suoi interessi di ricerca includono la letteratura postcoloniale e diasporica, American Studies e lo studio del genere letterario con particolare attenzione rivolta al Bildungsroman. Ha svolto un periodo di ricerca presso la University of Leeds e ha conseguito la laurea magistrale con una tesi dedicata alle prime opere di James Baldwin.
Rebecca Della Lucilla – Università degli Studi di Padova
Rebecca Della Lucilla è dottoranda in Scienze Linguistiche, Filologiche e Letterarie presso l’Università di Padova con un progetto che esplora le rappresentazioni narrative del “magico-femminile” come strategie di resistenza identitaria performativa nel contesto della modernità globalizzata latinoamericana. Laureata in Lingue e letterature e Studi Postcoloniali con una tesi sulla figura della strega nella letteratura ispanoamericana attuale, le sue linee di ricerca riguardano le strutture e i temi del fantastico ultracontemporaneo e le rappresentazioni letterarie della specificità latinoamericana, con una particolare attenzione verso gli utilizzi letterari dei dispositivi teorici appartenenti agli studi post e decoloniali, agli studi di genere e agli studi sul contemporaneo.
Riccardo Lanza – Università degli Studi di Padova
Riccardo Lanza, PhD del XL ciclo dottorale in scienze Linguistiche, Filologiche e Letterarie dell’Ateneo di Padova. Impegnato in un progetto di tesi volto a studiare le declinazioni tematiche e formali della letteratura ispanoamericana di frontiera, con particolare attenzione alle promiscuità intergeneriche tra realismo e fantastico nella prosa del 2000. La sua proposta ermeneutica ambisce ad inquadrare il connotato politico dei meccanismi di “straniamento cognitivo” dispiegati nella narrazione contemporanea del confine Messico-Usa -capeggiata da Yuri Herrera, Mayra Luna, Eduardo Antonio Parra, Alejandro Hernández- attraverso un’analisi testuale dove i concetti del postcoloniale latinoamericano sono messi in dialogo con le teorie estetiche sulla globalizzazione di conio europeo.
Complesso Universitario Beato Pellegrino
Scientific committee
DIPARTIMENTO DI STUDI LINGUISTICI E LETTERARI
Via E. Vendramini, 13
35137 – Padova
