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On Land and Across the Sea: Boccaccio’s Other Wor(l)ds. Junctions and Interweavings Conference
Friday, Oct 3, 2025 - Saturday, Oct 4, 2025
Royce 314,
10745 Dickson Ct
Los Angeles, CA 90095 United States + Google Map
Los Angeles, CA 90095 United States + Google Map
To mark 650 years since Boccaccio’s death, a conference on Boccaccio’s Other Wor(l)ds invites exploration of Boccaccio’s “Other Words” and “Other Worlds.” Boccaccio’s narratives—not limited to the Decameron—vividly depict cultural and intellectual exchanges, emphasizing human behavior, morality, and societal complexities across the Mediterranean and beyond, including Cathay. In the Decameron, the Levant serves as a crucial geographical and cultural reference, highlighting its role as a crossroads of commerce, religion, and cultural interaction. For instance, Nathan’s house in Decameron X.3 is described as being situated at the crossroads “from the West eastward, or from the East westward.” Similarly, in Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, Boccaccio extols the invention of the boat and maritime navigation, celebrating their benefits for humanity. He reflects on the immense advantages of trade and cultural exchanges and how they foster trust and friendships. Boccaccio notes that such interactions enable mutual teaching and learning of languages, bridging geographical distances and overcoming estrangement.
Inspired by Boccaccio’s fascination with other worlds and words, the Conference encourages geocritical approaches to Boccaccio’s works and explores this “hybrid point of connectivity” across society, politics, gender, religion, and economics. It aims to further investigate labor conditions and slavery in the medieval Mediterranean, with particular attention to the art and commerce of textiles and textual weaves. The focus extends from the silent labor of women weaving baskets across the Mediterranean basin to female textile workers in Florence, highlighting references to women’s labor both within and beyond the sea.
Register to attend in Royce 314
Schedule
| Day 1 – Friday, October 3 | |
| 9:00 AM | Coffee, fresh fruit, pastries |
| 9:15 AM | Welcome Remarks – Oona Paredes (CMRS-CEGS Associate Director) – Todd Presner (ELTS Chair) – Massimo Ciavolella (Franklin D. Murphy Chair in Italian Renaissance Studies) – Roberta Morosini (University of California, Los Angeles) |
| Panel 1 – Women, Words, and the Sea: Gendered Crossings in the Decameron | |
| 9:40 AM | Johnny Bertolio (University of Torino, Italy) – On Mary Magdalene’s Trail: Alatiel’s Intersectional Journey Through the Mediterranean |
| 10:00 AM | Orf Jawaher (Université Jean Moulin III, France) – Alatiel and Gostanza: a Non-Christian Woman in the West and a Christian Woman in the East – Presented via ZOOM |
| 10:20 AM | Teresa Nocita (Università degli Studi dell’Aquila, Italy) – The journey of Alatiel (Decameron II, 7): the Mediterranean as an experience of the self |
| 10:40 AM | Reed O’Mara (Case Western Reserve University) – Crafting a History of Women: Introducing the Getty’s Des cleres et nobles femmes and Le livre de la Cité des Dames Manuscript Presented by Elizabeth Morrison (Getty Museum) |
| 11:00 AM | Break |
| 11:15 AM | Discussion Panel 1 – Chaired by Janet Smarr (University of California, San Diego) |
| 12:30 PM | Lunch |
| Panel 2 – Cross-Mediterranean Geographies: Trade, Empire, and Narrative Networks | |
| 2:00 PM | Brittany Asaro (University of San Diego) – Boccaccio in SoCal: The San Diego Decameron Project |
| 2:20 PM | Matteo Leta (University College Dublin) – Boccaccio’s Decameron and the Representation of the “Other” in the Italian Renaissance Comedy |
| 2:40 PM | Anna Dini (University of California, Berkeley) – Saladin, A Mediterranean Exemplar in Decameron 10.9 |
| 3:00 PM | Roberto Pesce (University of Oklahoma) – Boccaccio and the Islamic World: The Influence of Marino Sanudo Torsello |
| 3:20 PM | Berenice Daniele (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) – Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Canaria: between humanism and colonialism |
| 3:40 PM | Break |
| 4:00 PM | Discussion Panel 2 – Chaired by Brenda Schildgen (University of California, Davis) |
| 5:00 PM | Reception |
| Day 2 – Saturday, October 4 | |
| 9:00 AM | Coffee, fresh fruit, pastries |
| Panel 3 – Objects, Texts, and Intertextual Voyages | |
| 9:30 AM | Danilo Petrassi (University of Macerata, Italy) – Landolfo Rufolo in the Age of Social Media: Sailing Different Seas Between Chaos and Compassion |
| 9:50 AM | Chiara Coppin (University of Naples “L’Orientale”) – «Di mare in terra». Reflections on the world of Teseida |
| 10:10 AM | Deirdre Klena (Saint Louis University) – “Secondo che io intesi”: Merchants, Convents, and Information in Boccaccio’s Elegy of Lady Fiammetta |
| 10:30 AM | Alexa Rojas (ABA Velli prize and Keck Fellow 2025, University of California, Los Angeles) – Do Clothes make the (Wo)man?” |
| 10:50 AM | Sarah Marie Leitenberger (University of Pennsylvania) – Courtesy of the Lady: Madonna Adalieta as a Cultural Ambassador in Decameron X.9 |
| 11:10 AM | Break |
| 11:30 AM | Discussion Panel 3 – Chaired by Massimo Ciavolella (University of California, Los Angeles) |
| 12:30 PM | Lunch |
| Panel 4 – From Ship to Shore: Poetics, Environment, and Cross-Cultural Mediations | |
| 2:00 PM | Jonathan Combs-Schilling (Ohio State University) – Boccaccio’s “Fragile Boat” and Pastoral’s Seaward Turn |
| 2:20 PM | Sharon Kinoshita (University of California, Santa Cruz) – Trading Places: Boccaccio’s Decameron 2.9 in/and the Medieval Mediterranean – Presented via ZOOM |
| 2:40 PM | Sara Ronzoni (University of Padua) – Environment, Humanity and Figure: a Journey through Petrarch, Boccaccio and Opicino de Canistris’ Geographical Works |
| 3:00 PM | Vincenzo Dimaggio (University of Indiana) – Linguistic Alterity and Identity in the Decameron |
| 3:20 PM | Discussion Panel 4 – Chaired by Brian Catlos (University of Colorado Boulder) |
| 4:45 PM | Break |
| 5:00 PM | Concluding Roundtable – Boccaccio’s Other Wor(l)ds Today This session brings together invited scholars for an open conversation on how Boccaccio’s Mediterranean crossings, geographies of alterity, and narrative experiments continue to speak to contemporary cultural and critical frameworks: migration, translation, gendered displacement, and literary mobility. Chair: Sebastiana Nobili (University of Bologna) – Janet Smarr (University of California, San Diego) – Michael Papio (University of Massachusetts Amherst) – Rino Caputo (Tor Vergata University of Rome) – Brenda Schildgen (University of California, Davis) – Brian Catlos (University of Colorado Boulder) – Akash Kumar (University of California, Berkeley) – Marco Veglia (University of Bologna) – Sharon Kinoshita (University of California, Santa Cruz) |
| 6:00 PM | Closing remarks |
This conference is sponsored by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies
In collaboration with:
UCLA Robert and Dorothy Wellman Chair in Medieval History and UCLA Franklin D. Murphy Chair in Italian Renaissance Studies