Dr. Paula Salvio, Professor, University of New Hampshire, USA
Friday, April 27, 2018 | 12:30 – 2:00 pm | Scarfe 310
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Abstract
“Children of the Massacre…” offers an examination of the Sicilian grassroots organization Addiopizzo, with a specific focus on Addiopizzo’s public pedagogical commitment to educate residents and citizen in Italy for what they describe as an ethical economy. Building on extensive interviews, fieldwork, and archival research, this paper begins with an introduction to the founding members of Addiopizzo and their use of story-taking and storytelling to curate courageous, non-violent campaigns against extortion. The paper examines Addiopizzo’s curriculum, designed in collaboration with teachers and antimafia cultural organizations to educate youth and residents about the importance of addressing extortion as the most primitive, primary method of accumulating wealth and destroying democratic live. Hannah Arendt’s writings on natality and belatedness provide a way to understand the public pedagogical value of Addiopizzo’s curriculum.
Short Bio
Paula M. Salvio is Chair and Professor of Education & Affiliate Faculty in Classics, Humanities, and Italian Studies at the University of New Hampshire. She writes and lectures on the cultural and historical foundations of education with a specialization in psychoanalysis, life-writing, and the impact that marginalization, trauma and war have on women, children and youth in formal and informal educational settings. She explores transitional moments in history and society – reform, wars and revolution and their aftermaths- and how these affect the relations of education, culture and politics. Along with her numerous articles and book chapters, she is the author of The Story-Takers: Public Pedagogy, Transitional Justice, and Italy’s Non-Violent Protest Against the Mafia (University of Toronto Press, 2017); with Bronwen Low and Chloe Brushwood-Rose, Community-Based Media Pedagogies: Listening in the Commons (Routledge Press, 2016); Anne Sexton: Teacher of Weird Abundance (SUNY Press, 2007), and co-edited with Gail Boltd, Love’s Return: Psychoanalytic Essays on Childhood, Teaching and Learning (Routledge, 2006).