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Ilaria Sicari

Ilaria Sicari is a MSCA Postdoctoral Research fellow. Her research project is devoted to the tamizdat (‘published abroad’), a term that refers to Soviet and Eastern European texts unpublished in the Eastern bloc and clandestinely smuggled and published in the West. Being the tamizdat an alternative transnational publishing practice, focusing on the agency of socio-cultural actors (activists of social movements, dissidents, editors, translators, literary agents, critics, diplomats etc.) involved in its production, circulation and reception, it will be possible to outline a comparative intellectual history of the Cultural Cold War in order to demonstrate that state and non-state book diplomacy was fundamental in avoiding the cultural isolation of the two blocs and in promoting the cross-border circulation of knowledge and ideas. 

At CREEES Ilaria will carry out her research under the supervision of Professor Norman Naimark and, during her visiting period at Stanford, she plans to realize a geo-spatial digital visualization of data in collaboration with the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA).

Visiting Scholars Info

Home Institution
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy)
Project Title
Transnational Book Diplomacy beyond the Cultural Cold War: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the Tamizdat (TAMIZDAT)
Fellowship
Horizon Europe 2022, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), PF, GF
DATES IN RESIDENCE
November 2023 - March 2025