The 19th Hannah Arendt Circle Meeting
Co - Directors
Abstract Reviewers
Host
Conference Assistants
Program
June 4th
Sala Azzurra
2:30-2:50 p.m. Welcoming
2:50-3:00 p.m. Introductory Remarks
3:00-4:30 p.m. Philosophy and Politics in Dark Times (In Memoriam of Karin A. Fry)
Fina Birulés | Universitat de Barcelona
Miguel E. Vatter | Deakin University
Chair: Simona Forti | Scuola Normale Superiore
4:30-4:45 p.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)
4:45-7:15 p.m. Round Table:
Reading Arendt’s The Hungarian Revolution and the Totalitarian Imperialism Today
Peg Birmingham | DePaul University
Jennifer Gaffney | Loyola University Chicago
Olivia Guaraldo | Università degli studi di Verona
Anne O’Bryne | Stony Brook University
Angela Taraborrelli | Università degli studi di Cagliari
Dana Villa | Notre Dame University
Chair: Valentina Moro | Stony Brook University and Gabriele Parrino | Scuola Normale Superiore
7:30 p.m. Reception
June 5th
Sala Azzurra
9:30-10:45 a.m. Session 1 - Chair: Laura Cremonesi | Scuola Normale Superiore
Capitalist futurity and the Anthropocene
Thiago Dias | UNICAMP - FAPESP
World Alienation and Capitalist Temporal Disruption: Reassessing Arendt’s Phenomenology of Appearance through Contemporary Temporal Regimes
Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen | University of Jyväskylä
Conditions of Appearance: Reimagining Critical Political Theory with Arendt in the Anthropocene
10:45-11 a.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)
11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Session 2 - Chair: Sofia Elena Merli | Scuola Normale Superiore
Historicity and Causality
Michalis Dagtzis | University of Athens
Radical Novelty in History: Institution and Contingency with Arendt and Merleau-Ponty
Chiara Agnello | Università degli Studi di Palermo
“Rosen ohne Warum”: Hannah Arendt and the ‘Death Factories’
12:15-2:15 p.m. Lunch Break
2:15-3:45 p.m. Session 3 - Chair: Lapo Ferri | Scuola Normale Superiore
Exile and Storytelling
Anna Argirò | Istituto italiano per gli Studi Storici
“We Refugees”: Hannah Arendt and Rachel Bespaloff on Exile and Beginning
Roan Costa Cordeiro | Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro – CNPq
The Incantatory Power of Storytelling: Thinking Narration with Hannah Arendt
3:45-4:00 p.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)
4:00-5:15 p.m. Session 4 - Chair: Jo-Anne Dillabough | University of Cambridge
Reassessing Natality
Francesco Guercio | European Graduate School
Saving the Phenomena, Loving the World: Love and Natality in Hannah Arendt and Reiner Schürmann
David Inczauskis | Loyola University Chicago
Hannah Arendt’s Challenge to Critical Phenomenology: Critique from the General Conditions of Natality and Plurality
5:30-7:00 p.m.
New Directions in Arendt Studies: A Focus on Contemporary Scholarship – Chair: Dawn Herrera Helphand | Loyola University Chicago, Elvira Roncalli | Carroll College
Peg Birmingham - Hannah Arendt and Political Glory (2025) and Andrea Timàr
Reading with Hannah Arendt: Literature, Criticism, Theory (2026).
8:15/30 p.m. Social Dinner
June 6th
Sala Azzurra
9:30-10:45 a.m. Session 5 - Chair: Maria Giuliana Lo Piccolo | Scuola Normale Superiore
Democracy and the “in-between”
Lihi Paul | École Normale Supérieur
Inter-est: Arendtian Ethics In-between Distance and Proximity
Natascia Tosel | Università degli Studi di Verona
Constitutio Libertatis: a Happy, Vicious Circle? Hannah Arendt and Karl Loewenstein on the Life of the Constitution in Contemporary Democracies
10:45-11 a.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)
11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Session 6 - Chair: Maria Robaszkiewicz | Paderborn University
Ethics and Technology
Katherine Brichacek, co-authored with Thor Christoffersen Hochman, Jayanti Jha, Jennifer Liu, and Naina Panjwani | USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Arendt on the “Dangers of Stochastic Parrots”
Nicholas Poole | York University
Justified and Vindicated: The Heautonomy of Arendt’s Judgment
12:30-2:00 p.m. Lunch Break and Business Meeting (Chiostra della Scuola Normale Superiore)
2:30-3:45 p.m. Session 7 - Chair: Daniele Bassi | Università degli studi di Verona
Building and Staging the Public World
Baku Momoki | Kansai University
Between Public and Private: Reassessing Riken Yamamoto’s Architecture through Arendt’s Political Theory
Lucy Benjamin | University of Edinburgh
The Theatre of Portbou
3:45-4:00 p.m. Coffee Break (Chiostra)
4:00-5:15 p.m. Session 8 - Chair: Yasemin Sari | Seattle University
Arendt and Literature
Silvia Lorusso | Sapienza Università di Roma
The Spaces of Critique in Dark Times. Hannah Arendt’s cross-reading of Benjamin and Kafka
Sasha Simon | Western University
Action and its Perversions: Arendt, Lessing, and Emerson on the Understanding Heart in Dark Times
5:15-5:30 p.m. Closing remarks
IMG: mika baumeister | by Unsplash