Giovanni Kezich (Milan, 1956) studied anthropology and archeology in Siena and London, gaining a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology with a research on The peasant poets. The octave of Latium in its social context (University of London, 1989). Since 1991, he is Director of the Trentino Folklife Museum of San Michele all'Adige, whence he has presieded the activities of project "Carnival King of Europe" (2007-).

Conferences

"The legacy of Giuseppe Šebesta (1919-2005) and the state of the art in Italian ethno-museography"

Bohemian descendant and multifarious cinematic artist Giuseppe Šebesta (1919-2005) with his “Museo degli Usi e Costumi della Gente Trentina”, founded in 1968, in the Italian Eastern Alps (www.museosanmichele.it), is credited with a significant revolution in Italian ethnography, with a largely new interest in material culture, and some interesting early insights on the immaterial components of local heritage.

• 7 March 2018, 17:00-19:00, EHESS (amphitheater François Furet) - 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris

"Pastoral graffiti: the valley of Fiemme and its wealth of shepherds rock paintings (1550-1950)"

In a remote cluster of rock sites in the heart of the Dolomites, generations of shepherds have left their red graffiti at the foot of overhanging cliffs numbering at around 50,000 single instances over a time span ranging from 1550 to about 1950. A complete survey of the writings explains the connection between this kind of modern pastoral graffiti and the most ancient conventions of this art (www.scrittedeipastori.it)

• 15 March 2018, 17:00-19:00, EHESS (artists'room) - 96 bd Raspail 75006 Paris

"Carnival King of Europe: European winter masquerades in ethnographic perspective"

European winter masquerades display a number of astonishing similarities in the shape of their characters, acts and overall structure. This can be seen across huge distances from the Balkans to the British Isles, and from Eastern Europe to Iberia, as it has been recently revived by a project of comparative ethnography that swept over 13 countries in the continent with a new wave of enquiries on the field.

• 19 March 2018, 11:00-13:00, EHESS (room 4) - 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris

"Ulysses not Ulysses. A new light on the scenarios and the plot of the Odyssey"

A number of authors over the years have taken up Strabo’s skepticism as towards present day Ithaca as the putative homeland of Homer’s Ulysses. The study of such alternative perspectives on Homer’s geography opens the way to the secret core of the Odyssey’s narrative mechanism, and points to a new anthropological interpretation, cast on the backdrop of the late Bronze age decline of matrilfocal prestige.

• 27 mars 2018, 14:00-16:00, EHESS (room 4) - 105 Bd Raspail 75006 Paris

"The chivalric legacy: extemporaneous folk poetry of Central Italy in its contemporary social context"

In peninsular Italy, the legacy of Renaissance chivalric poetr, as a substantial component of the traditional discourse in rural areas, has taken several different forms, such as folk puppetry in the South, folk drama (the “maggi”) across Tuscany and finally the commonplace usage of Ariosto’s “octave” in a variety of traditional contexts and formats – narrative and/or extemporaneous – throughout central Italy.

• 29 March 2018, 11:00-13:00, EHESS (room 4) - 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris