The colloquium “The Waste Question: Landscapes of Toxicity and Resistance in Southern Italy” took place at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge, on 10 June 2026. Supported by the CIRN Intesa Sanpaolo Fund and by the Society for Italian Studies (SIS), the event explored Southern Italian landscapes through the question of waste, in keeping with the CIRN Intesa Sanpaolo Visiting Fellowship theme, “Italian Ecologies.” It examined how waste is imbricated in material and relational processes, manifesting in the pollution and toxicity affecting parts of Southern Italy and in the construction of Southern Italians as the country’s socio-economic “deadweight.” The colloquium adopted a multi-scalar approach, moving from the Southern regions in general in the panels “Southern Landscapes and Imaginaries” and “Waste and Toxicity” to the case of Taranto in the final panel. Taranto, in Apulia, received special attention because it is home to Europe’s largest steel plant, ILVA (now ex-ILVA), which remains (somewhat) operational.

The multi-scalar structure was reflected in two keynote speakers, Marco Armiero (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) and Monica Seger (William & Mary). Armiero explored his concept of the “Wasteocene” a framework for understanding socio-political processes through which individuals and environments are rendered waste, while Seger examined counternarratives emerging from Taranto. The first panel featured Damiano Benvegnù (University of St Andrews), who offered an ecological reading of Antonio Gramsci amid environmental devastation in Sardinia, Claudia Lombardo (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), who examined the history of the NATO base in Comiso as an instance of “wasted” energopolitics, and Giulia Bellato (University of Cambridge), who explored immunditia as both the material by-product of everyday life and a moral and social category in the Middle Ages. The second panel examined filmic representations of waste. Karl Schoonover (University of Warwick) and I discussed Alice Rohrwacher’s Corpo celeste (2011), addressing depictions of dirty air and the film’s underlying (eco)queer implications, while Elena Emma Sottilotta (University of Cambridge) analysed fairy-tale motifs and environmental degradation in Bella e perduta (Pietro Marcello, 2015) and Cinderella the Cat (Alessandro Rak, Ivan Cappiello, Marino Guarnieri and Dario Sansone, 2017). The final panel focused on Taranto: Raffaele Ippolito (UCL) examined residents’ resistance to epistemic injustice under chronic pollution and their efforts to affirm their identity and belonging. Selby Wynn Schwarz gave voice to marginalised figures and ecologies, including Citte Citte, a theatre project involving incarcerated women, migrants detained in the Taranto hotspot, and queer marine ecologies. Michael Tortorella (Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna) explored community-based forms of inhabiting Taranto that can challenge structural, epistemic, and everyday violence.

Overall, the colloquium brought together early-career researchers and senior scholars across disciplines. It highlighted interdisciplinarity and transhistoricity as crucial approaches to understanding Southern Italy’s marginalisation and environmental crises. The event will develop into a special issue bringing Southern Italy into dialogue with other “Souths.”

The organiser thanks the SIS Executive Committee for its generous support, which covered Michael Tortorella’s travel expenses.