The doctoral conference Silence(d): Illusory Absences and Denied Presences aims to stimulate reflection on silence not only as the absence of voice or sound, but as a device that structures narratives, archives, memories, and processes of knowledge production. 

University of Florence, 26th-27th October 2026.

Argument

Silence has crossed disciplines, historical periods, and forms of expression, taking different meanings and functions. It may appear as emptiness, pause, interruption, or absence, yet at the same time it can be a form of latent presence, a trace of what has been removed, censored, or rendered invisible.Silence may also constitute a site of resistance and possibility – from being an instrument of control to an effect of individual or collective trauma that resists verbalisation, from empty space in archives to omissions in historical narratives and official documents. Indeed, it becomes a strategy of withdrawal, an expression of dissent, a gesture allowing to produce and negotiate meaning. 

Creative and interpretative frameworks entail processes of selection that produce dynamics of silencing  – voices, experiences, and perspectives that are unexpressed, unrecorded or marginalised. Thus, interrogating silence also entails reflecting on the conditions of knowledge production from a dual perspective: as an ontological condition, and as the product of discursive and material processes of silencing. Who or what is being silenced? Which voices remain at the margins? In what ways can silence produce meaning, or become a space for debate and elaboration? In some cases, however, silence may also elude practices of control or mechanisms of passive dissent. It can express itself through modes of representation that, while placing subjects in the foreground, ultimately erase or distort their voices in processes of ‘othering’. Visibility further intensifies the violence of enforced silencing. The exposure of bodies and differences manifests in phenomena such as ridicule, stereotyping, or mystification, obscuring the lived experience of the represented subjects.

Narratives are marked by gaps, absences, or frustrated forms of visibility that are never neutral. What does not appear, is excluded and forgotten, or, conversely, emphasised to manipulate its framing, often reveals what gets preserved and transmitted. In this sense, silence may be understood as a presence which crosses documents, testimonies, and representations, thus opening particularly productive critical spaces. In literary studies, silence can manifest itself both at the formal and thematic level. For instance, it may turn into ellipsis or the silencing of specific collectives and social groups. Moreover, in non-mimetic genres such as the fantastic, silence functions as a constitutive element of narrative or as a mode of representing otherness. In linguistics, it may be articulated as a pragmatic-discursive strategy, and as an object of study within multimodal approaches, conversational implicatures, and ideological discourse, addressed also through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). In philology, silence may appear as gaps or losses in textual transmission, caused by scribal omissions, the deterioration of material and writing supports, or processes of selection and censorship. In the visual arts, silence may emerge through absence, subtraction, or the suspension of the gaze, whereas in music and sound composition, it becomes an integral element of a piece. Lastly, in cinema and in performance art, it assumes a strong expressive and political charge. In all these fields, silence is not merely absence, but rather a device that shapes meaning and orients experience in its entirety.

Thematic Areas 

The doctoral conference Silence(d): Illusory Absences and Denied Presences aims to stimulate reflection on silence not only as the absence of voice or sound, but as a device that structures narratives, archives, memories, and processes of knowledge production.

The conference primarily welcomes contributions in the fields of philology, linguistics, literatures, and comparative cultures. However, it also encourages submissions from other academic sectors to foster interdisciplinary dialogue.

Possible thematic axes include the following, proposed as non-exhaustive guidelines:

• Silence and power: censorship, removal, marginalisation, and silencing practices.
• Archives of silence: gaps, omissions, and documentary voids.
• Silence and memory: trauma, repression, and testimony.
• Silence and language: prosody, the unsaid, the implicit, the unspeakable.
• Silence and the body: gestures, absent presence, performance.
• Silence as resistance: strategies of withdrawal, refusal, and dissent.
• Ecologies of silence: soundscapes, absence of sound and environmental transformations.
• Silence and spirituality: contemplative practices, rituals, and symbolic dimensions.
• Silence as pathology: interactions between medicine and the humanities.
• Silence and technology: configurations of silence in the digital age.

Submission Guidelines 

The call for papers is addressed to PhD candidates and early-career researchers interested in contributing to the conference debate.

Proposals, either in Italian or English, must be submitted by 15th June 2026 to the following email address: convegnosilenced.unifi@gmail.com.

The file submitted in a PDF format and saved as “Surname_ConvegnoSilenced_UNIFI” must include: the title, an abstract of no more than 300 words, 5 keywords, 5-7 bibliographic references relevant to the topic, and a brief biographical note of no more than 150 words written in the same language as the abstract and keywords. Authors are also required to specify their institutional affiliation, disciplinary field, and the language of their presentation, which must be either in Italian or in English.

Submissions will be evaluated by the Scientific Committee. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 20th July 2026. 

Each speaker will have 20 minutes for their presentation.

Practical Information

The conference will be held in person on Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th October 2026 at the University of Florence. Further details regarding the venue and other organisational matters will be provided upon confirming participation.

The conference is free of charge. However, organizers are not able to cover travel, accommodation, and subsistence expenses.

Key Dates 

• Submission deadline: 15th June 2026.
• Notification of acceptance: 20th July 2026.
• Conference dates: 26th-27th October 2026.

Contacts 

For further information, please contact: convegnosilenced.unifi@gmail.com

Committees 

Scientific Committee: Pietro Bianchi, Silvia Burgio, Sabrina Cappelli, Alice Fardin, Claudio Francesco Favazza, Alessia Gentile, Alessandra Lana, Valentina Antonina Pipicella, Floriana Ripa, Marco Rivadossi, Federico Schirato, Manuela Shocron Vietri, Rosario Alessio Spampinato, Andrea Venerina.

Organising Committee: Pietro Bianchi, Silvia Burgio, Sabrina Cappelli, Alice Fardin, Claudio Francesco Favazza, Alessia Gentile, Alessandra Lana, Valentina Antonina Pipicella, Floriana Ripa, Rosario Alessio Spampinato.