May 2026 has begun on a positive note for the Centre for Intermediality Studies and the Department of American Studies. Students and faculty members had the pleasure to welcome Professor Vincenzo Maggitti from Università Roma Tre. Maggitti is adjunct Professor in American Studies and intermediality and his research interests include cinematic techniques in fiction, ekphrasis and sound. In addition to contributing to an M.A. exam on the American Revolution, Prof. Maggitti delighted students two lectures centered on the productive intertwining of American movies and fiction and met PhD students of the Doctoral Program “Visual Cultures and Intermediality”. In his first lecture titled “Dynamics of Memory and Dystopia in Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark,” he analyzed Paul Auster’s 2008 novel through the lenses of cinema theories and techniques such as apparatus theory, montage, absence, movement- and time-image. Among the highlights were his analysis of the position of the grieving protagonist through Magny’s theory of “the man in the dark room” and of the use of absent and ghost-like characters, objects and stories in cinema, which the speaker linked to the protagonist’s and his granddaughter’s sorrow for the loss of two dear relatives. In the second lecture, “Double Minstrel Show: Percival Everett’s Erasure and Spike Lee’s Bamboozled as Signifying Texts,” our guest juxtaposed the protagonist of the 2001 novel by Everett—a novelist called Thelonious “Monk” Ellison—with Pierre Delacroix, the main character and manager of a TV channel in Spike Lee’s 2000 feature film. Both African American fictional characters try to succeed in the literary and film industry respectively. Maggitti argued that the works they produce end up thematizing concepts at the core of nineteenth-century minstrel shows, in which white actors used blackface to ‘embody’ racist and highly offensive stereotypes of African Americans in order to please white audiences. In both the novel and the movie, the protagonists realize that only their own artistic success hinges on extreme caricatures of African American traits and behaviors. Thus, both works satirize white people’s expectations both in the publishing and film industries as demeaning when it comes to representations of the African American community. Finally, Professor Maggitti engaged in a sparkling and wide-ranging discussion with PhD students that encompassed a variety of topics such as intermediality theory and choices related to the corpus and the form of the dissertation and ended with exciting reading and viewing suggestions. Students and professors look forward to welcoming Professor Maggitti in Graz again. (Anna Lorenzon, CIMIG)