Large calderas are the most dangerous volcanoes on the Earth. They are produced by collapse during explosive super-eruptions, which themselves are capable of triggering global catastrophes comparable to giant meteorite impacts. The mechanisms for unrest and eruptions at calderas are, to a large extent, unknown and, as demonstrated by volcanological research in the last few decades, they may be very different from those characterizing more commonly studied stratovolcanoes. The presence of large aquifer systems in these areas, with large magma chambers underneath, put them among the ‘hottest’ areas in the world, which means there is not only risk, but also ideal conditions for converting the exceptional underground heat into clean energy. Campi Flegrei caldera (Italy) represents an ideal natural laboratory to fully understand the mechanisms of caldera dynamics and to develop techniques for eruption forecast and effective risk mitigation. Drilling deep in this area could give precise insight into the processes of eruptions and unrest at this and other similar areas in the world. Furthermore, studying the aquifer systems over the whole depth and exploring higher depths where supercritical fluids are likely to be found, can give a strong impetus to the exploitation of geothermal energy, which is probably now the only clean source – certainly in Italy, but possibly also in the world – able to effectively replace fossil fuels for electricity generation.

This paper discusses the explanations for the causes and features of earthquakes in the works of philosopher and scientist Avicenna (980–1037) and in the theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1149–1209), who was deeply familiar with the work of Avicenna and who criticized him sharply on many occasions. The aim of this paper is to check the well-known hypothesis according to which Muslim theologians sometimes set out doctrines that were much more innovative from a scientific point of view than those of philosophers, strictly linked to Aristotle. This paper thus contributes to the history of Graeco-Arabic translations and the history of science. Avicenna's and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī's doctrines are compared with Aristotle and the Arabic tradition of the Meteorologica.

Transarea studies focus upon spaces as created by the movements that criss-cross them. From this point of view, from its very beginnings, literature is closely interrelated with a vectorial (and much less with a purely spatial) conception of history – and with urbanity, which plays a decisive role in Gilgamesh's travels through a (narrative) cosmos centered upon the city of Uruk. This article explores the city as a transareal space of movement in three examples of literature, with no fixed abode, around the turn of the millennium, i.e. Assia Djebar's Les Nuits de Strasbourg, Emine Sevgi Oezdamar's Istanbul-Berlin Trilogy, and Cécile Wajsbrot's L’île aux musées. These three writers project, in a very specific way, cities in motion as anagrammatic and fractal structures.

In what follows I am interested in how two German authors deal with ‘community melancholia’: Else Lasker-Schüler (1869–1945), a German-Jewish poet and performer, and Emine Sevgi Özdamar (1946–), a Turkish-German author and actress who belongs to the so-called ‘new German literature’ or migrants’ literature. Although both authors belong to different periods in German history, from the point of view of national identity, striking similarities exist in the historical intellectual discourse that surrounds German-Jewish literature during the first decades of the 20th century on the one hand and contemporary migrants’ literature on the other. I will focus on the function of theatricality in the work of both authors as a literary device that replies to or complies with the imperative of being part of a clearly defined culture or nation.

For the Neapolitan jurist and historian Pietro Giannone, the key to the future of the Kingdom of Naples lay in the understanding of the past. But the radical ideas in his Storia del regno di Napoli (1723) and other works cost him his freedom. The paper focuses on the development of the concept of cultural and civil history as a vehicle for change in the age of Giannone and his countryman Giambattista Vico.

Filippo Bottazzi (1867–1941), university professor of physiology, director of the Neapolitan Zoological Station ‘A. Dohrn’ and commonly credited as ‘the father of Italian biochemistry’, is an interesting case study of a distinctive intellectual risk: oblivion following upon the honours of a successful career. Bottazzi's fundamental work in physiology was distinguished by its close relationship with biological and physical chemistry. The international level of Bottazzi in this disciplinary field was commonly acknowledged, although he was also deeply interested in philosophy and history of life sciences. At the beginning of the twentieth century, together with many other prominent Italian intellectuals, Bottazzi mounted a long-lasting resistance against the prevailing idealistic trends in philosophy. The paper illustrates Bottazzi's contributions to some crucial and, at the time, completely unsettled epistemological questions on biomedical science, such as mechanism versus vitalism and the relation between biological and physical explanation. Within this framework, Bottazzi's historical studies are also considered. Finally, the paper argues for political and ideological reasons behind the silence surrounding Bottazzi after his death, pointing to his scientific commitment to the nutritional politics of the Italian Fascist regime, with its racial implications.

This article argues that the digital ‘revolution’ may turn out to be a true revolution for humanities and social sciences scholars, but not for the reasons usually brought forth in academic debates. Digital humanities is a way of returning to the intellectual fundamentals of the scholarly profession and of deeply changing the notion of academic community as well as that of reward and even authorship. This means not focusing on the new technical possibilities offered by the electronic format, which do not necessarily produce better science, but actually inventing a (new) political economy of social and human sciences. Scholars and academics should reinvent their daily practice in order to make true again the ideal of their profession: understanding societies in order to help them become more human.