Contemporary Italian thought may be setting the terms of philosophical and political debate in this country, as it has enjoyed more intellectual and editorial success in the United States over the last decade.

A conference, "Commonalities: Theorizing the Common in Contemporary Italian Thought," Sept. 24-25 in B09 Sage Hall, will invite leading Italian philosophers to discuss what separates Italian thought from other philosophical traditions, and what might account for its importance today. It has been at the heart of current debate on topics as wide-ranging as bioengineering, globalization and feminism, according to conference organizer Timothy Campbell, professor of Romance studies.

Participants from Italy will include Franco Berardi, Remo Bodei, Cesare Casarino, Ida Dominjanni, Roberto Esposito, Michael Hardt and, by video conference, Antonio Negri. American critics, including several from Cornell, will respond to the presentations, and scholars and graduate students are expected to attend from all over the Northeast and across the country.

"The conference will provide a moment to reflect upon the roots of Italian thought today, upon its future and also to pose more specific questions about genealogies of the common across a centuries-long history of the Italian peninsula," Campbell said.

Cornell students will blog about the proceedings live over the two days at http://commonconf.wordpress.com/, and portions of the conference will be available soon after on the site.

The conference is sponsored by Diacritics, a review journal of criticism and theory edited by faculty in the Department of Romance Studies.

Linda Glaser, a writer in Arts and Sciences communications, contributed to this article.