Raffaele Milani. Full Professor of Aesthetics. Milani has
been a Research Associate in Aesthetics at the University of
Bologna since 1974, in the same Faculty (Scienze della Formazione).
He was visiting professor in various foreign universities (Europe,
Canada, Japan). He participated in international symposiums and
held lectures and seminars on aesthetic categories, on the
comparison between the arts, on synaesthesia and the media, and on
the aesthetics of the the landscape. He teaches Aesthetics in the
Department of Educational Sciences and he taught Fenomenologia
degli Stili in the High School of Specialization on
History of Art at the University of
Bologna(2001-2007).
Director of post lauream Master in "Landascape Science and
Design" ( University of Bologna), 2003-2004, 2004-2005. He was Director of
Summer School: Italian Design (2005-2015). Art, Society and Industry (
University of Bologna - Osaka University, University of Taiwan,
Tongji University of Shanghai, China). Director of the
"Laboratory for Research on the City " (Istituto di Studi
Superiori, University of Bologna. Member of the Intitute of
Advanced Studies (Unversity of Bologna), 2003-2009. Member of the
European Commission at the French Ministry of Environment and
Sustainable Development on: "De la connaissance des paysages à
l'action paysagère" (from 2004). Italian delegate at the
International Association for Aesthetics. Member of the Scientific
Board at the EURIAS program. Member of the Scientific Board of
the Doctoral School of Semiotics, now PSCS.
He is the author of Categorie estetiche (Pratiche, Parma
1991), a detailed survey of the main aesthetic categories which
scholars and writers have referred to over the last three
centuries. Il Pittoresco. L'evoluzione del gusto tra classico e
romantico (Laterza, Bari 1996; awarded the Hanbury Botanical
Gardens International Prize)) analyzed the relationship between
natural beauty and artistic beauty, comparing the baroque,
classicism, rococo and romanticism. Il fascino della paura.
L'invenzione del Gotico dal Rococò al Trash (Guerini, Milano
1998) is an overview on the pleasure of terror in literature
and arts, from the Eighteenth Century until today.
In L'arte del paesaggio (awarded the
Calabria International Prize and the Hanbury International Prize,
translated in English, French, Spanish, Japanese), Milani addresses
the issue of natural landscapes as an aesthetic category. Making
use of a wide array of materials drawn from philosophical
tradition, literature and art. Il paesaggio è
un'avventura, (Feltrinelli, Milano 2005) is a
detailed guidebook to the aesthetic experience of landscapes.
Latest book: I Volti della Grazia, ed. il Mulino,
Bologna 2009 (translated in English, Peter Lang, New York), L'arte
della città (The Art of the City, McGill-Queen's UP, Montreal, Chicago, London, 2017), il Mulino, Bologna 2015.
He has contributed widely to important Italian journals of aesthetics, such as "Rivista di Estetica", "il verri", "Studi di estetica", “Estetica”, "The Journal of Asian Arts & Aesthetics".
President of the Italian Scientific Committee for the Art Exhibition Capolavori della Scultura Buddhista Giapponese (01/2014 - 09/2016), Roma, Scuderie del Quirinale. On May 2016 he held the Laudatio for Laurea ad Honorem to Joseph Rykwert. Between 2015 and 2018 he also gave lectures in some Italian and foreign universities as well as he took part in various symposiums (Losanna, Ginevra, Torino, Roma). Keynote speaker in various International Symposium: Tasting The Landscape, IFLA, Torino 2016; Archiletture, Bologna 2017; Pistoia, Capitale della Cultura 2017; Immagini?, Bressanone 2017. He is also coordinator of two international symposium in autumn 2017, topics: L'invention de la femme, In Defence of the Ancient City. May 26th 2018, he gave a lecture at the Conference on the topic of the Italian Costitution (art.9). Autumn 2018: speaker at the Furusato International Meeting at the University of Ca'Foscari in Venice and at the Autobiography International Conference in Paris, at the Institut Protestant de Théologie. Member of the Osservatorio sul Paesaggio della Regione Emilia-Romagna. Moderator of the round table Urban and Natural Landscape at International Congress of Aesthetics (22-26 July 2019).
Latest book: The Art of the City, McGill-Queen's UP, Montreal, Chicago, London, 2017.
