In the framework of the Francophone Book Fair of Beirut, an annual appointment much awaited by the Lebanese public, the Italian Cultural Institute is organizing the presentation of the book “Bel / Palmyre, Hommage” by the semiotician and archeologist Manar Hammad, with a preface by the famous Italian semiotician Paolo Fabbri, in the presence of the two authors. The roundtable will be moderated by Professor Anne-Marie Afeiche, Curator of the National Museum and Director a.i. of the Lebanese Directorate General of Antiquities.
Manar Hammad was born in 1944 in Beirut to parents fom Aleppo (Syria). He is an architect DPLG and PhD in semiotics. After finishing his studies in mathematics, architecture and semiotics, he began his career in research and teaching, then in archeology. He was co-director of a postgraduate DEAA program in architectural theory at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Paris-La Villette. He also taught theory of communication and analysis of non-verbal communication at the Montréal Universit and at the Quebec University in Montreal. He has done research in architectural anthropology and in semio-linguistics, and has organized numerous international scientific meetings on space semiotic. For many years, he has focused his research on the Semitic civilizations and their sacred and institutional spaces. In particular, he has devoted twelve years to the study of Palmyra, where he did excavation. He founded in Aleppo the Dar Hammad Research Centre, dedicated to scientific research on northern Syria.
Paolo Fabbri (Rimini, 1939), a semiotician, he has been active in different fields: from language to arts, from communication to philosophy, sociology and epistemology. He graduated in 1962 at the University of Florence, then moved to Paris, where he attended in 1965-66 the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE). He returned to Italy, where he began teaching semiotics with Umberto Eco at the University of Florence, in 1966-67. In 1970, he co-founded the International Center of Semiotics and Linguistics in Urbino. He has taught at numerous Italian and foreign universities. He has written many books and articles, edited and translated books on the language and communication problems. He also directed from 1992 to 1996 the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris. Since 2011 he has been Director of the Federico Fellini Foundation in Rimini.