Month: January 2024

On Wednesday, 17 January, recordings began for the first episode of Inclusioni, a podcast channel launched by the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Verona, in collaboration with Fuori Aula Network. The podcast will serve as a platform for the department’s research, featuring interviews and short segments, with a focus on the digital world and the promotion of diversity.

The first episode, set to release in April, will be titled “The Screen Challenge”. Adriaan Van der Weel from Leiden University in the Netherlands, a professor of Book Studies and co-author of the Ljubljana Manifesto on the importance of higher-level reading, will engage in a conversation with Massimo Salgaro, a professor of German literature from the department.

Van der Weel’s research, which centres on the relationship between reading and digital technologies—particularly the differences between reading on printed paper versus screens—will be the main topic of discussion in the debut episode of the podcast.

The Digital Spritz 2024 initiative kicked off on Wednesday, 17 January, with a series of meetings focused on digital topics and Digital Humanities in the teaching and research of foreign languages and literatures. The guest for the first event was Prof. Adriaan Van der Weel from Leiden University, co-author of the Ljubljana Manifesto on the importance of higher-level reading, also known as deep reading.

His talk, titled “The Screen Challenge: Deep Reading in the Digital Age”, delved into topics related to reading on digital devices, contrasting deep reading—a slow, immersive experience rich in sensory and emotional details—with fast reading. He also explored the reading crisis and the connection between democracy and reading.

As a reminder, the next Digital Spritz will take place on Wednesday, 21 February, featuring Prof. Fabio Ciotti from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, who will present on “GPT as Model Reader: LLMs and Narrative Comprehension”.