Author: martina

Festivabìlia Coming Soon Begins

“Festivabìlia Coming soon” will begin on Monday, September 30 at 4.30 PM in the Co-Working classroom. This new series anticipates “Festivabìlia: the Theatre of Potential Abilities 2024”, a theatre festival launched last year to showcase performances focused on inclusion and accessibility. The “Coming soon” series offers events dedicated to the presentation of important projects, organizations, and the protagonists of inclusion:

  • Monday, September 30 at 4.30 PM in the Co-Working classroom (Foreign Languages and Literatures building, mezzanine first floor)
    Narrating inclusion through Opera: the “Arena for All” Project
  • Friday, October 11 at 4.30 PM in the Co-Working classroom (Foreign Languages and Literatures building, mezzanine first floor)
    Screening of “Come, Come Closer”
  • Monday, October 21 at 4.30 PM in the Co-Working classroom (Foreign Languages and Literatures building, mezzanine first floor)
    FOLLOW FOSSY: Accessible Tours Between Museum Education and Inclusion.

All events are free, open to the public and for the larger community of the University of Verona.

Agreement with Ningbo University Signed

A new agreement between the School of Humanities and Communication of Ningbo University and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Verona was signed in Ningbo, China. The agreement, which crowns the collaboration between the two universities, was signed in August during the first Summer School organized by the two institutions, thanks to a partnership that began in 2023, an initiative by the director of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Roberta Facchinetti, and enthusiastically welcomed by the magnificent rector Pier Francesco Nocini.

“The new operational agreement,” explained Director Facchinetti, “symbolically seals the efforts made over the past ten years to develop and consolidate the study of the Chinese language at the university. Starting from the new academic year, Chinese will be taught at the University Language Centre and throughout the five-year programs for undergraduate and graduate degrees in Languages and Literatures for Tourism and International Commerce, offered by the department.”

Read the article that UnivrMagazine dedicates to the initiative here.

Emotions in Children’s and Youth Literature

The international conference “Emotions in Children’s and Youth Literature” will take place from September 19 to 21, organized by Professor Simone Rebora in collaboration with Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Freie Universität Berlin.

Emotional engagement is of fundamental importance when children learn to read, tell, and share stories. Surprisingly, this crucial dimension of cultural literacy has received little attention in literary studies, psychology, and digital humanities. The conference Emotions in Children’s and Youth Literature, which will be held entirely in English, will present the first results of the CHYLSA project (Children’s and Youth Literature Sentiment Analysis, based at the University of Mainz and Freie Universität Berlin) and explore potential synergies with the “Inclusive Humanities” Excellence Project at the University of Verona.

Info and full program available here.

The fifth episode of Inclusioni is online

The fifth episode of Inclusioni, the podcast channel of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures in collaboration with Fuori Aula Network, is now available online on major platforms. This all-female episode focuses on Carmen de Burgos, a writer and journalist who tirelessly fought for women’s rights in early 20th-century Spain, to the point of being placed on the list of prohibited authors by the Franco regime.

The hosts are Prof. Antonella Gallo, a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Verona who has been studying Carmen de Burgos for several years, and Prof. Anna Altarriba Cabré, a Linguistic Expert Collaborator at our university and president of the Italo-Spanish Cultural Association of Verona. The conversation and excerpts we will hear focus on the novel “La rampa” or “The Inclined Plane” (Le Lettere Publishing House, Florence), which was released in bookstores on March 1, 2024, and translated into Italian by Prof. Gallo.

“The Inclined Plane” captures the condition of women in early 20th-century Spain and Carmen de Burgos’ long political activism for women’s emancipation. It is also a powerful work of protest against gender inequality and a valuable testament to the author’s tenacious fight for a spiritual renaissance in Spain.

Happy listening!

Representations of Otherness, Diversity, and Marginality in Contemporary European and Non-European Literatures

Phenomena of social inequality and cultural exclusion, as well as forms of restrictions to the citizenship status and the consequent populist drifts deprived of any real political and cultural orientation, are effects of the complex power dynamics that, in this age of ours marked by an ever-increasing mobility, are exercised by global capitalism on the one hand, and, on the other, by current sovereigntist and nationalist movements. This research project addresses these pressing issues, which constitute crucially decisive challenges for our societies today, by analyzing representations of otherness, diversity, and marginality in contemporary European and non-European literatures. The goal of this investigation is to explore the different cultural trends characterizing our societies, with the aim of:

  • delving into their plural constitution,
  • highlighting the current dynamics of cultural, social, linguistic, and ethnic processes of  exclusion and inclusion, in connection with the ways in which they are perceived in an increasingly globalised world, and finally
  • outlining new modes of representation, new imaginaries and new spaces for action for those subjectivities that dwell in the cultural and political margins of our times. 

The project embraces an interdisciplinary perspective based on a convergence between postcolonial studies, categories and concepts developed by biopolitics, most recent researches on transnationalism, transculturalism and globalisation, as well as on the acquisitions developed by migration studies. The originality of the results will be guaranteed by:

  1. a focus on new literary trends, which nonetheless will make use, where necessary, of a diachronic approach aimed at highlighting the historical evolution of phenomena;
  2. the aim of carrying out a cohesive and transnational discourse on the European and non-European literature centered on the themes of otherness/marginality/diversity;
  3. the objective of broadening the methodological and theoretical framework espoused by the research project, by comparing the approaches adopted in the various linguistic and cultural contexts tackled by the researchers participating in it.

Group leader: Gabriella Pelloni

Internal members:

  • Daniele Artoni
  • Manuel Boschiero 
  • Martina Brufani 
  • Elisa Destro 
  • Davide Di Maio 
  • Lídia Carol Geronès 
  • Annalisa Pes 
  • Lara Righi 
  • Luca Salvi 
  • Isolde Schiffermüller 
  • Sara Trentini 
  • Andrea Zinato 
  • Susanna Zinato 

External members: 

  • Alessandro Achilli (Cagliari) 
  • Edoardo Balletta (Bologna) 
  • Paola Bellomi (Siena) 
  • Ugo Fracassa (Roma 3) 
  • Marika Piva (Padova) 
  • Marco Puleri (Bologna) 

Actions:  WP 1.1; WP 1.2 

References: 

Appadurai, Arjun (1996): Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  

Epstein, Mikhail (2009), Transculture: A Broad Way Between Globalism and Multiculturalism, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 68(1), p. 327-351. 

Esposito, Roberto (2006): Communitas. Origine e destino della comunità. Torino: Einaudi (nuova edizione ampliata). 

The Notion of “Subject” as the Cornerstone for the Creation of a Metagrammatical Terminological Map

The project aims to investigate the notion of “subject” and its various definitions in light of morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties.

The project involves studying the concept of “subject” in linguistic corpora and in traditional manuals/grammars, with the goal of building a network of connections within the field of metalinguistic terminology and facilitating the creation of a reference conceptual map.

Group leader: Alessandra Tomaselli

Internal members:

  • Sabrina Bertollo
  • Sibilla Cantarini
  • Andrea Padovan
  • Stefan Rabanus