Phd in CIVILIZATIONS OF ASIA AND AFRICA

email: Matilde.Mastrangelo@uniroma1.it
phone:
building: Complesso Marco Polo

Matilde Mastrangelo is full professor of Japanese Language and Literature at the Sapienza University in Rome. After graduating from the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples, she spent five years completing her studies at the University of Tokyo where she was awarded a Master's degree in “Theories of Cultural Representation”. During academic year 1993-94 she spent six months carrying out research at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Cambridge University. In December 1996 she was awarded a PhD in Far East Asian Civilisation by the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples.
Her academic writings cover various fields. Her first collection of essays examine the historical novel in both its ‘cultured’ and ‘popular’ narrative forms. The ‘cultured’ genre is analysed through works focusing on the role played by writer Mori Ogai, while her work on the ‘popular’ genre includes articles on history as revisited by storytellers. This theme ties in with another field of research – oral literature – whose development she traces from its origins to the present day, exploring its educational, humorous, and fantasy branches. She also collaborated on the production of the volume Fiabe Giapponesi (Japanese Fairytales), curating the translation of the third part (Fiabe giapponesi, Einaudi, 1998); she then contributed to the volume Mishima, Romanzi e Racconti (Mondadori, 2004) and translated the novel Kyōko no ie (Kyoko’s House) into Italian for the first time. Since 2001, when she obtained a Fellowship from the Japan Foundation, she has studied storyteller San'yutei Encho, and especially his ghost stories, translating Botandōrō (The Peony Lantern) into Italian (Marsilio, 2012). With M. Saito and N. Ozawa, she has contributed to the field of Japanese language teaching, publishing a Japanese Grammar and an Italian-Japanese Dictionary. She is currently writing a Japanese language manual.

Professor Mastrangelo frequently spends time in Japan carrying out research at the Universities of Tokyo and Waseda. She has participated in numerous international conferences and has been a member of the governing boards of numerous study associations in the field of Japanese Studies. She plays an active role in international exchanges with Japanese universities, and especially student mobility. In 2007 she took part in the Rector's mission to Japan.
From 2011 to 2017 she was Director of the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies Department.
From 2013 to 2016 she was the representative of the Associate Professors of Macro-area E in the Academic Senate.
From 2012 to 2016 she was a member of the Commission for Literary Translation Awards of the Ministry of Education.
From 2013 to 2017 she was Secretary General of the AISTUGIA (Italian Association of Japanese Studies)
As of 2017 she has been President of the AISTUGIA.
In 2017 she was decorated by the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs for the diffusion of Japanese Culture.
Since 2019 is Vice Dean of the Faculty of Humanities