Seminars


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2023


Instructor: Prof. Cinzia Giglioni (Sapienza Università di Roma) Title: ‘Linguistic perspectives on political discourse: the case of Congressional Hearings’ Date: 26th January 2023
January, 26, 2023
Professor Giglioni’s lecture introduced doctoral students to her research on U.S. Congressional Hearings, a highly codified genre and communicative event within political discourse. After presenting various types, aspects and stages of hearings, Professor Giglioni focused on the opening statements of selected congressional hearings. In particular, Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony from 2013 was presented as a case study examining the use of apologetic discourse, which included detailed examples of “transcendence” (reframing the situation in question in a broader context), “indirect denial” (responding to charges in such a way that the charges are never explicitly acknowledged), “differentiation” (creating necessary distinctions that redefine the questionable situation), and “bolstering” (enhancing the image of a subject by linking it to abstract values). This research discussed by Professor Giglioni focused primarily on questions regarding the identification of apologetic discourse in Clinton’s testimony, namely how apologetic discourse was articulated in the hearing, and which lexical and morphological traits were used as apologetic strategies. The lecture concluded with a detailed review of the various macro-textual moves employed in investigative hearings, such as the opening, looking back, the apology, looking forward, and the closing.
Instructor: Renzo Mocini (Sapienza Università di Roma) Title: ‘A multifunctional model for specialized discourse: explorations and applications’ Date: 26th January 2023
January 26, 2023
The seminar introduced doctoral students to basic theoretical and practical knowledge on the subject of specialized discourse, with particular emphasis on the role played by multi-lexical bundles within it. Professor Mocini began his lecture by familiarizing his audience with definitions of such key terms in the field as discourse, discourse community, or text, understood here as a social exchange of meaning in context (Halliday and Hasan, 1990). Then, he discussed three variables of context (field, tenor, and mode) that influence the way in which meanings are realized and expressed in the text, defining its specific register. The seminar drew attention to the fact that some multi-lexical patterns tend to frequently reoccur in particular contexts (i.e. within certain discourse communities), and should therefore be perceived as an important element of the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) teaching. Professor Mocini presented basic structural and functional taxonomy of those lexical bundles, supplementing it with examples from the field of medical sciences. The seminar ended with a practical exercise in which doctoral students had the opportunity to extract register-specific collocations from a medical paper’s abstract and assign them to three functional categories (ideational, interpersonal, or textual lexical phrases).
Instructor: Laura Ferrarotti (Sapienza Università di Roma) Title: ‘The Linguistic Landscape and Its Use in the EFL and ESL Classroom’ Date: 19th January 2023
January 19, 2023
Laura Ferrarotti’s lecture focused on the use of Linguistic Landscape (LL) in language teaching contexts, in particular ESL (English as a Second Language) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classrooms. During the first part of the class, Ferrarotti introduced the concept of LL and offered an overview of some significant studies in the field, such as Ross’s one in Milan (1997) and McArthur’s in Zurich (2000). After explaining some technical jargon – such as ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ signs –, Ferrarotti highlighted the advantages of using LL in language teaching projects, insisting on the pedagogical goal of developing a greater language awareness in students. During the second part of the lecture, two case studies were discussed: Rowland’s project (2012), which focused on the use of LL in a EFL classroom in Japan, and Ferrarotti’s (2019), which presented a didactic framework based on the use of LL for a ESP (English for Special Purposes) university course
Instructor: Chiara Prosperi Porta (Sapienza Università di Roma) Title: ‘Features of English for Economics and Finance: Genres and Discourses Across Time’ Date: 19th January 2023
January 19, 2023
Professor Prosperi Porta’s lecture offered a diachronic analysis of English for Economics and Finance by focusing on the use and reception of three different specialized text genres (pamphlets, lectures, and reports), as well as on the language used in them. To this goal, both quantitative approaches to language analysis through corpora, and qualitative methodologies to investigate discourse and genre were discussed. For the analysis of the economic discourse, starting from 17th century pamphlets written by merchants such as William Petty and John Graunt, Prosperi Porta pointed out how the argumentative text figured as a preferred type, shaped according to codified patterns and rich in metaphoric language. Lectures were the second specialized text type analysed. As an example, Joseph Stiglitz’s Nobel Prize Lecture was considered. Finally, Prosperi Porta analysed the report text type, showing how reports from the European Central Bank are addressed both to governmental and financial institutions as well to the general public. The report is identified by a standardised structure and described as one of today’s most popular genres across several disciplinary fields.
Instructor: Laura Di Ferrante (Sapienza Università di Roma) Title: ‘From academic discourse to science communication: Linguistic processes and communicative strategies’ Date: 19th January 2023 9 a.m.
January 19, 2023
This lecture provided an introduction to English for Academic Purposes (EAP), with special reference to two academic registers, namely scientific articles and press releases. In the first part of her lecture, Professor Di Ferrante focused on the importance of studying and teaching academic registers. To this end, she offered an overview of the horizontal and vertical variations of technical-scientific languages, along with their level of specialised exposition. In the second part of her lecture, Professor Di Ferrante offered an in depth presentation of her own study, which investigates bijective corpora consisting of scientific articles and press releases. Special attention was given to the different functions of these two academic registers and to the different linguistic strategies adopted to meet these different functions. In the case of scientific articles, titles are often compound titles, nominalization and hedging is more frequent and there is a higher degree of precision. In the case of press releases, titles are more short, they are more appealing than informative and hypernyms and hyponyms are more frequent.
Instructor: Marina Morbiducci (Sapienza Università di Roma) Title: ‘An introduction to the multifaceted scenario of 'specialized' linguistics’ Date: 16th January 2023
January 16, 2023
The lecture offered an introduction to specialized linguistics. The lecture was divided into three parts. The first part was dedicated to linguistic landscape (LL), which she introduced as the ‘visibility and salience of languages in public and commercial signs in a given territory or region’ (Landry and Bourhis 1997). This field stands at the junction of sociolinguistics, sociology, social psychology, geography, and media studies. Professor Morbiducci then shifted her focus on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), introducing a number of key concepts such as Braj Kachru’s circles of English diagrams, the communicative and pragmatic focus upheld by Widdowson – among others –, and language ownership. Kurt Kohn’s concept of ‘My English’ was also introduced, highlighting a psycholinguistic perspective on the acquisition of ELF linguistic skills. The third and last part of the lecture offered a brief overview on Corpus Linguistics (CL). After describing how CL has gained more and more stature over the last decades, its major areas of application were described, giving examples of major corpora available online. Morbiducci concluded her lecture by explaining the difference between types of corpora, as well as by naming a number of corpus analysis tools such as Sketch Engine.

2022


Instructor: Carmen Gallo (Sapienza Università di Roma) Title: ‘Reading Poetry from New Criticism to New Historicism’ Date: 2nd December 2022
December 2, 2022
This lecture was divided into two parts. The first part focused on the history of two literary theory movements of the 20th century, New Criticism (NC) and New Historicism (NH), and their influence on the American criticism of the poetical text. NC developed in the years between the two World Wars as a conservatory movement in opposition to urban capitalism. Professor Gallo explained how it advocated the creation of a new form of criticism, more scientific, precise, and systematic (Ransom, 1937). The development of this movement until the 1970s was taken into consideration, together with criticisms moved to it from other movements, e.g. Marxism. Subsequently, the point of view of NH was presented. This movement, which originated from the ‘Cultural Turn’ in the 1980s, considered the broader historical context in which a poetic text originated, in opposition to the more text-oriented approach of NC. In the second part of the lecture, Professor Gallo proposed to observe how three different critics – Brooks, Culler, and Marotti – used the poet ‘The Canonization’ by John Donne (1633) to express different ideas concerning the nature of poetry criticism.
Instructor: Gordon Hutner (University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign – Sapienza Fulbright) Title: ‘Budd Schulberg’s World War’ Date: 16th November 2022
November 16, 2022
Professor Hutner’s second lecture focused on Budd Schulberg’s documentary ‘The Nazi Plan’ (1945), the first cohesive account of the rise of the Nazis, compiled from German propagandistic footage – such as Leni Riefenstahl’s films –, newsreels, and sound recordings. During the first part of the seminar, Schulberg’s biography was recounted, starting from his first literary publications and his relationship with Hollywood as a young screenwriter, to his involvement with the Communist Party and the resulting political controversy that took place in the 1950s. The second part of the seminar was devoted to Schulberg’s military activity during World War II. While serving in the Navy, he worked with John Ford’s documentary unit, and was involved in collecting evidence against Nazi war criminals. With this objective in mind, ‘The Nazi Plan’ was compiled and, later on, admitted as legal evidence during the Nuremberg Trials. Professor Hutner particularly highlighted the methodology of his research, which consisted in first-hand archival research of film reels and personal autobiographical documents, such as diaries and letters.
Instructor: Rosanna Camerlingo (Università di Perugia) Title: ‘Giudici e Imputati nei Tribunali di Shakespeare’ Date: 15th November 2022
November 15, 2022
Professor Camerlingo’s lecture focused on the theme of justice in the Renaissance era and the language associated with it in Shakespeare’s work. In particular, the lecture considered three plays, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and Hamlet, showing how different characters represent and propose different declinations of morality and justice. Religious schisms led to the questioning of Catholic conceptualizations of law and morality, bringing them to the centre of debate, and of the stage, during the Renaissance. The analysis of three excerpts, one from each work, was accompanied by historical, cultural, and religious explanations in order to clarify what were the main theoretical bases supporting the character and arguments of the dramatis personae analysed.
Instructor: Jane Desmond (University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign) Title: ‘Beyond Humanism and Anthropocentrism’ Date: 12th November 2022
November 12, 2022
This lecture provided an introduction to multispecies ethnography, a genre of writing and research method emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century, whose main focus is the investigation of other-than-human life forms in their interaction with human society. Professor Desmond shared a research work which stands at the intersection of multispecies ethnography and literary studies. In particular, she explored the role of poetry as multispecies ethnography, namely a cultural activity of trans-species translation for the articulation of human/non-human relationships beyond anthropocentrism. To this end, Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The Fish’ (1946), Anne Phillips’ ‘Two Cows’ (2018), Emily Dickinson’s ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’ (1891) and Linda Hogan’s ‘Song for the Turtles in the Gulf’ (2014) were presented as case studies.
Instructor: Gordon Hutner (University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign - Sapienza Fulbright) Title: ‘Publish or perish! How to publish on an academic journal’ Date: 2nd November 2022
November 2, 2022
Professor Hutner’s first lecture focused on how to publish an article on an academic journal. Starting from his personal experience – both as an academic writer and as a reviewer – Professor Hutner explained the various steps towards publication, highlighting the possible mistakes which can occur in every phase and how to avoid them. Part of his lecture analysed how elements of a major research can be useful for possible publications in side-fields. Moreover, suggestions on how to set up a possible article keeping in mind the aim, the audience, and the context of publication were given. Throughout his lecture, Professor Hutner emphasized how fundamental it is to find the proper academic journal where to submit a work.
Title: ‘Shakespeare, Austen and Audiovisual Translation: The Classics Translated on Screen’ Dates: 30th June, 1st and 2nd July 2022 Programme: https://web.uniroma1.it/seai/?q=it/node/403
June 30-July 2, 2022
While adaptation and intersemiotic studies about the classics on screen have been flourishing, audiovisual translation has comparatively neglected adapted classics, arguably preferring to focus on TV series, video games and films of all times not necessarily referred to an illustrious hypotext. This three-day international conference thus attracted contributions which analysed adapted literature in various media from the point of view of audiovisual translation. Audiovisual texts inspired by the works of a variety of writers (including the most adapted authors such as Shakespeare and Austen), their adaptations and their translations into a number of languages were discussed.
Title: ‘Imagining Poetry Today: Responses to P. B. Shelley’s Defence of Poetry (1821)’ Date: 23th May 2022 Programme: https://web.uniroma1.it/seai/sites/default/files/allegati_notizie/Locandina_Shelley.pdf
May 23, 2022
This conference was divided into two sessions. In the first session, Professor Lilla Crisafulli, Professor Michael Rossington and Professor Paolo Bugliani historicised Shelley’s Defence of Poetry by looking at its context of publication and its English and US reception in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the second session, which took the form of a roundtable discussion in Italian, Franco Buffoni, Laura Pugno and Guido Mazzoni shared their views on Shelley’s essay, followed by readings of Shelley’s as well as their own poetry.
Title: ‘Translation through History and History through Translation’ Date: 27th April 2022 Programme: https://web.uniroma1.it/seai/sites/default/files/allegati_notizie/2022%20TraducibilitàIntraducibilità.pd
April 27, 2022
This seminar consisted of two talks, by Professor Christopher Rundle (University of Bologna) and by Professor Serenella Zanotti (Roma Tre University) respectively, which explored the crossroads of translation and history. Entitled ‘History through the Lens of Translation: A Case Study of Four Fascist Regimes’ and situated at the intersection of translation studies and fascist studies, Professor Rundle’s talk addressed the issue of hostility towards translation in four fascist and para-fascist regimes (Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal). In her talk entitled ‘Translating the Untranslatable: An Archival Perspective’, Professor Zanotti adopted an archival perspective to investigate the role that Joyce played in the translation of Ulysses into French.
Instructor: Alice Balestrino (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) Title: ‘From the Dissertation to the First-Book Project’ Date: 31st May 2022
May, 31 2022
The seminar aimed to advise students (especially third-year students) on how to have one’s dissertation published as a book after graduation. The first part looked at the differences between dissertations and books, focussing on the following aspects: purpose; length; audience; scope; literature review and methodology section; use of images and citations. In order to frame dissertations and books as two different genres, the instructor took several defended dissertations turned into published books (including her own) as examples. In the last part of the seminar, she provided students with practical advice on how to write a book proposal, also based on her very recent first-hand experience.
Instructor: Alice Balestrino (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) Title: ‘“History is everything that happens everywhere. Even here in Newark”: Philip Roth and the Holocaust’ Date: 24th May 2022
May 24, 2022
The lecture focused on Philip Roth’s interest in the Holocaust as part of, and corresponding to the narrative of Holocaust reception in the United States. It concerned specifically the so-called ‘Zuckerman novels’ – such as The Ghost Writer and The Anatomy Lesson, featuring Nathan Zuckerman, an alter ego of the author, as a character and narrator – and ‘Roth books’ – such as Patrimony and The Plot against America, featuring Roth himself as a character and narrator. The lecture illustrated how these novels try to fill in the ‘unbridgeable distance’ between the Holocaust and American life and to explore the inauthenticity of most attempts to lessen that distance.
Instructor: Ugo Rubeo (Sapienza University of Rome) Title: ‘Afro-American Poetry’ Date: 12th May 2022
May 12, 2022
The seminar provided doctoral students with a comprehensive and wide-ranging introduction to the Harlem Renaissance. It began with a discussion of Gertrude Stein’s early stylistic experiments with repetition, pattern and rhythm, as well as her deep engagement with innovations in the visual arts. Professor Rubeo then presented a series of key figures from the Renaissance, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and Sterling A. Brown. The seminar usefully emphasised the diverse and heterogenous nature of the Harlem scene, including debates between writers and intellectuals of the time, whilst also considering its roots and resonances in American culture.
Instructor: Martina Pfeiler (University of Vienna) Title: ‘Contemporary American Poetry’ Date: 11th May 202
May, 11, 2022
The seminar was divided into two sessions. In the first part, Professor Pfeiler provided doctoral students with an overview of performance-centred and cross- or inter-media American poetry of the late-twentieth and twenty-first century. She discussed how these traditions and innovations relate to historic and ongoing debates about the relationship of the poem to subjectivity, political and cultural contexts, and the material conditions of its production. The following workshop involved group discussions of texts in performance by Gil Scott-Heron, Maya Angelou, Patricia Smith and Daniel Beaty.
Instructor: Massimo Bacigalupo (University of Genoa) Title: ‘Modernist American Poetry’ Date: 10th May 2022
May, 10, 2022
The lecture focused on the notion of ‘late style’ across a range of twentieth-century American poets. Professor Bacigalupo began by discussing Robert Frost’s preface to his Collected Poems (1939), ‘The Figure a Poem Makes’, and William Carlos Williams’ prologue to Kora in Hell: Improvisations (1920), which both address the plight of modernity and its relation to poetics and the task of the writer. Professor Bacigalupo then led doctoral students through readings of poems by Frost, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop and Ezra Pound, considering the implications of each text for wider questions about style, the modern and tradition.
Instructor: Vicky Angelaki (Mid Sweden University) Title: ‘A Theory of Contemporary Drama + Workshop’ Dates: 20th and 21st April 2022
April, 20-21, 2022
The seminar was divided over two days. The first session drew attention to current debates about connections between ecocritical perspectives and contemporary British theatre, as well as reflecting on how past theatrical traditions may carry with them latent ecological concerns and preoccupations. In particular, Professor Angelaki provided doctoral students with a detailed reading of Carl Lavery and Clare Finburgh’s introductory essay, ‘Greening the Absurd’, to Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment, and the Greening of the Modern Stage. The second day involved an open discussion of a number of recent theatre productions which explicitly or implicitly sought to engage audiences with questions of environment, ecology and the Anthropocene.
Instructor: Rory Loughnane (University of Kent) Title: ‘Re-Editing Shakespeare + Editing Early Modern Drama in Practice’ Dates: 16th and 17th April 2022
April, 16-17, 2022
Different editions of most of Shakespeare’s works have been printed since his lifetime, which has caused small variations – if not printing mistakes – to exist in the different editions of the same play. Various attempts at re-editing Shakespeare have thus been made over the centuries, with the aim of producing versions of his works that resemble as closely as possible what he originally wrote. As shown by this two-day seminar, new technologies allow searchers to spot printing mistakes more efficiently, but indepth knowledge of the plays as well as of Early Modern English is necessary to grasp all the subtleties of this exercise.
Instructor: Patrick Zabalbeascoa (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona) Title: ‘Aspects of Humour in Literary, Audiovisual and Translated texts: Multilingualism and Codeswitching: Theories and Methodologies + Analysing Multilingual Audiovisual texts’ Dates: 16th and 17th March 2022
March, 16-17, 2022
Translating humour requires an adaptation to the culture of the target countries. Conveying humour does not consist only in translating a text, but also in understanding the spirit of the author. Otherwise, a comic situation may be lost in translation. Things arguably get even more complicated when it comes to translating multilingual texts. After a review of the main translation theories, extracts from Tom Woolf’s and Kazuo Ishiguro’s works were analysed together with their Spanish translation during this twoday seminar, revealing that misunderstood humour can be inadequately translated.
Instructor: Marina Dossena (University of Bergamo) Title: ‘Tools and Methods for Explorations in the Histories of English: What Are the Options Today? + Focus on Networks and Coalitions in Late Modern Times’ Dates: 24th and 25th February 2022
February, 24-25, 2022
The seminar was divided into two days. During the first one, Professor Dossena discussed research options becoming increasingly available to historical linguists for the study of language use in the past through corpora and digital resources. During the second session, emphasis was laid on the analysis of social networks and coalitions in historical sociolinguistics, with particular attention to Late Modern English materials and documents. After being given a list of online resources from which to draw information, the doctoral students had the opportunity to work in groups in order to familiarise themselves with this kind of research. Then they presented their considerations on their findings and received feedback from the professor.
nstructor: Gabriella Mazzon (University of Innsbruck) Title: ‘The Diachronic Study of Dialogue: A Pragmatic Perspective + Workshop’ Dates: 7 th and 8th February 2022
February 7-8, 2022
Linguists are interested in fictional dialogues for a variety of reasons. Whether the dialogues are from Shakespeare’s plays or from TV series, a pragmatic perspective aims to understand how people construct meaning together, according to interiorised sociolinguistics rules. From Jane Austen’s classics to US sitcom Big Bang Theory, including the smart detectives Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, this two-day seminar analysed different fictional dialogues from a pragmatic perspective, focusing on their construction, interaction and ironical aspects.
Instructor: Stefania Sini (University of Eastern Piedmont) Title: ‘Postclassical Narratologies: Paths, Foundations, Tools’ Date: 24th January 2022
24/1/2022
The lecture was part of a three-day seminar focusing on aspects related to literary theory and new developments in contemporary critical methodologies. The first part of this session discussed the differences and continuities between classical and postclassical narratologies. The second part looked at a variety of topics through the lens of postclassical narratology. These include: communication and mediation; character and plot; embodied simulation; enactivism; natural and unnatural; storyworld.

2021


Tutorial no. 1 Instructor: Sonia Massai (King’s College, London) Title: ‘History and Theory of Shakespearean Textual Editing: An Introduction + Editing Workshop’ Dates: 26th and 27th October 2021
26-27/10/2021

Sonia Massai (King’s College, London) Richard III and the Language of History
10/6/2021

Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (University of Neuchatel), The “King’s English” and the language of the king: Merry Wives and the Henriad
27/572021

Franco Marenco (Accademia delle Scienze di Torino), A craftsman in History
20/5/2021

Pascale Aebischer (University of Exeter) ”Jangled Out of Tune, and Harsh”: watching Shakespeare performed in translation during lockdown
6/5/2021

Urszula Kizelbach (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań), Regia maiestas non moritur (?): Linguistic inadequacy in King Henry VI
25/2/2021

2020


Anna Romagnuolo (Università della Tuscia) - Discourse analysis
10/06/2020

seminar
08/04/2020

Malgorzata Poks (University of Silesia in Katowice) - “Lamb 6 May admits ties to Cain”: The human, the less-than-human, and the kin(g)dom in Thomas Merton’s The Geography of Lograine
06/05/2020

Emilia Di Martino (Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli) Linguistic variation and gender studies in translation
5/2/2020
Emilia Di Martino’s talk focused on the intersections between gender studies and translation studies and on language variation in translation, with its stylistic and pragmatic implications. As regards gender studies, Di Martino offered a vast and varied overview on classical and state-of-the-art studies in the field, concentrating, in particular, on the Canadian school of feminist translation scholars and on the work of Luise von Flotow.
Taije Silverman (University of Pennsylvania) - Translating Pascoli: The Princeton UP edition (2019)
03/06/2020

Stephen Donovan (Uppsala University, Sweden) - Periodicals, Conrad and the origins of modernism
20/05/2020

Gary Watt (University of Warwick) - Practices and doctrines of interdisciplinarity
23/04/2020

Dorotha Filpzack (University of Silesia in Katowice) - The rewriting of dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
22/04/2020

Julio de los Reyes Lozano (Universitat Jaume I de Castelló) - Know your audience: methodology in reception studies on audiovisual and literary translation
18/03/2020

May Hawas (The American University in Cairo) - World Lit


Daniel Finch-Race (University of Bristol) - Ecocriticism and Sustainability


Oleg Sobchuck (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History) Cultural models and theories of evolution
25/03/2020

Enrico Terrinoni (Università per Stranieri di Perugia) Translating the “plultiple”. Finnegans Wake in Infinitalian.
26/02/2020

Sonia Massai (King’s College London) - Shakespeare’s accents: methodologies and approaches
20/2/2020

2019


Rory Loughlane, University of Kent,(1) Editing Shakespeare in the Digital Age (2) Studies in Early Modern Authorship and Attribution
8 luglio
1) Editing Shakespeare and Others in the Digital Age This workshop included an opening interactive lecture, followed by practical editing tasks, and a troubleshooting session on editorial mandates and objectives. Students were guided to look at the sorts of considerations, both practical and theoretical, involved in proposing and undertaking a new edition of an early modern author. (2) Studies in Early Modern Authorship and Attribution This workshop focused on the eighty or so surviving extant co-authored plays from early modern English professional theatre (1576-1642) and looked at the sorts of modern attribution tools deployed in stylometry to distinguish one author from another. In doing so, the current state-of-play in attribution studies about the Shakespeare canon was considered. The workshop also involved discussion about the nature and practice of both amateur and professional authorship in early modern England.
Sofía Sánchez-Mompeán (Universidad de la Murcia), “Prosodic rendition in dubbing translation: How characters say what they say.”
29 maggio
This lesson will offer an overview of dubbing and prosody from a twofold approach: dubbing and prosody as two autonomous and consolidated disciplines and dubbing and prosody as two interrelated fields that interact together in the production of meaning. The focus will be placed on the fundamentals of dubbing and translating prosody, presenting the difficulties encountered when dubbing and translating prosodic features such as intonation, tempo, loudness or rhythm, and discussing the most distinctive traits of dubbed speech at the prosodic level. Several examples and empirical data will be also provided to illustrate how the way characters say what they say can affect the quality and naturalness of the final outcome.
Edmondo Lupieri (Loyola University Chicago), “From codes to the Code: religion and marketing in more or less popular literature between the 20th and the 21st centuries. Or, from Ignazio Silone to Dan Brown, through Umberto Eco.”
20 maggio
We will first analyze the ways the authors utilize religious elements from various origins (from biblical traditions to historical reconstructions) for the structure, general contents and details in their narratives; we will then try to understand how influential those elements have been on the readability and especially marketability of their books.
Enrico Grazzi (Roma Tre University), “Language and variation: introducing World Englishes.”
8 maggio
Globalization has contributed to the worldwide diffusion of English as a mediational tool to carry out an econocultural function (Brutt-Griffler, 1998) in the fields of science, technology, business, culture, the media and education. This has turned English into a second order contact language (Mauranen, 2012) within the growing communities of non-native speakers (NNSs) ̶ and has led to the emergence of new Englishes that perform a lingua franca role (ELF) in a glocal (Robertson, 1995) dimension. Consequently, the divergence of ELF from the standard English (SE) exonormative model is a process that is ingrained in sociolinguistics, and one which entails the L2-users' concurrent adoption of English and its adaptation to their sociocultural identities, to cope with a wide range of communicative needs. This phenomenon defies the rather simplistic classification of non-standard uses of English as deviant or erroneous, and questions the very notion of standardness (Coupland, 2000), for it shows that, in a diachronic perspective, today's polycentric nature of English follows from a natural evolution, on a par with all other languages. For this reason, variations in ELF use had better be considered as instances of language continua (Thrudgill, 1999), rather than the indication of the NNS's deficient communicative competence. The aim of this talk is to focus on these topics and stimulate a discussion to provide possible answers.
Rocco Coronato, University of Padua, "Breaking the circle. King Lear and Indeterminacy"
17 aprile
Prof. Coronato's lecture fiocuses on the links between Renaissance medical texts concerning melancholy and the texture of metaphors in W. Shakespeare's King Lear. According to Prof. Coronato, King Lear drwas upon and at the same time interrogates the physilogical mechanisms of passions, and in particular the cure for melancholy.
Dick McCaw, Professor at Royal Holloway University of London
9 aprile
What did Bakhtin think about the theatre? That it was outdated? That it ‘stopped being a serious genre’ after Shakespeare? Could a thinker to whose work ideas of theatricality, visuality and embodied activity were so central really have nothing to say about theatrical practice? Dick McCaw will explore the relation between Bakhtin’s ideas and the theatre practice of his time.
Meryam Mengouchi, Università di Tlemcen (Algeria), professore visitatore Erasmus, "Post-colonial Magrhebean literature"
27 marzo
The lecture explores the birth and development of post-colonial Magrhebean literature, in conversation with post-colonial Magrhebean cinema and current post-colonial critical theory
Presentation of Franco Moretti's book, Un paese lontano
11 febbraio 2019
The book will be presented by Bruno Cartosio (retired full professor of American history at the University of Bergamo), Giorgio Mariani (full professor of American literature at Sapienza) and Alessandro Portelli (retired full professor of American literature at Sapienza). The author will be present.
Jacob Blakesley (University of Leeds) About Sociologies of Poetry Translation
5 febbraio 2019
Both Translation studies and Gender Studies are inherently interdisciplinary fields, but the connections between these two disciplines are not always present or explicit. This lecture will first look at some concepts and approaches used in Gender Studies, and then will go on to explore how Translation Studies has incorporated gender in its theoretical approaches and practices. It will illustrate some challenges of translating feminist theories across cultural contexts. Then, it will outline the typologies of studies that have incorporated gender perspectives into several modes of translation. In short, this lecture will try to reflect on the translatability of Gender Studies and on the gendering of Translation Studies.
Jacob Blakesley (University of Leeds) About Sociologies of Poetry Translation
28 gennaio 2019
Like a Matryoshka doll, the sociology of poetry translation is a subfield within the field of the sociology of literary translation, which is itself situated within the two still larger and distinct fields of the sociology of translation and the sociology of literature. A sociological approach advocates for the need to study translation data against broader aesthetic, historical, and political trends and will be of particular interest to students and scholars in translation studies and comparative literature. This approach demonstrates the need for poetry translation to be extended beyond close reading and situated in context, and aims to bridge the gap between the ‘cultural turn’ and the ‘sociological turn’ in Translation Studies. This lecture will focus on sociologically analyzing poetry translation within English, French, and Italian traditions – and, if time allows, to the translations of Dante’s masterpiece across the world.

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