Research: Italian Cultural Landscape through the Eyes of European Travelers, or the Sense of place: New Visualization Techniques
Serena Sapienza graduated in 2019 in "Languages, Cultures, Literatures, Translation" (German and English) from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" with a thesis in Italian linguistics, in which she dealt with the relationship between Sicilian dialect and regional Italian of Sicily, focusing on their varieties in a synchronic perspective. At the same university, she received the "excellence grant" for the Master programme in "Linguistic, Literary and Translation Studies" and in 2022 she graduated with honours. In her thesis she investigates the relationship between literature and spatiality within the biographical experiences and poetic production of the German-speaking poet Paul Celan. Specifically, in "A reading of domestic space: Haus and Wohnen in Paul Celan", she concentrates on the perception of interior and inhabited spaces and the projection of utopian or heterotopic values onto specific places, crossed or occupied by the poet during his frequent deterritorialised mobility. Currently, she is a PhD student in "Germanic and Slavic Studies" (C- Grant DM 351) at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" with a project that desires to combine the study of spatial perception with artistic-literary representations using digital tools, such as architectonic reconstructions of cultural landscapes, thematic and topographic maps, close and distant reading techniques. Specifically, she aims to analyse the travel experiences of Central European writers through Italian landscapes, by concentrating on the processes of reorientation and of spatial perception. She is developing a transdisciplinary approach centred on literary, geosemiotic and artistic studies of the various examined representations. Since 2021, she is part of the permanent seminar, funded in the Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies, "Paesaggi di Voci", which connects linguistic and literary experiences to the contemporary social and cultural panorama.