RESEARCH IN ITALIAN AT ROYAL HOLLOWAY

Italian at RHUL has a strong tradition of research across a wide range of specialisms within the area of Italian studies. The department comprises three Professors, one Senior Lecturer, two Lecturers, and two Honorary Research Fellows, and currently supervises 16 postgraduates, researching topics ranging from Renaissance Studies to 20th-century cultural studies.

The central areas in which research supervision is provided are as follows:

• The Italian chivalric/Carolingian epic
• Renaissance literature and the history of the Italian book in the Renaissance
• Artistic and cultural relations between Britain and Italy in the nineteenth century
• Modern literature, especially modern poetry, the twentieth-century detective novel, Italian theatre and Futurism.
• Relations between music and literature in the mid-twentieth century
• Language and discourse in diverse contexts of spoken and written use, including narrative, theatre, and national and international institutional settings.
• Colonial and postcolonial studies
• Italian Orientalism
• Travel writing

The Italian department welcomes applications from candidates wishing to study for an MA by Research, an MPhil or a PhD. Details of Studentships and other RHUL funding for 2008 entry are available online.

Fabrizio De Donno BA, MA (London), co-editor of Colonial and Postcolonial Italy, Special issue of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 8(3) 2006, and author of articles on ideas of race in colonial and fascist Italy, on the interplay between orientalism and classicism in British and Italian colonial cultures, and on Mazzini’s impact on Gandhi’s anti-colonial thought. He has completed a PhD thesis on Italian Orientalism at Cambridge University.

Professor Jane Everson MA (Edin), DPhil (Oxon), author of Bibliografia del ‘Mambriano’ di Francesco Cieco da Ferrara (Alessandria, 1994),The Italian Romance Epic (Oxford, 2001), and of articles on Italian Renaissance literature, Dante, Ariosto and early printing in Italy. Co-editor of Writers and Performers in Italian Drama from Dante to Pirandello (Lewiston-Lampeter, 1991), Scenes of Change. Studies in Cultural Transition (Pisa, 1996), and Italy in Crisis: 1494 (Oxford, 2000). Current research grants include: AHRC Resource enhancement grant for 3 years for the project: The Italian Academies 1530-1650: a themed collection database, in collaboration with the British Library; and British Academy research grant for the preparation of the new critical edition of the narrative poem Il Mambriano.

Dr Stefano Jossa DottLett (Napoli), PhD (Pisa), author of La fantasia e la memoria. Intertestualità ariostesche (Napoli, 1996), Rappresentazione e scrittura. La crisi delle forme poetiche rinascimentali (1540-1560) (Napoli, 1996), La fondazione di un genere. Il poema eroico tra Ariosto e Tasso (Roma, 2001), L'Italia letteraria (Bologna, 2006) and of articles on Italian Renaissance, Ariosto, Tasso, Alamanni, Giraldi Cinzio, Castelvetro, and Speroni. He is currently pursuing research on the building of Italian national identity, Ariosto, and Castelvetro.

Dr Giuliana Pieri DottLett (Pavia), MA (Kent), DPhil (Oxon, author of The Influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on fin-de-siècle Italy: Art, Beauty and Culture (MHRA, Texts and Dissertations series, no. 65, 2007) and of several articles on the interrelationship between art and literature in the 19th and 20th century, Anglo-Italian cultural and artistic relations, and Italian crime fiction.

Professor Vivienne Suvini-Hand BA (Trinity College, Dublin), DPhil (Oxford), author of Andrea Zanzotto (Edinburgh, 1994), Mirage and Camouflage: Hiding behind Hermeticism in Giuseppe Ungaretti’s L’Allegria (Leicester, 2000), Sweet Thunder: Music and Libretti in 1960s Italy (Oxford, Legenda, 2006) and of articles on modern and contemporary poetry, opera and cinema, and contemporary Italian music. Is currently pursuing research on 20th-century Italian poetry, Italian opera, and the relationship between libretto and music in the work of avant-garde composers.

Professor Arturo Tosi DottLett (Padua), PhD (London), author of Immigration and Bilingual Education (Oxford, 1984), L’italiano d’oltremare/Italian Overseas (Florence, 1991), Dalla madrelingua all’italiano (Florence, 1995), Language and Society in a Changing Italy (Clevedon, Avon; 2001), and of numerous articles on applied linguistics, immigration, multilingualism and contact linguistics. He is currently pursuing research on various aspects of language and society within Italy and outside and on theory and practice of translation within the EU Commission and Parliament.

Post-doctoral Research Assistant: Dr Simone Testa Dott. Lettere e Filosofia (Bologna), MSc (Edin), PhD (Lond): Dr Testa is research assistant to Professor Jane Everson in the AHRC funded project 'The Italian Academies: printing, publishing and the book trade, 1530-1650'. He completed his PhD on 'The editio princeps of Thesoro politico (1589): Its Context and Significance in Late Sixteenth-Century Political Literature'. This is the anonymous, first printed collection of Venetian ambassadors' reports, instructions to cardinals and papal nuncios, and various discourses on political issues of the time. He is currently publishing the results of his PhD in various articles. He is also developing a research interest in Cinema studies.

Honorary Research Fellow: Dr Letizia Panizza BA (San Francisco), MA (Berkeley), PhD (London). Dr Panizza specializes in Italian humanism and intellectual history (Petrarch, Lorenzo Valla, Pico della Mirandola, and, outside Italy, Erasmus). She has edited Arcangela Tarabotti’s Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini (London, 1994), Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society (2000), and co-edited A History of Women’s Writing in Italy (CUP, 2000). She has published numerous studies on Italian Humanist thought (especially Stoic and Platonist), on the reconciliation of philosophy and rhetoric, on Lorenzo Valla, Ariosto, and Tasso. Her current research is on women, society, and culture in the Renaissance, aspects of the novella, and 16th and 17th century Italian satirists and libertines.

Honorary Research Fellow: Professor Christopher Cairns. Professor Cairns’ academic interests include the Republic of Venice in the Renaissance and the Counter-reformation. He is the author of Domenico Bollani, Bishop of Brescia: Devotion to Church and State in the Republic of Venice in the Sixteenth Century (De Graaf, Nieuwkoop, Holland, 1976) and Pietro Aretino and the Republic of Venice: Researches on Aretino and his Circle in Venice, 1527-1556, (Olschki, Florence, 1985). As a specialist in Italian theatre, he has published widely on the Commedia dell’Arte, and his work on Dario Fo yielded Dario Fo e la "Pittura Scenica”: Arte Teatro Regie, 1977-1997 (Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli, 2000).

School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures Postgraduate Pages