Areas

Germanic Philology
GERMANIC PHILOLOGY
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The research group on Germanic philology focuses both on research and didactic activities dedicated to medieval Germanic cultures and literatures (in particular medieval German, Scandinavian, and English languages and literatures). Contents are presented through an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, by means of text-critical methodologies, historical linguistics, rhetorical and stylistic studies. The main fields of research of the group are the following: Vernacular literatures in the Germanic Middle Ages, Paleography, Codicology and Book History from countries with a Germanic linguistic and literary tradition; Textual criticism within medieval manuscript traditions; Digital scholarly editing; Intertextuality and connections between Germanic traditions and Latin, Romance and other vernacular traditions; Text-image correlation in medieval codicology.  


Slavic philology
SLAVONIC PHILOLOGY
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The Slavic studies group is involved in philological research, especially the history of Slavic philology in Italy (it is linked to the Slavistics History Commission of the International Committee of Slavists), the history of the Russian language, the history of Russian musical theatre, the reception of Western opera in Russian and Soviet periodicals, the mobility between the Russian Empire/Soviet Union and Europe (notably as regards contacts between music milieus), the comparative analysis of ancient Russian and Russian texts, archival research and editions of unpublished books from different eras (including music) from the modern age to the 20th century. Methodologies include philological and textual research, poetry studies, and historical, critical, literary and linguistic research to understand the thematic, figurative and formal dimensions of texts in a critical way. Comparative and culturological approaches are also used.


Artificial Intelligence for the Digital Humanities
Computing methodologies
(see  AMC12 classification)
The research area on "Artificial Intelligence for the Digital Humanities" investigates the development of Artificial Intelligence methodologies, techniques, and tools, and their application to support Digital Humanities studies, in particular related to Foreign Languages and Literatures. The main research streams concern the development of tools and techniques for: natural language processing and the extraction of quality knowledge from textual resources; the well-founded representation of the extracted knowledge and automated reasoning for deriving new one; the development of resources and applications according to Semantic Web and Linked Data best practices; effective information and document retrieval.


French and francophone literature
FRENCH LITERATURE
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The French and francophone literature group is involved in studies on culture and literature in the French langauge from the middle ages to modern times. Authors from France and the various French-speaking countries in Europe and on other continents are also of study interest. The group’s main research areas are: French Renaissance literature (see www.cinquecentofrancese.it); French Renaissance theatre (with the creation of the French Renaissance theatre corpus); relations between Italy and France during the Renaissance; female writing; French literature of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries with particular focus on novels, theatre in the revolutionary era, AIDS literature, literature of the diaspora and Jewish literature. Studies of original texts are carried out using philological, linguistic and critical literary research methodologies, with particular regard to critical understanding, seeking a deeper comprehension of linguistic and rhetorical aspects and their thematic, figurative, rhetorical and interdisciplinary dimensions.


English and Anglophone Literatures
ENGLISH LITERATURE
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Research in the area of English Literature and Anglophone Literatures deals with authors, poetics, themes, genres/forms, and media in the history of British literature and culture with a period-coverage ranging from the Renaissance to the present day, as well as in the field of Anglophone literatures and cultures and Postcolonial Studies. The variety of the explored subject areas is rich (besides the staff’s projects, see research interests on individual webpages). Among the privileged research fields: the Renaissance, Shakespeare and the Caroline theatre; English early-modern literature and culture; the Restoration theatre; the aesthetic thought of the Eighteenth century; Victorian, Modernist, Postmodernist, Post-human literature and culture; Scottish literature; literatures and cultures of the Australian, African, and Caribbean areas. The theoretical and methodological approaches are definitely plural, often interweaved in group research projects, and include textual (philological, stylistic-rhetorical) and historico-contextual studies, culturalist studies, interdisciplinary studies, comparative studies, performative and transmedial studies.


Russian and slavic literature and comparative literature
SLAVONIC LITERATURE
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The area of Russian Literature and Comparative Slavic Literatures is primarily concerned with (a) modern and contemporary Russian literature, with special attention to Romanticism and Realism, (b) prose of the 1920s and 1930s, (c) concentrationary literature, (d) post-Soviet Russian literature, and (e) librettology between 18th and 20th centuries. Further research directions include other Slavic literatures in a comparative approach. Methodology: philological-textual, critical-historical and linguistic approaches and poetry studies, aiming to develop a critical understanding of texts; comparative and cultural approaches; critical categories pertaining to post-Soviet, post-colonial and psycho-literary studies (e.g. trauma studies and memory studies).


Iberian and Hispanic-American literature
SPANISH LITERATURE
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The Iberian and Hispanic-American literature group is involved in the research and teaching of culture and literature in the Spanish language from the middle ages to modern times. Authors from the Iberian Peninsula and Spanish-speaking areas in Europe, the Americas and other continents are also studied. The group’s main research areas are: contemporary Spanish theatre, Sephardic literature and culture, Iberian cultural studies, theater of the Golden Age, Spanish chivalric romance, treatments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, medieval poetry and the Spanish Renaissance, translations and vulgarisations in Hispanic varieties, literary journalism in the Romantic era, Catalan literature and culture, contemporary Hispanic-American poetry, colonial and postcolonial literature, civil war literature and exile literature. Studies of original texts are carried out using philological, linguistic, cultural and historical, critical literary and digital humanities research methodologies, with particular regard to critical understanding, seeking a deeper comprehension of linguistic and rhetorical aspects, the translation process, thematic, figurative, formal and historiographic dimensions of anthropological and socio-political references, and multilingual and transcultural dimensions, often from an interdisciplinary perspective.


German and Austrian literature
GERMANIC LITERATURE
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The German literature group carries out international research on authors and themes concerning German-language culture and literature from the 18th century to modern times. There is a strong research focus on literature from Austria and Central Europe, for which the department is involved in various international collaborations, such as the critical edition of Ingeborg Bachmann's work in collaboration with the Salzburg Literary Archive and the edition of Stefan Zweig's work at the Stefan Zweig Centre. Other areas of research include romanticism, the historical, critical edition of Christoph Martin Wieland's works, and Nietzsche's work (in cooperation with the Research Centre for Text Studies, University of Stuttgart). These areas are explored from different methodological perspectives, especially culturological, hermeneutical, historical, philosophical, intermediate and interdisciplinary studies. The group is active in research on empirical aesthetics, particularly in the study of literary reading processes (E-Read Network).


Chinese language - Chinese literature
Ancient Chinese Chinese Language
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The research group on Chinese Language and Literature is involved in philological, literary and linguistic studies on premodern and modern Chinese language and literature. Researches apply different methodological approaches, from the fields of philology, linguistics, narratology, translation studies and literary criticism, in order to provide deep critical understanding of original textual sources in relation to formal aspects, rhetorical and stylistic dimensions and themes. The group’s main research areas are: premodern narrative in literary language; premodern vernacular narrative; commentarial literature; premodern poetry; intralingual and interlingual rewriting and translation practices; Chinese as a foreign language, Chinese for specific purposes (Legal and Business Chinese).


French language and linguistics
FRENCH LANGUAGE
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This research area focusses on the metalinguistic analysis of the French language both synchronically and diachronically, with reference to its phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and translational aspects. The fields of study favoured by the Department are: lexicology and lexical semantics, monolingual and bilingual lexicography, vocabulary teaching, neology and terminology. These research topics are developed from different methodological perspectives, with special reference to Corpus linguistics, automatic terms extraction, Explicative and Combinatorial lexicology, teaching approaches, textual pragmatics and with the support of informatics tools for lexicology, lexicography and neology.


English language and linguistics
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
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This research area focuses on the metalinguistic analysis of the English language both synchronically and diachronically, with reference to its morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and translational aspects. Our research also includes studies aimed at the practice and reflection on translation in its multiple dimensions, as well as studies on the didactic aspects of teaching English (L2) both in traditional and digital contexts with special reference to materials development, assessment tools and the choice and effectiveness of pedagogical tools. The fields of study favoured by this research area are: Media Discourse, digital discourse, political discourse, World Englishes (WE), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), English as a foreign language (EFL), lexicography and lexicology, genre and text typology of English for Specific/Specialised Purposes (ESP) and the didactic choices adopted in fields such as EFL, ESP and English Medium Studies (EMI). These research topics are developed from different methodological perspectives and theoretical approaches, with special reference to Corpus linguistics, Teaching approaches, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) methodologies, Cognitive linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis and Multimodal-multisemiotic approaches.


Russian language and linguistics
RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
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The section of Russian language and linguistics deals with the study of the Russian language from theoretical and applied perspectives, with a particular focus on the fields of Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning and Teaching, Sociolinguistics, and Translation Studies. Research interests mainly focus on the acquisition and teaching of morpho-syntactic and pragmatic competences in Russian FL, the study of inclusive and accessible teaching practices and the design of online and blended language courses, the status of the Russian language in the post-soviet area, the analysis of inquiries from translation theory - in particular with reference to intercultural communication and linguistic anthropology, and issues connected to cognitive linguistics, such as metaphor and processing. The abovementioned fields are investigated from a varieties of perspectives, with the methodologies pertaining SLA, pragmalinguistics, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, translation theories, and cognitive linguistics. The approaches include both theoretical investigation and analysis of data from corpora as well as data collected in teaching experiments, fieldwork, and elicitation tasks.


Spanish language and linguistics
SPANISH LANGUAGE
standard compliant  BSO
The Spanish language and linguistics group deals with metalinguistic analyses of the Spanish language in its diatopic, diastratic/diamesic, synchronic/diachronic, phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactical, lexical, textual and pragmatic varieties at different levels and registers of oral and written communication. It is also involved in studies on translation in its multiple forms. The group’s research areas centre around: semantic, lexical and phraseological elements; the history of the language; technical and scientific texts (16th-19th centuries); the history of translation and the study of translations into and out of Spanish; linguistic aspects related to migration; tourism communication; the phonetic and phonological aspects of Spanish varieties and phonic interference in the acquisition of Spanish as a foreign language. These areas are examined from different perspectives, especially through lexicology and lexicography tools, cognitive linguistics, translation studies, speech analysis, phonetics and phonology.


German language and linguistics
GERMANIC LANGUAGE
standard compliant  BSO
The German language and linguistics group focuses mainly on the linguistic description of contemporary standard German and some of its varieties (both dialectal and minority) spoken in northern Italy. Linguistic research is centred on all levels of analysis, phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary, its general purpose being a theory of linguistic contact in the area of investigation (especially Germanic novels) as well as the search for common linguistic phenomena in European languages from a semantic and typological perspective. The theoretical approaches used in the various levels of investigation range from theoretical linguistics, especially generative grammar and the grammar of predicates, to pragmatic communication, argumentation theory, second language studies and translation studies. Different methodologies are employed to deal with such research, including data collection through questionnaires to speakers, the construction of databases with the information collected, the elaboration of formal theoretical frameworks of linguistic contact, and word classification


Anglo-American language and literature
The area of American Literature and Language operates at an international level researching authors and themes in American literature, culture, and language. It covers 19th and 20th century. Research is mainly dedicated to a) 19th century short story, with special emphasis on the works of Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe b) 19th century literary rhetorics and the debate on slavery with its political implications and as a basis for minorities issues c) English as hegemonic language in U.S. and its relation to minorities and their languages, with related consequences for cultural and social frames of references. American English is part of our investigations in that the area analyzes from a lexicographic point of view literary and cultural aspects of American English and slang, applying them to the field of translation in literature and film.


General   standard compliant 

Fraseología
Fraseologia


Language and Linguistics   standard compliant 

Lexicology and Lexicography
Dizionari


Literatures of other languages   standard compliant 

Chinese Literature
Narrativa cinese in lingua vernacolare - Narrativa cinese premoderna in lingua letteraria


Activities

Research facilities

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