P.I. Alfonso Botti

2022-2024

The project aims to metadatabase the correspondence of Paul Sabatier, an important figure in European culture between the 19th and 20th centuries, in the perspective of making it accessible online in open mode. The scholar, of Calvinist faith, was the author of the first biography of Saint Francis conducted with a historical method. The Life of the Saint he wrote was a success on a European and international scale. He was also the founder of the Society of Franciscan Studies. His papers reveal a vast network of contacts involving illustrious exponents of the cultural and religious debate of the time and shed light on some crucial aspects of the debate foregrounding the relationship between historical studies and religion. The data resulting from this project will be hosted in the digital library now in use at the DHMoRe Centre.

P.I. Giuliana Diani

Participants: Marina Bondi, Silvia Cacchiani, Franca Poppi, Annalisa Sezzi, Judith Turnbull, Mariasophia Falcone, Ilaria Iori, Fabiola Notari, Federico Zaupa

External collaborations: University of Pavia and University of Zaragoza 

July 2022-January 2024

The project intends to investigate web-based communication in the dissemination of knowledge within academic and institutional contexts, with particular reference to websites and blogs. The aim of the project is to analyse the linguistic resources of academic and institutional web-based communication in English such as the construction and promotion of discursive identity, knowledge dissemination, reader’s "engagement" and dialogue among participants. In order to achieve this, English-language corpora will be created as representative of discursive practices in the use of digital tools for academic and institutional communication. The project intends to expand a previous departmental project CAP (Academic and Professional Communication) to institutional communication. Key areas of investigation include: (1) academic communication in international contexts, focusing on the impact of the Web on traditional forms of academic communication and on the use of websites and blogs for research in the fields of economics, law and science; (2) institutional communication in the fields of law and science. In particular, academic and institutional blogs in English in the fields of economics, law and science and websites related to institutional-legal discourse will be created. The study will be carried out from a textual and pragmatic perspective.

P.I. Laura Gavioli

External collaboration: Cecilia Wadensjö (Stockholm University)

(starting spring 2022, completed January 2024)

The aim of the project is to make an extensive database of mediated interactions accessible to the research community, mainly for interpreting and interaction studies. The data collection started in 2004 and is currently still ongoing. It includes mainly interactions in healthcare, but also in other public services (schools, police offices) and business settings (mainly trade fairs)

The project actions are as follows:

1. Completing the audio-transcription link of all mediated interactions, particularly those collected after 2022
2. Classifying the data, with suitable metadata, and preparing them for inclusion in a repository 
3. Designing the repository organisation for data retrieval
4. Test the data (accessible to UniMORE researchers only, for the moment).

The project is structured as follows:

Phase 1. Analysis of recent samples of data. In particular, the analysis will focus on a recent collection recorded in school settings, a different setting as compared to those previously sampled. The school setting is not much explored in interpreting research so the purpose of work in this phase is to: a. produce research on interpreted interaction in school settings (parent-teacher conferences); b. test the feasibility of the metadata over collections different from those in the main healthcare settings that constitutes the corpus.

Phase 2. Employing a contracted researcher with expertise in using the ELAN software and in classifying audio or video transcripts. The contracted researcher will develop the set of metadata with the research team and will elaborate a plausible organization for the data. A visiting researcher (Cecilia Wadensjö, Stockholm University, an international expert in mediated interaction analysis) will be invited for two-months to collaborate in the analysis and comparison of the data, from healthcare and school settings.

Phase 3. Planning the database organisation and testing.

P.I. Selenia Marabello

2022-2023

The project investigates the construction of ideas around motherhood and migrant/non-migrant bonds of asylum-seeking and refugee women. It consolidates a line of research, already started in 2019, on the infrastructures of conviviality that unfold around reception centres and temporary domestic spaces for migrant mothers. The ethnographic research will focus, in particular, on the relationship between temporality and mobility boundaries. How are near time – fragmented and interrupted – and future time reconfigured for migrant mothers whose trajectories are twofold? Bio-historical time is affected by macro processes such as the closure of routes and the conditions of the journey that orient and shape, at least potentially, ideas – missed, realised or aspired to – of dignity, freedom, mobility and living together. By shifting the focus from migrant reception to the networks that unravel around it, the aim is to empirically test the notion of the infrastructure of conviviality, consolidating reflection already initiated and contributing, with an original study on the Italian case, to a lively international and interdisciplinary debate.

P.I. Silvia Modena and Vincenzo Gannuscio

2022-2023

The project examines the rise of populist discourse in France and Germany from the 2000s to today, a period marked by an increase in Islamic terrorist attacks in these countries. The research aims to employ a theoretical approach that bridges German and Italian political linguistics with the French school of discourse analysis. This interdisciplinary framework is used to examine how populist discourses have proliferated, particularly in the shift from party democracy to media democracy. The decline of traditional political structures, such as party branches and local circles, has led to the emergence of new discursive forms which, from the project's perspective, require the application of the combined theoretical tools mentioned above for their analysis. 

By comparing two types of populism—one driven by social protest and the other by the construction of a national identity—the project seeks to underscore the significance of national history, religion, and culture in the French, German, and Italian contexts.

The project relies on the discursive analysis of diverse corpora, including internal party programmes, election manifestos, official speeches by leading political figures, as well as posts and tweets. These corpora are highly multimodal, reflecting the digital environments in which they are produced, such as social networks, websites, blogs, and other platforms. The analysis is supported by tools designed to label, process, and manage not only textual data but also the digital environments surrounding these corpora. The key tools used for this purpose include EXMARaLDA, Praat, Lexico, and TextObserver.

The ultimate goal of the project is to create a multilingual corpus that can be expanded over time and is representative of various discursive genres.

P.I. Elisabetta Menetti

2022-

Italian literary tradition has produced and still produces 'short' narrative forms capturing multiple contents within a dynamic perspective, in tension between the need for normativity given by norms of literary genres, and the drive for transformation (the forms). This research proposal is to investigate the history of the Italian short story from Boccaccio to Calvino (the centenary falls in 2023) under the different forms in which Italian short story writing has manifested itself over the centuries, starting from its medieval origins. This involves looking back at the generative nucleus of the exemplary tale, the novella, the fable, the fable, the 'istoria' up until the short forms of moral and philosophical reasoning, the chronicle, the diary, the epistolary tale and the modern (novella, sketch, figurine) and contemporary tale. A conference will be organized discussing investigations of the origins of the short narrative forms of the Italian narrative canon and its transformations between ancient and contemporary rewritings in relation to the function of other forms, such as the long form of the narrative frame which developed between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and to the many forms of the novelistic tale.

P.I. Chiara Preite

July 2022-February 2024

The Modena Lexi-Term research group has designed and realized an 'On-line Multilingual Glossary of  Emilia-Romagna’s Typical Products', called "Local tastes". Within this project we have created a multilingual terminological database (Italian, French, English, Spanish, Romanian - possibly expandable to other languages in the future) containing terminological records about 53 typical and protected products of the Emilia-Romagna region (d.o.p., d.o.c. and d.o.c.g, i.g.p., i.g.t., as they can be found in the Register of protected designations of origin, protected geographical indications and traditional specialties guaranteed (Regulation (EU) No. 1151/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 November 2012). Each product designation, considered as a term, identifies an entry for a terminological record in 5 languages. Each entry contains a number of informative fields: domain and subdomain, grammatical information, definition, description and technical notes about the product, authentic context(s), phonetic transcription, variants and other semantic relations, an image, etymology, and the equivalents in the other foreign languages (followed by linguistic notes if needed). The equivalents make it possible to shift to the other languages, so the users will be able to surf through languages in order to broaden their knowledge about products. A linguistic and content revision of each record will be carried out (with the collaboration of the DSLC colleagues of the various languages involved and, in particular, of the members of the Modena Lexi-Term research group, which also includes a colleague from the University of Craiova for the revision in Romanian, a language not taught in the DSLC). We also have structured the architecture of a site hosting the database with a user-friendly interface for accessing information in the form of a multilingual glossary. For each language, a clickable nomenclature is offered, linked to the equivalents of all other languages. This makes it easy to switch from one language to another and thus 1) to consult definitions, contexts, technical and linguistic notes in the chosen language, and 2) to easily switch to other languages to retrieve equivalents and read the relevant information in other languages.

P.I. Ulrike Kaunzner

External partners: Sandra Reimann (University of Oulu) and Rupert Hochholzer (University of Regensburg)

2022-2023

In recent years, the investigation of attitudes towards language diversity and multilingualism has received increasing scientific attention, particularly because it has been found to contribute to good levels of multilingual competence. Not least, it is an essential factor in language choice and interpersonal interaction, whether at school, university, or in a professional context. The methods for studying attitude research are now well advanced; qualification methods are being developed to deal with linguistic heterogeneity and multilingualism: these methods can now profitably be used in the context of university courses. 

The study is a continuation of the Departmental FAR 2021 project (Multilingualism in International Business - survey and pilot study) with a new focus. Based on the results of the investigations conducted in international and local companies (2021-2022), the desire emerged to examine more closely the issue of attitudes towards multilingualism as a possible indicator for the effectiveness of communication within companies and public institutions. Analysis of attitudes may also be suggestive for the conception and design of multilingually-appropriate text types and forms of conversations. 

The attitudes towards multilingualism are collected in different contexts by means of interviews and/or sample-based questionnaires: whether in companies, public institutions or schools (kindergarten, primary school, secondary school...). Even though the focus will be on the Modena area, the two Finnish and German project partners, who were involved in the 2022 pilot project, will be called upon again for two reasons: 

(1) Integration of the respective scientific focus of the colleagues: (a) research on multilingualism and (b) text linguistics/textual type competence, business communication and advertising; 

(2) Comparison of the research results on the European North-South axis (Finland - Germany - Italy) on the basis of the studies conducted in the Modena model.

P.I. Angela Albanese

2022-2024

In the cultural field (art, literature, publishing), the role of actors, translators, and ghostwriters has been and continues to be crucial. In reality, these figures collectively embody a form of submerged authorship.

1. The work of actors has long been compared to that of textual interpreters; however, in the minds of audiences, the performative signature remains consistently recognizable as distinct and autonomous from that of the author. These so-called interpreters bring forth something that goes beyond the actions prescribed by the text, embodying the very essence of theatrical art. Building upon these reflections, and extending the analysis to diverse historical and geographical contexts, this study seeks to examine the various forms of submerged authorship in theater and the ways in which performative creation can assert its independence from literary authorship.

2. A similar, often hidden dynamic can still be observed today in the work of literary and theatrical translators. In 1959, Renato Poggioli titled an influential essay on translation The Added Artificer (published in the collective volume On Translation), an emblematic title emphasizing the translator’s role as an additional creator. Some have gone even further, claiming an exclusive authorship for the translated work as an expression of the translator’s own poetics and style. Yet the history of translation provides striking examples of hidden authorial identities, especially among female translators: consider Lucia Morpurgo Rodocanachi, a “ghost translator” (négresse inconnue for Montale), Vittorini, Gadda, and Sbarbaro, who used her translations as the first drafts of works later refined and signed only by themselves. The issue of the invisibility of translators and their asserted authorship continues to conflict—particularly in the digital age—with practices that are often reluctant to fully acknowledge their authorial identity. Consequently, it is essential to investigate, in accordance with established research areas, questions such as: authorship in literary and theatrical translation; the historical relationship between translation and authorship; the poetics of translation in relation to gender; and the ethics surrounding collaborative translations.

3. Beyond the often hidden, hybrid, or entirely submerged authorship of those who perform texts on stage or translate them for theater and literature, there exists another form of authorship that intentionally remains concealed: that of ghostwriters. While contemporary associations of this practice primarily link it to the works of figures in politics, sports, entertainment, and pop music, the exploration of ghost or fragmented authorship encompasses a much broader spectrum of cases, both synchronically and diachronically, including pathographies—narratives and representations of illness that are often autobiographical or based on personal testimonies. Literature and artistic practices provide numerous case studies of this phenomenon, prompting analysis from the perspectives of stylistics, rhetoric, textual functioning, and representational strategies.

P.I. Maria Chiara Rioli

2022-

The project aims to analyse the interactions between the history of humanitarianism, refugee history and gender history through the case study of Dar al-Tifl, the Children's Home, founded in 1948 by a Palestinian teacher, Hind al-Husayn. This is an experience of great significance in the history of education in the Middle East, created during the most dramatic phase of the Palestinian war of 1947-1949, which took in thousands of orphans and represented the first example of Palestinian humanitarianism known to the world, including through the documentary Sands of sorrow. Dar al-Tifl still exists today and over the decades its work has been intertwined with that of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. The archives of Dar al-Tif, unlike the UNRWA archives, are today accessible to researchers. The project is intended to be carried out in 2 phases, the first being archival, the second historical:

1. Archival Action 1: Reconnaissance of the archives of Dar al-Tifl in Jerusalem: analysis of the archival history of the fonds, description of the collection and organization of an international event in collaboration with the ERC project Open Jerusalem: Opening Jerusalem Archives for a Connected History of 'Citadinité' in the Holy City, 1840-1940, of which the proposer was project manager and is still core team member.
2. Furthermore, a selection of the inventory will be imported to the website of the Horizon2020 project ITHACA - Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency, of which the Department is coordinator, and in collaboration with DHMoRe;
3. Action 2 Historical: Dissemination and historical communication: a) Drafting of a peer-reviewed article in English in open access in an international journal; b) presentation of first results in an English-language seminar in cooperation with the journal Jerusalem Quarterly; c) drafting of book proposal in English for an international publishing house; d) drafting of manuscript in English for peer-reviewed publication. The manuscript will be edited by the proposer together with Karène Sanchez Summerer (Leiden University) and Mezna Qato (Cambridge University).

P.I. Laura Turchi

2022-

Starting from the investigation of original sources preserved in the Modena State Archives, the project aims to outline some salient features of the internal and foreign policy of an ancient regime state such as the Estense State between the late Middle Ages and the Modern Age (16th century). The project aims to promote: a) the publication of a book on the administration of central justice in the Este state (15th-16th centuries); b) the publication of at least two articles (one in a volume, the other in a peer-reviewed journal) on Este diplomacy in the 16th century.

P.I. Isabella Ferron

Participants: Marco Cipolloni, Flavio Fiorani, Leonardo Gandini, Valerio Nardoni

2022-

This study involves an exploration of  the concept of "insecurity" from different perspectives. Analysis will include meanings and uses from linguistic-textual, literary and cinematic points of view. Historical contexts will be taken into account favouring those moments that are considered critical for cultural relations and the encounter with “the other”. The areas under examination will be particularly, but not exclusively, the Spanish-speaking and German-speaking worlds. The project deals with cultural relations mediated by translations and illustrations and their reception, but also with the different “re-writings” of the cinematographic and narrative imaginary, e.g. for advertising or for the cinema, both from an audience-oriented and a metafilmic perspective. The project is developed around three main nuclei:

1. Multilingualism, translation processes and the relationship between text and illustrations in the late 18th and early 19th century.
2. The period between the great migrations of the late 19th century and the aftermath of the Great War (up to the 1929 crisis);
3. Totalitarianism, the memory of exiles and related traumas.

The project is divided into three actions aimed at analysing the aesthetic and ethical-political dimensions of the works and periods studied. The three actions will focus on three historical periods that carried great change. Specifically:

Action 1 will focus on the period between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, in which there is a focus on cultural otherness that leads to the development of identity concepts, as well as the definition of the concept of national languages.

Action 2 will concern the Silent Film Era, with a focus on narrative, documentary and cinematographic material relating to the major political, economic and social changes of this “era”.

Action 3 will examine the analogue/pre-digital sound cinema period, with a focus on the reciprocal influence between fiction and film - this action will be  based on a corpus of fictional texts, films, documentaries and graphic novels.