Department OrganizationSectionsIntercultural Studies Section

Intercultural Studies Section

The Intercultural Studies Section is set up as a meeting point for members of the Department of Education, Languages, Intercultures, Literatures and Psychology who are dedicated to the study of languages and literatures in an intercultural and multidisciplinary perspective (imagology, gender studies, post-colonial studies, studies of (auto)biography, authorship, popular culture, philology, marginality, literary reception, theater and performance, translation studies).

Thid Section embraces a scientific-cultural perspective that establishes systematic and dynamic relationships between linguistic, cultural and epistemic knowledge that, within the different forms of communication, anchor mediation between individuals and social contexts, in the belief that every cultural fact should be interpreted on the basis of appropriate historical-cultural assumptions and not external criteria.

The many courses of study and research of this Section combine solidly with teaching aimed at identifying—using linguistic, philological, literary and translational skills—the points of contact but also of distance between cultural experiences located in different historical and geographical realities. The understanding of differences resides within a relationship of mutual respect and equal dignity between different cultures and is rooted in the awareness that respective identities are enriched from encounter and dialogue, processes of interference and overlap, and exchange. Identities which are never static but constantly evolving, mixing and becoming rich and articulated, configured within societies that are increasingly characterized by hybridization and contamination.

From an open perspective aimed at enhancing the multiplicity of scientific interests and theoretical-methodological approaches, the Section is characterized by its attention to the study of multifaceted and complex intercultural relations with the aim of bringing out and safeguarding the richness of histories, languages and traditions by respecting not only otherness and difference, but also the socio-economic, political and legal inequalities that often determine the content and mode of exchange and resulting new cultural configurations. An open hermeneutics capable of revealing the conditionings and processes of ‘naturalization’, also linguistic, that make dominant ideologies opaque and that questions traditional categories of ethnocentric thought in order to go beyond.

 

Coordinator:

• Fernando Cioni

Participants:

• Jacopo Aldighiero Caucci Von Saucken
• Fiorenzo Fantaccini
• Coral García Rodríguez
• John Witmer Gilbert
• Yrja Cecilia Haglund
• Agapita Jurado Santos
• Tina Maraucci
• Nicole Jeanne Maroger
• Marco Meli
• Ilaria Natali
• Donatella Pallotti O Ballotti
• Simona Porro
• Valentina Rossi
• Ayse Saracgil
• Letizia Vezzosi
• Anna Wegener