My interest for diaspora literatures and the new literatures in
English is carried on in a comparative literature perspective,
that is to say, confronting anglophone non metropolitan works with
contemporary European and North-American literary products, and
British canonical works, in the wake of Postcolonial theory. My
interest for visula studies comes from the sudy of the visionary
elements of the fantastic and their use and emplot in the so-called
magical reaklism that characterizes so many literary works
from non-European realities. Visual studies are intended both
as the study of visual devices in literature and the relationship
bewteen image and writing, and the approach to
the various declinations of the "gaze theme". Finally, a
deep curiosity for all the expressions of contemporary
culture, postomodernism and postcolonialism, has
lead me to cultural studies, and World Literature.
Silvia Albertazzi is the Director of CLOPEx (Centro studi sulle letterature omeoglotte dei paesi extraeuropei). Her research focuses on these main fields:
1) Colonial and postcolonial
literature. Postcolonial theory. Migration and Diaspora
literature. Silvia Albertazzi published the first volume to
appear in Italy on Indo-English literature, Il tempio e il
villaggio, in 1978. Since then she has never ceased to
study Indian literature in English: she has written many articles
and volumes on the subject (see her history of Indo-English
literature in the volume Verso gli Antipodi, edited by
Agostino Lombardo in 1995) , held lectures, read papers at national
and international congresses, divulged the subject on magazines and
newspapers, and organised two international conferences on
Indo-English literature at the University of Bologna (in 1992 and
1997). Her books Translating India (1993) and Nel bosco
degli spiriti (1998), where she compares Indo-English
literature both with the other Postcolonial literatures in
English and with British and North American contemporary
literatures, together with the collection of essays
Appartenenze, on female Black writing in English,
which she edited in 1998, are a proof of her continuous interest
for the so-called new literatures in English. With Lo sguardo
dell'Altro (Carocci, 2000), she opened her critical view to all
the literatures written in European languages outside Europe,
examining theory and praxis of Postcolonial literatures both
diachronically and synchronically. A result of the work done
with the members of the Centre for Postcolonial studies of the
University of Bologna are the two volumes of Abbecedario
Postcoloniale, which she edited in 2001 and 2002 with Roberto
Vecchi for the publishing house Quodlibet; Postmodernism and
Postcolonialism (Il poligrafo, Padova, 2002), edited with
Donatella Possamai, and Periferie della storia, edited
with Roberto Vecchi and Barnaba Maj (Quodlibet, 2004). Moreover,
Prof. Albertazzi taught Postclonial literatures at courses for
teachers and librarians in Ravenna, Padova, Venezia, Longiano,
Salerno, Cesena, Bologna, and was invited to talk about
her experience of teaching Postcolonial literature at the
University of Innsbruck, at the Australian National University of
Canberra and at the European Parliament of
Luxemburg.
2) Fantastic literature.
Prof. Albertazzi has been interested in fantastic literature since
1980, when her volume Il sogno gotico appeared. In 1993
Laterza published her volume Il punto su: la letteratura
fantastica. After that, she has devoted to the comparative
study of European and extra-European contemporary literature where
imagination and magic are used to convey political contents and
social protests. Moving form the so-called magical realism, she has
detected new uses of the fantastic in Postcolonial
literatures. A particular attention has been devoted to the idea of
the healing force of narration. Starting from Benjamin's thoughts
on the relationship between narration and technical reproducibility
and applying it to the so-called new literatures, Prof. Albertazzi
has put in question limits and boundaries of fantastic
literature in order to individuate features of fantasy and fable in
the most recent postcolonial narrative. The result of this research
are to be found in Il romanzo new global. Storie di
intolleranza, fiabe di comunità, Pisa, ETS, 2003, which she
wrote together with psycho-analyist Adalinda Gasparini.
3) Modern and contemporary
fiction in English . In the field of modern English literature,
prof. Albertazzi has studied the gothic novel and Victorian
fiction. Very recently she has written the chapters on XVII and XIX
century of Breve storia della letteratura
inglese edited by Paolo Bertinetti (Einaudi, 2004). As for
contemporary literature, she has written extensively on XXth
century authors, from D. H. Lawrence (to whom she devoted a book
published by Laterza in 1988) to Julian Barnes, Ian MacEwan, Graham
Swift. As her works published in the ‘90s - Bugie sincere
(Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1992) and her more recents books, such as
In questo mondo (Meltemi 2006) and Il nulla,
quasi (Le Lettere, 2010) - show, now Silvia Albertazzi
studies contemporary fiction in a World Literature perspective. In
this context, her comparative study of Postmodern and Postcolonial
is particularly interesting. Not by chance, she has been invited to
relate on it at various congresses and foreign Universities (Brown
University, Providence; Innsbruck; UWA, Perth; ANU, Canberra;
Helsinki; Belo Horizonte, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) and
has been visiting professor three times at Brown University
and at the Université d'Orléans, France.
4) World Literature
See her work with the members of CLOPEx, Introduzione alla World Literature (Carocci 2021) and the events she organized at the central library of Bologna, Sala Borsa, in 2020-2021.
5) Cultural Studies
See her recent works on popular music and English culture of the Sixties, such as Leonard Cohen (paginauno 2018); Questo è domani (paginauno 2020); John Lennon (Castel Negrino 2022) and the events she organized at the central library of Bologna, Sala Borsa, in 2022. As an international expert on Leonard Cohen, she was invited to give a lecture at Byre Theatre, St Andrews University (Scotland) in 2019.
Finally, as Scientific Responsible of the Centre for
Postcolonial Studies of the University of Bologna, Silvia
Albertazzi launched a series of critical essays called “Troposfere”
published by Quodlibet, Macerata in 2001; coordinated
two Departmental researches: “Multiculturalism and multimedia”
(1997-2000) and “Post-modern, Post-colonial, Post-empire and
Post-regime” (2000-2002); organised four international congresses
in Bologna: Imagining Australia (1997),
Scrivere=incontrare (2000); Postmodernism and
Postcolonialism (2001); Post-Scripta. Possible and
Impossible Encounters Between Cultures (2003). As a cultural
divulger, she has collaborated with various magazines, newspapers,
radio broadcastings.
After being a member of the Palermo unit of a PRIN research on
"Literature and Visual Studies" coordinated by Prof. Michele
Cometa, she is still working on literature and photography.
