LITERARY CURRICULUM
Lidiia Astapenko
The Theatre of Hugo Ball: Expressionistic and Dadaistic Influences
GERM-01/B
This research project undertakes an in-depth exploration of Hugo Ball’s theatrical work, examining the German writer’s contributions during the early 20th century. The study has two primary objectives: first, to clarify the relationship between Ball’s theatrical aesthetics and the Expressionist and Dadaist movements; second, to assess the impact of his dramatic writing and scenographic reflections on his literary evolution, emphasizing the performative nature that characterizes his body of work. The analysis will include a thorough examination of Ball’s texts, complemented by a study of his correspondence, which he maintained with family members and friends, including Hermann Hesse. This approach will be further enriched by a detailed analysis of Ball’s essays and theatrical works, aiming to illuminate his artistic vision and identify potential interpretative insights into his plays.
Supervisors: Prof. Serena Grazzini – Prof. Alessandro Fambrini
Elia Cavallini
Modern Representations of Political Power: Authoritarian Figures in Novels since the Second World War
COMP-01/A
This project’s main goal is to analyze the literary representation of authoritarian politicians – whether democratic or not – and explore what these depictions reveal about how such power is imagined and conceived within specific historical, social and cultural contexts. Beginning with a brief overview of the origins of this theme from the seventeenth century onward, the project will primarily focus on novels from the post-World War II period to the present. It will also engage with other literary genres or art forms, such as plays or films. The research will concentrate on works that portray political power from the inside, presenting powerful figures as protagonists rather than mere background characters. These texts will be examined through a comparative and thematic lens, with an emphasis on their interrelations. This approach is grounded in the belief that a global literary system exists and that themes of this nature transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries. The authors included in our corpus – such as Vargas Llosa, García Márquez, Kourouma, Vermes and Scurati – do not seek to propagandistically endorse the figures of power they portray. Instead, by adopting the perspective of these figures, these works invite readers to understand their nature and humanity, characterized by flaws, limitations, arrogance, and insecurities. This approach humanizes both the individuals in power and the authority they wield, offering insights into our cultural and human relationship with the concepts of authority and freedom.
Supervisors: Prof. Stefano Brugnolo – Prof. Serena Grazzini
Edoardo Giorgi
Animal Figures, Human Beasts and other Hybrid Representations in Romanian Literature from the Twentieth Century to the Present Day
FLMR-01/E
This PhD project aims to provide an overview of some of the most significant animalistic and pseudo-animalistic presences within Romanian literature, which constitute an interesting case study that can be collocated in a period ranging from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. The critical analysis will be set up according to an interdisciplinary perspective – through the study of figures and characters – and based on various methodologies, applied accordingly to the specificity of each text: methodologies that range from the field of ecocriticism and ethology, but above all of symbology, psychology, anthropology; the category of the fantastic will be also used, as well as the different procedures of intertextuality. Considering the breadth of the historical and socio-political period in which the various texts are placed, the importance of a complete vision of the animal or hybrid character’s development should not be underestimated: from the most exquisitely classical animalistic representations focused on the beast/man relationship in popular culture, to the multifaceted hybridism of the avant-gardes; from magical realism with folkloric grafts by authors such as Mircea Eliade to the socialist realism, finally arriving at postmodernism, extremely receptive to previous genres, but which has developed superior sensitivity and complexity, with a much greater awareness and attention to the feral point of view regarding the narration. In addition to animals and hybrid figures, it will also be essential to outline the concept of “human beasts”, through the analysis of the reduction of the human being to an animal, as a substantial part of the project intends to explore the facets of human bestiality within an approach aimed at the literature of memory.
Supervisors: Prof. Emilia David – Prof. Valeria Tocco
Giulia Pellegrinotti
giulia.pellegrinotti@phd.unipi.it
Otherness in fantasy worlds: a cultural and sociological analysis of the worldbuilding process in fantasy literature, from Tolkien to the present days
ANGL-01/A
This project aims to explore the potential of the worldbuilding process within the fantasy genre, taking into consideration the mutual influences between this process and the socio-cultural context in which it is used, with particular attention to those areas of our society where forms of discrimination are most common, such as racism, sexism, classism, and the exploitation of nature. This idea comes from the awareness that most fantasy fiction depicts forms of rebellion fighting against “evil forces” which represent a literary embodiment of the very same oppressive social, economic, and political structures that we find in our society. The first part of the project aims to collect the largest amount possible of fantasy works, not only those that are part of the canon but also, and especially, contemporary texts, in an attempt to fill a gap that is now too evident in academic criticism regarding the works published since the early 2000s. From the analysis of the worldbuilding used in the selected texts, the aim of this project is to propose a new model of categorization of fantasy fiction based on cultural and sociological criteria, in particular regarding the forms of oppression and discrimination highlighted within these works, the way this oppression is fought and the results that this entails. The second part of the project will instead focus on a more in-detail analysis of a smaller set of texts, reasonably not more than three, to analyse the mechanisms of worldbuilding based on the socio-cultural criteria aforementioned.
Supervisors: Prof. Roberta Ferrari – Prof. Laura Giovannelli
Attilio Russo (PNRR grant – DM 630/2024)
Narratological Perspectives on Russian Literature: A Digital Interface Between Tradition And Innovation
SLAV-01/A
The research project aims to establish an Open Access platform centered on Russian Narratology, serving two primary objectives: to foster the dissemination of lesser-known narratological theories and to provide an innovative digital resource that illuminates the evolution of narrative forms in early 20th-century Russian Literature. Within the realm of artistic studies—through international workshops, academic publications, and collaborative networks fostered by research institutions such as CRAL (Centre de recherches sur les arts et le langage) and ENN (European Narratology Network)—narratology has proven to be an effective analytical framework, merging structural, functional, and semiotic perspectives with the examination of archetypes, motifs, and narrative voices. This discipline has thus become essential in balancing the original truth of a text, as examined through historical-critical and philological analysis, with the interpretative act, inherently boundless in nature. Russian narratological studies hold a pivotal position within this framework. However, scholars such as Aleksandr Skaftymov, Tamara Sil’man, and Boris Korman—pioneers of fundamental concepts like historical poetics and subtext theory—remain relatively underrepresented in the contemporary academic arena, despite their relevance for modern European and American narratological studies. Addressing this substantial gap in Italian and European Slavic studies, the platform will feature translations of narratological articles, original theoretical contributions, comprehensive case studies, and a database on narrative techniques, themes, motifs, and common topoi. It will also provide educational resources to support both academic inquiry and broader public engagement.
Supervisor: Prof. Marco Sabbatini
LINGUISTIC CURRICULUM
Ilaria Manfredi (CECIL grant)
Multiword Expressions in Italian: building of a linguistic resource and evaluation of automatic annotation tools
GLOT-01/A
The project aims to research multiword expressions in Italian. The research focuses on setting up an approach that takes into account all the different manifestations of the phenomenon, as well as different varieties and domains of linguistic usage in Italian, including spoken language. The goal of the project is to evaluate various computational techniques and tools for the automatic annotation of multiword expressions, which can then be used to obtain an overview of the presence and characteristics of this phenomenon in the Italian language. To this end, I first intend to create a manually annotated linguistic resource, developing strategies to cover the widest possible range of multiword expressions across different varieties and domains of Italian. Various computational techniques and tools for automatic annotation will be evaluated making use of the created resource. The tool with the best performance can then be used on available Italian corpora to gather both quantitative and qualitative data on types, distribution, and possible differences in the use of multiword expressions across different varieties of Italian.
Supervisors: Alessandro Lenci – Prof. Francesco Rovai
Giulia Milani
Inter- and Intralingual Translation Processes by using Artificial Intelligence in the Field of University Teaching of German as a Foreign Language
GERM-01/C
This research project aims to constantly observe the evolving state of the art of studies dedicated to the use of AI-based tools in the field of university teaching of German as a foreign language (DaF, Deutsch als Fremdsprache), thus establishing a dynamic dialogue with the considerations on translation teaching and reading and writing skills in a second language (L2). This project intends to examine the production of the machine translation DeepL in the interlingual (German-Italian / Italian- German) and intralingual (German-German) translation processes in order to investigate the choices made by DeepL Translator and DeepL Write at the various levels of the language system, with particular attention to syntax and lexis. The study will be carried out on a specially created corpus consisting of literary and everyday texts translated by the AI system, compared with the source texts and their translations edited in German and/or Italian. By comparing the translations produced by human translators with those generated by the Artificial Intelligence, it will be possible to evaluate the functioning of the machine translation and to identify any recurring errors and inaccuracies, so as to consider its applicability for translation teaching purposes. The same text selection will then be employed in a second empirical study concerning the intralingual translation process by means of DeepL Write, with the aim of observing reductions, syntactic simplifications and changes in content, style and register. This research project raises, alongside the practical question of the potential use of AI in the university teaching of German as a foreign language, the theoretical question of the possibility to identify and describe those grammatical phenomena characterising ‘AI German’, which could provide a material basis for classroom testing and for the development of learners’ metalinguistic reflection and linguistic-translational skills.
Supervisors: Prof. Marina Foschi – Prof. Patrizio Malloggi