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International Research Projects

The professors of the Department of Humanities participate in international research projects in collaboration with European (Belgium, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain) and non-European (Brazil, United States) universities, institutes and organisations. The projects concern multiple research fields (e.g., archaeology, education, political philosophy, linguistics, literature, pedagogy, history, theatre).

Below are listed, in alphabetical order (by surname of the referent or participant DISUM teacher), the projects that are currently active.

HospitAm. Hospitalités dans l'Antiquité méditerranéenne : sources, enjeux, pratiques, discours

Eleonora Destefanis (partecipante DISUM-UPO)
Coordinatrici: Claire Fauchon-Claudon (ENS de Lyon – UMR 5189 HiSoMA), Marie-Adeline Le Guennec (Université du Québec à Montréal), Smaranda Marculescu (ENS de Lyon)

Other participants: Richard Bouchon (Université Lumière Lyon 2), Bernadette Cabouret-Laurioux (Université Lyon 3), Cristina Corsi (Università di Cassino), Konstantin Klein (Universität Bamberg), Marlena Whiting (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz).

Funding body: ENS Lyon; IDEX LYON (2019-2020); Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (2017-2018).

The project focuses on the notion of hospitality in the context of the ancient Mediterranean, between free hospitality practices and particular hospitality agreements between individuals and / or groups, in the broader context of mobility and circulation in the Mediterranean basin, in the sense of extensive antiquity, ranging from the Greco-Roman world to the Dark Ages / early Byzantine period. The activity involves a strong interdisciplinary approach, in which archaeology, history of written sources, epigraphy and linguistics operate in dialogue and mutual debate.

ERC: SH5; SH6

Hospitality; Mediterranean; Classical Ages; late Antiquity; Dark Ages

Start: 18/11/2015; end: 31/12/2022

Project website: https://hospitam.hypotheses.org/

Email address:  projet.hospitam@gmail.com

Eleonora Destefanis: eleonora.destefanis@uniupo.it

 

Comparative pedagogies: inclusive pedagogies from the fifties to the present  

Maria Cristina Iuli and Miriam Ravetto (coordinators DISUM-UPO)
Other participants: Krystyna Mazur, Agnieszka Dickel, Silvia Bonacchi (Warsaw University).

The project aims to reflect on the libertarian and liberation pedagogies of the second part of the twentieth century in order to identify ideas that can be put back into play in the current, massive digital turning point in teaching triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a project that involves both the pragmatic-semantic and the grammatical-syntactic aspects of language learning, and the different approaches will be analysed both from a philosophical and critical point of view, and from an applicative point of view. The goal is to identify effective and critical pedagogical strategies that can offer models to the current digital turning point in education, placing the concept of a learning community and social inclusion at the centre of the process.

ERC: SH3_11; SH4_8; SH5_8

Critical pedagogy; innovative teaching; inclusive methodologies; learning community; classroom strategies

Start: 07/01/2021; end: 01/01/2022

Maria Cristina Iuli: cristina.iuli@uniupo.it

Miriam Ravetto: miriam@ravetto@uniupo.it

 

Études franco-italiennes autour de la Renaissance

Michele Mastroianni (coordinator DISUM-UPO)

UPO participants: Filippo Fassina, Maurizio Busca

Other participants: Silvia D’Amico (Université Savoie Mont Blanc, Chambéry), Sabine Lardon (Université Lyon 3), Paola Cifarelli (Università degli Studi di Torino), Monica Barsi (Università degli Studi di Milano).

Funding body: Université Italo-française, UPO Department of Humanities, Département d’Italien de l’Université Savoie Mont-Blanc (Chambéry), Université Lyon 3, Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures of Milan, Department of Humanities of Torino.

Le cadre où se contextualise le projet concerne des enquêtes sur la culture humaniste du XVIe siècle, dans une perspective italo-française, ainsi qu’européenne. Ce projet s’insère dans un contexte scientifique concernant la valorisation des influences franco-italiennes, notamment au sein de la Renaissance italo-française, mais aussi de la Renaissance européenne. Il s’agit de collaborations scientifiques menées depuis une vingtaine d’années au moins par les Universités du Piémont Oriental, Savoie Mont Blanc, Lyon 3, Turin et Milan.

ERC: SH5_2; SH5_3; SH5_8

Renaissance; classiques; réélaborations; problématiques historiographiques

Start: April 2020

Michele Mastroianni: michele.mastroianni@uniupo.it

 

Rewrites and classical models in the French renaissance theatre

Michele Mastroianni (coordinator DISUM-UPO) –

Other UPO participants: Dario Cecchetti, Filippo Fassina, Maurizio Busca

Other participants: Sabine Lardon (Université Lyon 3), Tristan Alonge (Université de la Réunion).

The scientific activity of the Vercelli research group, coordinated by Prof. Michele Mastroianni, has for years revolved around the study of the sixteenth century, in particular, of theatre and religious poetry in France. The selected critical perspective concerns the reception of the ancient classical Greek-Roman models. Numerous critical studies (monographs, collective volumes and articles) as well as philological works, already published or in press - edited by Michele Mastroianni, Dario Cecchetti, Filippo Fassina and Maurizio Busca - testify to the intense research activity carried out so far. M. Busca and F. Fassina are currently engaged in studies carried out within the framework of two research grants on the reception of Ovid and Plutarch in the French sixteenth century. The results will be welcomed in international publications, including the international journal «French Studies» (band A) and series of high scientific importance for the Éditions Classiques Garnier in Paris in addition to critical editions that will come out in the series of Théâtre Français de la Renaissance, publications are planned for the Classiques Garnier editions and for the series "Dramaturgica gallicana inedita et rara" (directed by D. Cecchetti and M. Mastroianni). The theoretical questions of the moyen français concerning translation in the sixteenth century are investigated in collaboration with the international project Babel EVE: Émergence du Vernaculaire en Europe, accompanied by an online magazine (Corpus Eve: Émergence du vernaculaire en Europe), directed by S. Lardon. Study days on the Renaissance Theatre are planned.

ERC: SH5_2; SH5_3; SH5_8

Theatre; Renaissance; classical sources; reworking of ancient texts

Start: 2000

Website: www.mondifrancesi.org and http://journals.openedition.org/eve/

Michele Mastroianni: michele.mastroianni@uniupo.it

 

Studies of literary genetics. Henry Bauchau: poetic laboratory and contemporary aesthetics

Michele Mastroianni (coordinator DISUM-UPO)

Other UPO participants: Debora Rampone

Other participants: Catherine Mayaux (Université Cergy-Pontoise Paris), Marc Quaghebeur (Archives et Musée de la Littérature de Bruxelles), Myriam Watthee Delmotte (Université Catholique de Louvain).

The project is centered on the study of the journals, published and unpublished, by Henry Bauchau and, in particular, on research aimed at publication (in part already pursued with results published in international class A journals, including the Revue internationale Henry Bauchau and collective volumes published by prestigious international French and Belgian publishers) of the first unpublished version of La Déchirure, of the first unpublished edition of La Sourde Oreille ou le Rêve de Freud and of some of the Cahiers Antigone, preserved in the Archives of Brussels. Michele Mastroianni has published a monograph and numerous articles on Henry Bauchau for Italian and foreign publishers. Debora Rampone is currently working on the elaboration of Antigone and on an unpublished document (Notes sur l'écriture d'Œdipe. ML7160 / 2) by the Belgian author, of which a critical edition is planned for the Library of French Studies (Rosenberg & Sellier).

ERC: SH5_3; SH5_8

Textual genetics; poetic laboratory; study of unpublished works

Start: 2008

Michele Mastroianni: michele.mastroianni@uniupo.it

 

Recreaciones teatrales del “Quijote”

José Manuel Martin Moran (participant DISUM-UPO)

Coordinator: Emilio Martínez Mata (Universidad de Oviedo)

Other participants: Juan Emilio Tazón Salces, Cristina Valdés, Francisco José Borge López, María José Álvarez Faedo, Raquel Serrano González, Lennart Koch (Universidad de Oviedo), Santiago López Navia (Universidad de La Rioja), Gonzalo Díaz Migoyo (Northwestern University), Carmen Rivero (Universität Münster), Emmanuel Marigno (Université Jean Monnet de Saint-Etienne), Iole Scamuzzi, Stefania di Carlo, Guillermo Carrascón (Università degli Studi di Torino), Franco Quinziano (Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo).

Funding body: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.

The research project aims to increase knowledge in the field of reception of Don Quixote in an area, such as that of theatrical rewritings, which has not yet received the necessary attention. The priority objectives of the project are focused on offering, firstly, free access editions and translations in Spanish, as well as printed publications, of the most relevant theatrical reconstructions of Don Quixote in England, France, Italy and Spain, from historical periods which are more interesting from the point of view of the reception of Don Quixote. Secondly, the project will offer information organised in a database of Don Quixote theatrical re-enactments in Spain, England, France, Italy and Germany-Austria. The project will therefore provide Spanish translations (and Spanish rewritten editions currently lacking a philological edition), with the corresponding introductions and notes, of eighteen theatrical rewritings from different linguistic areas.

ERC: SH5_2; SH5_8

Cervantes; Don Chisciotte; reception; theatre; theatrical rewriting

Start: 01/06/2020; end: 31/12/2022

website: http://grec.grupos.uniovi.es/

Emilio Martínez Mata: emmata@uniovi.es

José Manuel Martín Morán: martin.moran@uniupo.it

 

Politeness and Impoliteness in the literary dialogue in Ancient Greek (COREGO)

Maria Napoli (partecipante DISUM-UPO)

Coordinators: Luz Conti Jiménez and Emilio Crespo Güemes (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Other participating universities: Universidad del País Vasco, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre.

Funding body: Ministero de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Spain).

The project deals with the synchronic and diachronic analysis of morphological, syntactic and pragmatic strategies for the expression of (dis) courtesy in ancient Greek, and their interaction with intensification and mitigation phenomena, with particular reference to the dialogic context in texts of epochs and different literary genres.

ERC: SH4_10; SH5_1

(S)courtesy; mitigation; intensification; epistemic modality; dialogue

Start: July 2019; end: July 2021

Luz Conti Jiménez: luz.conti@uam.es

Maria Napoli: maria.napoli@uniupo.it

 

(inter)linguístic pragmatics, cross-cultural and intercultural

Miriam Ravetto (participant DISUM-UPO)

Coordinators: Elisabetta Santoro and Luiz Antonio da Silva

Other participating universities: Universidade de São Paulo – USP; Universidade Aberta; Université de Lyon 2; Ruhr Universität Bochum; Università degli Studi Roma Tre.

Funding body: CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico.

The international project aims to compare characteristics of various linguistic acts, including requests made in different languages ​​and cultures, starting from identification of the linguistic means used. The research fields of the group are not limited to cross-cultural pragmatics; studies related to a single language and culture are also proposed (intracultural pragmatics), comparative analyses between native and non-native speakers (intercultural pragmatics) and investigations on teaching practices and on learning the pragmatic aspects of a language by non-natives (interlingual pragmatics). The project also intends to explore qualitative analysis of the categories and variables that reveal the main similarities and divergences, with particular attention to the function of linguistic means used by speakers. The research examines the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Italian, German, Spanish. Methodologies have been chosen for the collection of data which make it possible to have a large number of native and non-native speakers of the languages ​​in question. The research group annually organises the "Jornada de Estudos em Pragmática", when the results of the studies carried out within the project are presented.

ERC: SH4_7; SH4_9

cross-cultural pragmatics; language acts; corpus linguistics

Start: 2015; end: 2025

website: https://it.gppragmatica-usp.com/

website: http://dgp.cnpq.br/dgp/espelhogrupo/8375977618083848

Elisabetta Santoro: esantoro@usp.br

Miriam Ravetto: miriam.ravetto@uniupo.it

 

Satz und Satzgefüge kontrastiv: Deutsch – Portugiesisch – Italienisch

Miriam Ravetto (participant DISUM-UPO)

Coordinator: Hardarik Blühdorn (Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim)

Other participating universities: Universidade de São Paulo (Brasile), Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Università di Pisa.

Funding body: Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Mannheim); Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.

The international project aims to examine the syntax, information structure and semantics of simple and complex German sentences in a contrastive perspective with the Portuguese and Italian Romance languages. There are typological differences between the two languages under study which are particularly interesting in the following areas:

• Verbal position and syntactic structuring of matrix and secondary sentences.

• Use and frequency of shortened sentences.

• Modes of codification of the information structure (prosodic means, split sentences, marked structures, etc.).

The research is based on data from the IDS corpora (eg Cosmas II or FOLK) and other similar sources. The objectives are mainly descriptive, in accordance with traditional grammarography, which is flanked by more recent theoretical approaches and terminological tools (structure of constituents, information structure, semantics of the sentence).

ERC: SH4_6; SH4_7

Syntax; contrastive grammar; information structure; corpus linguistics

Start: June 2014

website: https://www1.ids-mannheim.de/gra/projekte/satz-und-satzgefuege.html?L=0

Hardarik Blühdorn: hardarik@ids-mannheim.de

Miriam Ravetto: miriam.ravetto@uniupo.it

 

Civic Constellation III: Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Anti-Liberalism

Gabriella Silvestrini (participant DISUM-UPO)

University project leader: Universidad de Málaga

Other participating universities and organisations: UiT The Arctic University of Norway (Tromsø), The Åland Islands Peace Institute (Mariehamn).

Funding body: Spain’s National Research Fund.

Over the past decade the rise in constitutional democracies across the world, and significantly throughout Europe, of anti-liberal politics has changed the terms of academic and public debates on democracy and rights. In real politics anti-liberal claims and practices are argued in the name of democracy and even of basic rights. Resulting from an alternative, anti-systemic understanding of political action comes a way of doing politics that is affecting seriously the performance of democratic institutions, and the civic experience of individuals, to the point of presenting the basic tenets of constitutionalism and the rule of law as principles that can be left aside when governing real democracies. Civic Constellation III argues, first, that if the rule of law is not enforced and basic freedoms are not institutionally protected along with pluralism, the legal and civic conditions enabling the democratic process become critically distorted and fatally damaged. And second, that opposing democracy to liberal constitutionalism is not a mere play with words. It is not exactly philosophical speculation but a theoretical view with performative consequences discernable through philosophical argumentation. Underlying its rhetorical force is a flagrant misunderstanding of constitutional democracy and an undissimulated defence of authoritarian rule.

ERC: SH2_2; SH5_10; SH6_9; SH6_10; SH6_13

Democracy; constitutionalism; anti-liberalism; rule of law

Start: 2019; end: 2022

website: https://www.uma.es/civicconstellation/

José María Rosales: jmrosales@uma.es

Manuel Toscano: mtoscano@uma.es

Gabriella Silvestrini: gabriella.silvestrini@uniupo.it

 

Cost Action CA 16211 Reappraising Intellectual Debates on Civic Rights and Democracy in Europe (RECAST)

Gabriella Silvestrini (participant DISUM-UPO)

University project leader: Universidad de Málaga.

Funding body: COST European Cooperation in Science and Technology – Horizon 2020.

Civic Rights and Democracy illustrates the strains produced by the universalizing claims of rights, most clearly of human rights, on the national character of democracies. Even though the democratic ideal is formulated in universalist terms, the historical practices of democracy are only achievable in non-universalist conditions. That fundamental tension is epitomized by the predicament of democratic citizenship, whose legal status gives access to universal rights, yet at the same time sets the political boundaries of non-universalist communities.

Reappraising Intellectual Debates entails revaluing ‘humanities’ and ‘social sciences’ contributions to address the challenge. Current debates on the relations of civic rights and democracy in Europe reflect separate lines of scholarly work, which to a great extent reproduce structural political and policy divisions. RECAST seeks to revamp the path connecting intellectual debates, public debates, politics, and policy action.

ERC: SH2_2; SH5_10; SH6_9; SH6_10; SH6_13

Civic rights; democratization; humanities and social sciences cooperative research

start: 15/09/2017; end: 14/09/2021

website: https://www.uma.es/costactionrecast

Social media: https://www.facebook.com/CA16211RECAST/

Gabriella Silvestrini: gabriella.silvestrini@uniupo.it

 

Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project (Halle/erfurt)

Gabriella Silvestrini (participant DISUM-UPO)

Coordinators: Frank Grunert (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), Knud Haakonssen (Universität Erfurt), Diethelm Klippel (Universität Bayreut).

The publication in 1625 of Hugo Grotius’ major work, De iure belli ac pacis, marked the beginning of a new form of natural law and a new phase in its history. As a branch of moral and political theology, natural law had a long earlier history in Catholic thought and in ecclesiastical and civil polity. Grounded in civil law and politics, and taking shape as an independent academic subject, the new natural law emerged first in Protestant countries but soon found reception in Catholic contexts. The vocabulary of natural law quickly proved useful for formulating issues in a wide array of intellectual and practical cultures, ranging from jurisprudence, political and moral philosophy, and literature, to constitutional design, law reform, judicial practice, and diplomacy and international law. The teaching of natural law thus often came to play the role of an intellectual clearing-house at the centre of the arts, law, and politics curriculum, organising the school-learning through which early-modern thinkers set out. Drawing its materials from the practices of European public law, politics, and diplomacy, the language of natural law made these available in the more abstract and teachable vocabulary of obligation and rights, sovereignty and freedom. In order to understand these historical processes, we have to study natural law in its full intellectual and practical complexity.

ERC: SH6_10; SH5_6; SH6_5

Natural law; international law; natural rights; sovereignty; freedom

Start: 2013

website: https://www.uni-erfurt.de/max-weber-kolleg/forschung/forschungsgruppen-und-stellen/forschungsstellen/forschungsstelle-fuer-fruehneuzeitliches-naturrecht/natural-law-1625-1850/home

Gabriella Silvestrini: gabriella.silvestrini@uniupo.it

 

Archeology of shariNg pracTIces: the material evidence of mountain marGinalisatiON in Europe (18th-21st c. AD) (ANTIGONE)

Vittorio Tigrino (partecipante DISUM-UPO)

Coordinator: Anna Maria Stagno (Università degli Studi di Genova).

Funding body: European Commission.

The main aim of the ANTIGONE project is to investigate how the disappearance of practices for managing shared environmental resources played a role in the abandonment and political marginalization of European mountain areas from the 18th c onwards. The legacy of these processes can be seen in population levels in these areas, and in the worsening of their natural and cultural heritage. Current policies – aiming to promote their ‘heritagisation’ – do not seem likely to be more effective, in the long-term, as development interventions than the drive for rationalization in the 19th c. and modernization in the 20th c. A new historical perspective is needed which addresses the process of abandonment and marginalization in its entire complexity. ANTIGONE will analyze the critical period from the 18th to the 21st c. and provide new insights into the links between individuals, communities, central States and landscape, grounded in a new understanding of the relationship between practices, resources and objects. Through its multidisciplinary approach ANTIGONE aims at provide: new knowledge on the historical mechanisms underlying the abandonment of mountain and, more broadly, rural areas, as a key to understanding marginalisation; new knowledge on landscapes, practices and their features; a new methodological toolbox for interdisciplinary investigations driven by archaeology; a new role for archaeology, beyond the acknowledged one as a heritage science; new contributions to community based policies for local sustainable development and landscape management.

ERC: SH6_3; SH6_7; SH2_12 IS

Heritage; landscape archaeology; environmental history; commons

start: 2020; end: 2025

Vittorio Tigrino: vittorio.tigrino@uniupo.it  

Escritura Teatral Colaborativa En El Siglo De Oro: Analisis interpretacion y nuevos instrumentos De Investigacion (Centenario De Agustin Moreto, 1618-2018)

Marcella Trambaioli (participant DISUM-UPO) – Coordinator: María Luisa Lobato (Universidad de Burgos).

Funding body: Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Spain).

As part of the larger PROTEO project, the goal is the study and implementation of critical editions of the comedies written in collaboration by Moreto and other Baroque dramatists.

ERC: SH5_4  

Critical edition; Agustin Moreto; Comedia Nueva; edición crítica

start: 2015; end: June 2021

website: https://www.ubu.es/poder-y-representaciones-festivas-1450-1750-proteo/pr...

Marcella Trambaioli: marcella.trambaioli@uniupo.it

 

GLESOC: Grupo de investigación de Literatura española del Siglo de Oro

Marcella Trambaioli (partecipante DISUM-UPO) – Coordinators: José María Díez Borque and Elena Di Pinto (Universidad Complutense Madrid).

Funding body: Ministero Educación, Spain (REF. UCM-930455).

  1. Madrid en la literatura de los Siglos de Oro: estudio de la literatura cortesana en el entorno de la ciudad, convertida en capital en 1561;
  2. Manuscrito, libro y edición: aproximación a los aspectos editoriales y vinculados al mundo del libro escrito, publicado y divulgado;
  3. Recepción de la novela en el Siglo de Oro: contextos lectores de la novela cortesana y de los principales autores del canon y fuera de él;
  4. Política, corte y representación en el Madrid de los Austrias: estudios de géneros y obras paraliterarias: entradas reales, recibimientos, bodas reales, villancicos religiosos, literatura popular impresa, etc.
  5. Poesía y fiesta ciudadana: uso de la literatura con objetivos políticos en contextos festivos religiosos y profanos.

ERC: SH5_3

Reception; politics; court; poetry; theatre

start: 2006

project website: https://www.ucm.es/glesoc/

Marcella Trambaioli: marcella.trambaioli@uniupo.it

 

Lengua, Literatura, Vino y Territorio

Marcella Trambaioli (coordinator DISUM-UPO) – Other coordinator: Elisa Borsari (Universidad de La Rioja).

Funding body: Universidad de La Rioja, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Cassa di Risparmio di Vercelli, Regione Piemonte.

Thanks to a bilateral framework agreement, signed in June 2017 between the Department of Humanities of the University of Eastern Piedmont and the Universidad de La Rioja, two international interdisciplinary conferences with specialists from various countries have been organised.

ERC: SH5_3; SH5_9; SH5_10; SH5_12

Wine; territory; language; literature; history; anthropology

start: 2017; end 2021

Marcella Trambaioli: marcella.trambaioli@uniupo.it

 

Last modified 11 August 2022