Abstract, name, affiliation and paper title ACIS conference 4-6 December 2013

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1 Abstract, name, affiliation and paper title ACIS conference 4-6 December 2013 Karen Agutter University of Adelaide Italian Migrant Hostel Experiences Over 300,000 Italians arrived in Australia after the Second World War. While the majority arrived as unassisted migrants, or under the sponsorship of family and paesani, many came with assistance, either as post-war refugees, or under the assisted passage schemes which operated from These assisted immigrants were often housed in Migrant Hostels, Reception and Training Centres, Work Camps and business operated Single Men s Quarters such as those run by BHP. Although the uprisings at Bonegilla, Matraville and Villawood have been well documented the Italian Immigrant experience of the hostel system is less well known. Like many other migrants of this period the Italian experiences varied across time and across hostels. For many assisted migrants, including Italians, periods of unemployment and forced mobility for work created hardships, uncertainty and forced separation. For many, the hostel experience was an alien one, with food and aspects of communal living difficult and unfamiliar. Furthermore, the reception of Italians by other nationalities within the hostel system, particularly the British assisted immigrants, was often hostile and in 1952 the British Migrants Association went as far as to demand separate hostels or at least physical and structural segregation within hostels, to prevent exposure to foreigners, particularly Italians. Although Italian single men, single women and family groups formed an important percentage of hostel residents across Australia, their hostel experiences, particularly outside of Bonegilla, are little known. This paper will use archival documents and oral histories to consider the broader Italian immigrant experiences within the Australian post-war hostel system. Keywords: Italian Migration, Migrant Hostels, Migrant Experiences, Migrant Reception Simona Albanese University of Southern Queensland Italian masterpieces in Australia and immigration: a new approach Italian artworks in Australia were catalogued for the first time almost twenty-five years ago by Peter Tomory and Robert Gaston, who compiled for the first time a summary inventory of The European paintings before 1800 in Australian and New Zealand Public Collections (1989), and later by Ursula Hoff, who wrote a further catalogue of European Painting and Sculpture before 1800 (1973 and 1995 eds). Plenty has been written since then on these works, especially in the last ten years. Considerable attention has been given to Giovan Battista Tiepolo s Banquet of Cleopatra by the critics and by art historian Jayne Anderson, who has written a book on this painting: Tiepolo s Cleopatra (2003). [ ] In this paper I will investigate the possible relationship between these artworks and the anonymous Italian migrants. Did they know about the existence of these Italian masterpieces? Did they ever visit the National Gallery of Victoria? Could these pictures have provided a reminder of the achievements of the culture they had left behind, a parallel for the risks they had taken in 1

2 leaving Italy, and the satisfaction of knowing how highly valued those achievements were in Australia? Keywords: art, paintings, migration, Banquet of Cleopatra, Giovan Battista Tiepolo Louise Baird Flinders University La zona di sé and the epistolary form: comparing two novels of Natalia Ginzberg In her last two novels Ginzburg changed her literary style and form, choosing the epistolary mode. Caro Michele (1973) is mostly written in the form of letters, interspersed with two sections of dialogue and a few pages of third person narrative. La città e la casa (1984) is entirely composed of letters. Her choice of this epistolary mode is dictated by her intense preoccupation with the inner life of her characters, dentro di noi, accompanied by a growing dislike of authorial third person narrative. The change of mode evident in these last two novels is the more dramatic when compared with her previous novel, Le voci della sera. In earlier fiction Ginzburg particularly favoured the first person voice. Now she finds in her last two novels a way to depict more fully, with much greater range, the interiors of human consciousness, what goes on dentro di sé. She preserves the sense of first person narrative but covers a plurality of personal voices without having to use third person or omniscient narrative. Caro Michele emphasises the idea that human consciousness is a kind of prison, a zona di sé in which individuals are confined, each in their own cell, trying to communicate, to understand and be understood, but mostly failing. This idea is common in twentieth-century literature but Ginzburg s expression of it is highly distinctive and deserves special attention. La città e la casa carries further her unique method of voicing her thematic concerns, her unique ways of manipulating the epistolary mode. Both novels depict a central character in flight, from the previous self, from the past. Each of these characters has a secret, which may or may not have been unearthed by others. Caro Michele has a smaller range of characters, with the mystery as to the real nature of Michele at its heart. The letters of the other characters both elucidate and mystify. La città e la casa has a much more complex plot structure and a greater range of characters, letterwriters all trying to unlock the self, to interpret their own characters for others, and to offer opinions about other characters as well. Letters are thus used for self-revelation, as much as to draw out plot, describe, wound and comment on their fellow correspondents. The epistolary method is brilliantly used by Ginzburg as a means to expose the workings and failings of human consciousness in the plot of life. The paper s title comes from a comment made by one of the characters: Ognuno di noi è sbandato e balordo in una zona di sé. Loretta Baldassar University of Western Australia Second Generation in Prato and Perth: the politics of recognising difference This paper explores the experience of belonging and identity for second generation migrants in Prato, Italy and contrasts this with the experience of second generation in Perth, Australia. The data presented are drawn from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Prato between 2009 and 2012 in collaboration with Raffaetà and McAuliffe and ongoing fieldwork conducted in Perth by Baldassar. In examining this issue, we found that citizenship status is a key identity construct that is performed and embodied in the Italian context, while the concept of ethnicity is largely absent. In contrast, ethnic identity is a key defining attribute for migrants in Australia and citizenship is often largely irrelevant. These findings contribute to scholarly debates about the relevance of citizenship to 2

3 identity and belonging and the heuristic value of the notion of ethnicity. In the Prato case, social and political citizenship, at least as far as identity and belonging is concerned, are tightly linked. People refer to citizenship status as the key identity definer in much the same way that notions of ethnic and racial identity are used in similar contexts in the UK, north America and Australia. I examine the factors that contribute to the politics of recognising difference in the Italian and Australian contexts. Factors of relevance include the relative recency or newness of immigration to Italy and the visible difference of the certain high profile second generation groups. The conception of ius sanguinis citizenship, along with the relative absence of the notion of ethnic identity in both popular and academic discourses, have contributed to a strongly essentialist notion of identity that does not easily permit notions of mixity and diversity. Irene Belperio Flinders University Dante s Commedia for our time: Is the traditional canon still relevant Dante s Commedia, as well as his lesser known works, has managed to captivate audiences from various countries for over 700 years. Can the same be said today, particularly in a university context? This paper argues that: far from being an outmoded social, political, religious and literary commentary, Dante s discussion of such issues as migration, wealth and religion raises interesting points for analysis today; reflecting not just on the mistakes of the past, but on previous pedagogies and epistemologies can be a useful means to contextualise current thinking; and lastly, the representation of Dante s Commedia across the centuries offers not just fresh insight into the poem itself but the similarities and differences in interpretations offered in various periods can provide insight into the times themselves. Just in the past 120 years, the first cantica of the Commedia was made into Italy s first ever feature film in 1911, the Inferno turned into a videogame, complete with Dante-pilgrim as Templar Knight and, most recently, Dan Brown utilises Botticelli s map of the Dantean underworld in his latest novel Inferno. One of the conclusions to be drawn from this is that the teaching in universities of the Commedia and, perhaps more broadly other canonical Italian authors, involves their reconceptualisation and their reinterpretation for a modern audience. In this manner, it is hoped to highlight their continuing relevancy as well as placing them firmly within the context in which they were penned. Keywords: Relevancy, reconceptualisation, reinterpretation, diverse media Stephen Bennetts University of Western Australia Australian Ndrangheta: notes for a history of Italian organised crime in Australia How much do we really know about the history of the Ndrangheta in Australia, now the most powerful and most globalised of the three southern Italian Mafias (Dickie, 2013), and the only one of these organisations known to be active in this country? The known history of the Ndrangheta in Australia begins in Far North Queensland in the 1930s, but the organisation most recently came to public attention in 2011, when Italian police unsuccessfully sought the extradition of the Calabrian former mayor of Perth s City of Stirling on Mafia charges. 3

4 As in Italy, the Australian Ndrangheta has proved adept at cultivating local politicians, and has also benefited at times from bogus appeals to an Australian multiculturalist discourse. The assassinations of Donald Mackay in 1977 and AFP Deputy Commissioner Colin Winchester in 1989, together with the television series Underbelly, have made the Calabrian Mafia a staple of local journalism and media, yet there has been a paucity of detailed and serious scholarly research on the Australian Ndrangheta. Local journalistic and police investigation of the phenomenon has sometimes suffered from a lack of knowledge of the Italian language, or an appreciation of the organisation s wider Italian and global context, with senior Australian law enforcement officers at times even questioning the existence of an Australian Ndrangheta as a corporate entity. While Italian and international researchers have recently been producing important insights into the nature of the Ndrangheta (Dickie, 2011, 2013; Ciconte & Macri 2009; Sergi, 2012; Varese, 2006; Spagnolo, 2010), their efforts to research its history and activities in Australia are hampered by geographical distance. This paper assesses the value of these two geographically separate bodies of knowledge, and the prospect of bringing them into dialogue through Professor John Dickie s proposal to establish a transnational research network on the Australian Ndrangheta. Stefano Bona Flinders University Italian filmmakers in China: translocal cinema and the changing perception of another culture In a globalised world, the interactions between cultures previously unknown to each other are increasingly creating new challenges and opportunities. China is one of the main protagonists of the world economy, and its rise has stunned the world. How has its perception changed in countries that used to be in an economically leading position no more than a few years ago? Having had connections with China since the time of the ancient Roman Empire, Italy may provide a symbolic point of view. Moreover, since the People s Republic of China was founded in 1949, Italian filmmakers were the first Western directors allowed to shoot feature documentaries and films in that country. Hence, the previous question may turn into: How have Italian filmmakers represented China?. From Carlo Lizzani in 1957 to Dario Baldi in 2012, seven Italian directors have made internationally distributed films in China. If films cannot be used as historical documents, they still can convey the director s perception of China when they were made. Thus, the analysis and comparison of these translocal films allow us to understand how the visual perception of the People s Republic of China has shifted from that of an idyllic and isolated society to that of a modern society characterised by inequality and increasing internationalisation, and to what degree this change has impacted on Italian society. Josh Brown University of Western Australia Linguistic convergence in 15th century Lombardy: the correspondence of suor Elisabetta of Pavia The main tendency characterising the evolution of the vernacular in Lombardy during the late Middle Ages is the formation of a koinè. Lepschy has noted that written language in Milan during the Quattrocento was determined by a variety of traditions, including Latin and latinising elements, literary Tuscan and Northern Italian (literary Lombard in particular). In recent years, there has been ongoing debate surrounding the role which Milan played in the formation of the koinè. Lurati, for 4

5 example, suggests Milan provided a centralising force for the Milanisation of the other Lombard vernaculars, similar to what occurred for Piedmont and the Veneto. On the other hand, Massariello Merzagora suggests that the linguistic history of Lombardy does not revolve around Milan. Sanga has provided a synthesis of both viewpoints and suggests that Milan oriented the development of other Lombard dialects, both through its spread of the koinè padana antica, as well as through the spread of an Italian model mediated by Milanese over a long period. The problem of convergence a historical process by which languages in contact become more similar in structure has so far received little attention throughout the literature on Milan s role in the formation of the Lombard koinè. This paper considers the correspondence of suor Elisabetta of Pavia to show that convergence had begun even earlier than what has currently been suggested in the literature. Josh Brown and Marinella Caruso University of Western Australia New Courses 2012: the impact on enrolments in Italian at UWA This paper explores the recent introduction of a new course structure at UWA, called New Courses, and the impact this structure has had on first- and second-year enrolments in Italian. We begin by briefly discussing the new degree structure in general before looking at some overall trends on how it has impacted language enrolments at UWA, and in Italian in particular. Using data from enrolment numbers in past years and a survey we created, we will show how a large percentage of students studying Italian at UWA are not from the Faculty of Arts, how this new degree structure has impacted on our student cohort and what this implies for language teaching. The paper considers how New Courses has impacted on students choices when deciding on a major, retention rates and what implications the new structure has for teaching about Italian culture. Overall, we conclude that Italian is an attractive choice for students from all Faculties and point to areas of further research. Harry Cameron University of Sydney Revisiting Raddoppiamento Sintattico This paper presents the findings from a study of the Italian phonological process of Raddoppiamento Sintattico (RS) namely, the doubling of the first consonant of a word. RS was first documented by Renaissance philologists and has received much attention from grammarians and phonologists ever since, especially over the last thirty years. However, important questions remain unresolved for example, regarding RS s regional distribution and whether it applies only within specific syntactic environments. This paper presents a new look at the criteria governing the occurrence of RS, on the basis of a study performed on data taken from CLIPS (Corpora e Lessici dell'italiano Parlato e Scritto), a corpus of spoken Italian. The study confirms certain well-documented findings such as that RS is typically triggered by the preceding word having final stress or being one of a number of other trigger words. However, it also identifies that (i) RS occurs in the speech of some northern Italians, challenging the majority of previous literature; (ii) the likelihood of a word undergoing RS is influenced by the stress of the word itself; and most importantly, (iii) RS occurs more frequently within commonly collocated expressions and most frequently of all within idiomatic constructions. The paper argues that this latter finding largely explains previous (heavily contested) observations that RS can apply only within given syntactic environments. The paper explains briefly the broader 5

6 linguistic implications of the patterns of RS occurrence providing evidence in favour of detailed lexical storage, and in favour of a usage-based approach to phonology, such as Exemplar Theory. Keywords: Linguistics, Phonetics, Phonology, Raddoppiamento Sintattico Liz Campbell Flinders University Inferno XXVII: a study of deception, self-deception and wilful blindness Canto XXVII of Dante s Inferno is often paired with Canto XXVI, since both deal, inter alia, with aspects of fraudulent counsel. Scholars, have, however, devoted greater attention to Canto XXVI, dealing as it does with the great mythic figure of Ulysses. The purpose of my talk will be to highlight the importance of Dante s Inferno XXVII because it concerns the manipulation by the powerful, in the person of Pope Boniface VIII, of those with a weak moral compass, which, in this case, is the all-too-human figure of Guido da Montefeltro, and the justification claimed by those of a weak moral compass for acceding to unethical demands. In so doing, I hope to demonstrate Dante s understanding of human psychology, his use of irony and his dramatic portrayal of wilful blindness. Montefeltro s prevarications in his account of his encounter with Boniface finds a modern echo in, for example, the behaviour of high-powered executives who, in their appearance before the Leveson Inquiry into the abuse of power by the Press, exhibited wilful blindness regarding phone hacking and the ensuing cover-up. Guido da Montefeltro is a tragi-comic figure whose dilemma is vividly depicted in a way that remains as fresh and as relevant to the twenty-first century as it was almost seven hundred years ago. Keywords: Dante; Inferno; Canto XVIII: Guido da Montefeltro; Pope Boniface VIII; deception, self-deception, wilful blindness. Piera Carroli and Vivian Gerrand Australian National University Home, belonging and citizenship in G2 Italian literature: sustainability beyond territoriality Overcoming the trauma of uprooting was a common preoccupation of earlier immigrant fiction which still recurs. In post 2000 fictions and narratives written by Italians of immigrant extraction we take as our focus Kaha Mohamed Aden s Fra-Intendimenti and Igiaba Scego s writing there is a critical comparison of the different cultures and generational values and the claim for new spaces and new subjectivities, along the lines of the nomadic figuration and flexible citizenship proposed by Rosi Braidotti. The literary domains are closely linked with the historical and political domains and the theoretical approach adopted: Braidotti s figurations of nomadic subjectivity and nomadic ethics. In a seemingly similar vein, Somali-born author Ayaan Hirsi Ali s most recent book draws on the idea of nomadism and bears the title Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010). Rather than opening up the ways in which identity is imagined as Braidotti is interested in doing, however, Hirsi Ali reinforces Samuel Huntington s famous Clash of Civilizations thesis which theorises, in particular, incompatibilities between the monotheistic religions. Adens and Scego s, Fra-Intendimenti and La mia casa è dove sono, also published in 2010, are similarly preoccupied with how we imagine identity. The idea that home is where one finds oneself presents a departure from Huntington s paradigm which extends nationalistic tropes of blood ties 6

7 that are evident in Italian jus sanguinis citizenship laws, where to be Italian, one must have Italian blood. To be at home, in Aden s and Scego s work, means to accept that one s identity is produced as much by one s heritage as it is by one s trajectory. This idea has been explored across multicultural and postcolonial bodies of literature over the past few decades. Aden s and Scego s positioning as Italian Somali writers within a context of a nation that has neglected to acknowledge its colonial past speaks to and with this literature. Keywords: G2 Italian literature, belonging, sustainability, nomadic subjectivity Piera Carroli Australian National University Is Italian literature becoming nomad? Drawing on Braidotti s philosophical concepts of nomadic subjectivity and sustainability, this paper proposes a perception of 21st century literature as nomad, in need of a nomadic aesthetics and perception of poetics. Elitist canons appear anachronistic in the ever fluctuating, often virtual, 21st century, aerial rather than territorial, cultural space in which literature is one of many practices imagining and generating cultural spaces, inclusive of a multitude of texts made up of disparate enunciations (Fiorentino 2011). The proposition of a nomadic literature intentionally confuses any already challenged notions of fixed canons and national literatures. The literary texts considered, produced astride the two centuries, which, unlike earlier texts [that] used syntax to cry out (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 26), uses syntax to escape encaging definitions ( minor, migrant ). It focuses on global themes, intersecting the individual and the collective, the local and the global in their complex narratives leaping into geographies and histories beyond Italian national borders, with women often being protagonists as authors. Engaged in literary and political globalism, these writers strive for a nomadic subjectivity. No longer just collective or political, or autobiographical, their literature has escaped easy labelling and strict definitions. Using several nomad texts, the case will be made that this recent literature, often considered minor in the negative sense, provides the opportunity to reverse racist discourses and turn contamination and otherness into a language and literature of innovation and change (Carroli 2010) by including texts able to reflect and express Italy's global society and a literary globalism. Can literature once more help build Italian unity from difference, and, this time, with difference? Keywords: Italian literature, nomadic subjectivity, migration Joshua Carter University of Melbourne Narratives of Trauma in Igiaba Scego s Oltre Babilonia The novels of author Igiaba Scego examine the relationship between trauma and language. The author s second novel Oltre Babilonia follows the lives of two sets of mother and daughter (Miranda and Mar, and Zuhra and Maryam) connected via their relationship to an absent father and husband Elias. These two interlocking stories focus primarily on the younger protagonist s difficulties integrating into Italian society. Both daughters are not without their own problems: Zuhra suffers from the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of her high school professor, and Mar must come to terms with the loss of both her unborn child and her partner Patricia. However, each daughter s personal trauma is exacerbated by the historical and cultural legacies of their parents, a concept which Marianne Hirshe termed post-memory 1. As life-stories are presented 1 Hirsh, M. Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile. Poetics Today (1996): Print. 7

8 genealogically violence is intertwined with identity and continues to affect family members long after events have occurred. The two stories of mother and daughter illustrate that inter-generational trauma is transmitted through language. In Oltre Babilonia trauma is presented as a gendered experience. While both sexes were equally subjected to the violence trauma arguably forms the basis of female subjectivity in the text. The cultural significance attributed to the mother-tongue ensures that personal histories are conveyed from mother to daughter in their native language. Furthermore, in being firstgeneration migrants and women the stories of both mothers are predominantly confined to the family and are expressed in the language of the private sphere rather than Italian, disallowing memories from entering into the cultural frameworks of their new country. Scego places the onus on her protagonists to trace trauma back to its origin in order to illustrate that their troubles are not distinct from the past, though rather represent a continuation of it. Keywords: Igiaba Scego, intergenerational trauma, post-memory, gender. Marinella Caruso and Josh Brown University of Western Australia Translating and dubbing films into Italian with imovie This paper discusses the integration of a multimedia project involving the video editing application imovie in an Italian course at the University of Western Australia. The use of video materials in language classrooms has a long tradition. Thanks to technological advances, video materials can now be offered to students as texts to manipulate by means of computer editing software. We report on a project designed for first-year students from the advanced stream (post high-school) which involved dubbing a five-minute sequence of a film from English into Italian using imovie. Using results from a survey distributed online as well as written comments from students, the paper argues that the integration of an assessment task involving imovie was a fundamentally positive learning experience. Despite initial apprehensions by students to use new software and concerns about time constraints, we show how students re-interpreted sophisticated linguistic expressions in Italian in their own way. The evaluation of the project demonstrates that the application of imovie to language learning was a positive learning experience even when students were not familiar with the software. Daniela Cavallaro University of Auckland Staging hysteria: Clotilde Masci s Vigilia nuziale During her playwriting career for professional and amateur theatre, Clotilde Masci ( ) wrote more than one hundred plays. Her major works touched on topics which would be the focus of the rising feminist theatre: marriage as the main role offered to women in Italian society, unmarried or widowed life, separation and divorce. The protagonist of Masci s 1952 drama Vigilia nuziale Cristina, at nearly 30 years of age, is about to marry the son of her father s best friend someone she barely knows. On the eve of the wedding, however, she claims first to her family and later to the police to have stolen a ring. After the confession of the true thief proves her innocence, the play ends with a subdued Cristina who asks her relatives for forgiveness, meekly obeying her fiancé s instructions, as the wedding preparations resume reviewers of Vigilia nuziale were baffled by the character of Cristina, mentioning hysteria as a possible cause for her behaviour. In recent decades, women playwrights have rewritten cases of 8

9 female hysterics, or have used characters of hysterical women as figures of artist s manqué, women whose creative potential had been stifled. In my presentation, I will show that the characterisation of Cristina s traumatic past, repressed present and threatening future, together with Masci s choice of the profession of a medical doctor for Cristina s fiancé, make of this play a suggestive precursor to recent works on hysteria by contemporary women authors. I will conclude that Cristina s hysterical behaviour and her continued confession of guilt, with the foreseeable consequence of several years in jail, may be a last desperate attempt to avoid what she knows will be the confinement and suffocation of a wife, the silencing of her creative potentials. Keywords: Clotilde Masci hysteria Italian women writers Italian theatre Mirna Cicioni Monash University Telescopes and Film Reels: Autobiography and Humour in three Italian Memories of Childhood in the Holocaust I look at three autobiographical texts by Italian Jewish writers who, in their sixties, retrieved memories of their childhoods after the anti-semitic laws of Lia Levi (born in 1931) wrote Una bambina e basta (A Little Girl and No More) in 1994; the book has not been translated into English. Aldo Zargani (born in 1933) wrote Per violino solo (For Solo Violin) in 1993; the English translation was published in Renzo Modiano (born in 1936) wrote Di razza ebraica (Of Jewish Race) in 2005; the English translation, by Susan Walker and myself, was published in Expelled from state schools after 1938 and forced to live in hiding after the armistice of 8 September, 1943, the young narrated selves experience exclusion, isolation, dangers, constant fear for themselves and their loved ones, but also moments of human solidarity and occasional childish curiosity and playfulness. I focus on the ways the adult narrating selves look back at their young selves: the juxtaposition of the two perspectives is at times humorous and at times selfdeprecatingly ironic. Daniela Cosmini-Rose Flinders University Italian Civil Alien Corps in South Australia, the forgotten enemy aliens The period during the Second World War is remembered by the Italians in Australia as one of the hardest of their experience as migrants, owing to the restrictions that they were subjected to and to the anti-italian sentiment that had spread throughout the nation. On the day that Australia received news that Italy had entered the war (11 June 1940) the migrants of Italian origin were no longer just aliens (unnaturalised foreigners) but became enemy aliens. A number of Italian migrants, both naturalised and unnaturalised, were arrested and interned on the basis of their political views, occupation and social standing. Those who were not arrested were given the option of volunteering for military service, otherwise, from 1942, they were obliged to serve in the Civil Alien Corps (CAC) to work on projects of a non-combatant nature such as construction works, salt production, cutting and handling of timber and scrub clearing. Although numerous studies have focused on the internment of Italians, to date there has been very little research to explore the issues related to those enemy aliens who were removed from their usual occupations and loved ones to serve in the Civil Alien Corps, and were subjected to discrimination and loss of liberties. This paper presents the findings from a study of the experiences of Italian migrants who served in the CAC in South Australia during the Second World War based on the analysis of personal 9

10 archival files that contain information on the projects migrants were employed in, documentation relating to financial, medical leave, disciplinary matters and letters sent by the aliens themselves to their families, which will provide insight into the experiences of a forgotten group of migrants during an important period of South Australian history. Keywords: Italian Migration, Migrant Experiences, South Australian History, Enemy Aliens. Luciana d'arcangeli Flinders University Un'altra meta' del cielo: genere, sessualita' e identita' sociale nel cinema italiano Ad un primo rapido esame della situazione del cinema Italiano nel nuovo millennio potrebbe apparire di assistere alla nascita di una nuova, anche se limitata, età dell oro per quanto riguarda il cinema italiano declinato al femminile, l espressione di sessualità alternative ed identità sociali che resistano in un epoca liquida alla deregolamentazione e flessibilizzazione dei rapporti sociali. Il presente intervento si propone di effettuare una panoramica sui film ed i dati più significativi del cinema italiano, dal 2000 ad oggi, rispetto ai temi di genere e sessualità, illustrando, ove possibile, i progressi fatti e quelli ancora da fare. Anna Du Chesne Southern Cross University Traditional Wild Food Gathering by Italian Immigrants in Australia The use of gathered wild food plants is a practice that is central to traditional plant knowledge and use in Italy (Nebel & Heinrich, 2009). In the past decade the practice of foraging has become a topic of interest in the Australian popular media. Italian-Australians appear to be key players in this social phenomenon. The objectives are to review the practice of foraging, the gathering of wild plants, in Australia with a focus on Italian immigrants. A review of the scientific and popular literature available on Italian-Australian immigrant use of wild food, ethnographic data, including participant observation and informal interviews, form the basis of this review. Italian immigrants in Australia continue to gather wild food plants. While there is very little scholarly information on the traditional plant practices of Italian-Australian immigrants, there is a growing interest in traditional practices such as foraging in the popular media. Much of the information available is disseminated through the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies, which has resulted in the emergence of the forager as social activist and educator. This is articulated as a social imperative of environmental belonging, demonstrated by engaging in the traditional cultural practice of foraging for weeds. The concern in Australia about invasive exotic species, exemplified by the Noxious Weed Act, may be at odds with the importance of accessing culturally significant plant species often recognised as weeds in the Italian community. This may impact on use patterns and the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). The traditional practice of gathering wild food plants, no longer an essential source of nutrients, is now a pleasurable activity, which has a growing profile as a sustainable practice. Gathering wild plants may be viewed as an expression of cultural identity and memory. Further research is needed in order to document the traditional practices employed by Italian migrants in Australia, as an element of the investigation into the role TEK plays in the maintenance of cultural identity. 10

11 Theodore Ell University of Sydney Intruders in Eden or thoughtless guardians? Giorgio Orelli on the rift between human beings and their sanctuary Swiss-Italian poet Giorgio Orelli (b. 1921) voices the isolated and precarious status of his Ticino homeland, a landscape that dwarfs culture into a particle of nature, pre-social, elemental. But all is not restful in this Swiss sanctuary. Orelli perceives a muted but threatening state of conflict. Hunters stalking their quarry feel their guns suddenly turned aside; rain comes over the farms like an assault; the flight of birds and butterflies seems to carry some vital message that is barely understandable. Are these signs that humanity has trespassed where it is not welcome and may soon be forced out? Or is nature sending a distress signal, appealing to the better side of a guardian that has abused and neglected it? Whatever the case, what confronts the human figures in Orelli s poetry is a sense of wrongness, failed responsibility, distraction from matters of great importance at the edge of thought. The alienation growing in Italian life causes such stress work does not mean a living, institutions do not respond to citizens needs or beliefs, politics is a scene not of building but of tearing apart that it may seem unwarranted to approach it in purely symbolic terms. But symbolism such as Orelli s finds real weight as Italy confronts the ethical as well as the economic side of its crisis. Orelli s poetry can stand as a warning of the consequences of leaving conscience adrift, of allowing the sense of isolation and exposure, the lack of responsiveness between self and setting, to be overlooked through short-sightedness. This is poetry that makes the case for an expansive, searching mentality in a reductive climate: poetry as recourse and redress. Keywords: Poetry; Giorgio Orelli; Switzerland; Ticino; nature; alienation; symbolism; socioeconomic crisis; literary study Marisa Escolar University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Teaching Introduction to Italian Literature, Beyond the Anthology One of the traditional courses in an Italian major, introduction to Italian literature has often been taught as a transhistorical survey of the canon, with the assistance of an anthology that provides historical and literary context (usually strictly Euro/Western-centric), summaries, excerpts, analyses and discussion questions, and texts written in a manner deemed particularly difficult for the students may be paraphrased, translated into contemporary Italian or footnoted. Students thus are led to believe that a single, correct interpretation exists, and are often discouraged thinking that their linguistic or analytical skills are simply preventing them from accessing the answer themselves. A further consequence of this approach is the propagation of the belief that a dozen men created Italian literature, and that they did so by continuously and belatedly borrowing from both their own past as well as European trends. This paper is part of an on-going project in the development of an introductory curriculum that allows students to engage with Italian literature in a dynamic fashion, de-emphasising a smooth historical narrative in favour of a focus on the plurality of Italian literatures. If part of an introductory class is to expose students to such names as Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Goldoni, Manzoni, Foscolo and Leopardi, I argue for the need to do so in a layered fashion: considering how an author wrote and rewrote his text, and how it was subsequently rewritten and repurposed both inside and outside Italy. Italy thus becomes a dynamic contributor to a wider literary conversation, and the Italian canon is permeated by other authors, forms, genres, media and languages. 11

12 After some brief comments/critiques on the traditional approach to teaching Italian literature (which I intend to support with some data/input from courses taught by colleagues throughout the U.S.), I will discuss my own project with specific classroom examples, and, ideally, open the floor to a discussion about alternative approaches. David Faber University of Adelaide FG Fantin: A Complex Sense of Belonging Beginning with the definition without sociological pretension of belonging as a complex dimension of membership of community and personal identity, this paper takes a fresh look at the complex sense of belonging of a significant Italian Australian migrant worker, Francesco Giovanni Fantin ( ), whose life, work and untimely death at the age of 41 have attracted considerable historical attention given his assassination by fascist antagonists at Loveday Internment Camp near Barmera South Australia around 6.30pm on 16 November 1942, shortly after the Battle of El Alamein in which Australian and Italian troops participated on opposing sides. His death was a turning point in the history of wartime preventive deterrent detention of enemy aliens, the single most adverse social event in the history of the Italian community in Australia, then as now one of the largest and most significant ethnic communities in the nation. The paper charts the dimensions of community, both socioeconomic and political, which informed Fantin s sense of working class anarchist identity from his formative years in the Schio district of the Veneto to his sense of identification with Australia on the very eve of his death. Matteo Farina University of South Australia The sequential organisation of openings in Facebook Home interactions Online chats, blogs and social media have provided second language students with more opportunity to interact in the target language. However, the way Italian Native Speaker (NS)s interact in online environments, such as Facebook (FB), is different from the way they communicate in spoken conversation. Thus, being able to understand the way Italian NSs interact on FB is important for teachers in order to explain to students how to communicate in this specific environment. This paper presents the results of one of the first studies that applies Conversation Analysis (CA) to investigate the sequential organisation of the opening posts of FB Home interactions. After describing the terminology utilised in this study, such as explaining what is the Home, a thread, a post and an opening, this paper shows that generally Italian FB users begin FB Home interactions by using a telling. Moreover, tellings which occur in the first post of a FB Home interaction are commonly autobiographical or related to a third person event. After describing what are autobiographical and third person event tellings, this paper continues to analyse the different formats of first post tellings, including textual messages, photo and hyperlink tellings as well as the combination of textual messages and photos or hyperlinks. In conclusion, a better understanding of the way Italian NSs interact on FB might help teachers in developing new materials that may help students improve the communicative competence in the Italian language. Keywords: Facebook, conversation analysis, openings 12

13 David Forgacs New York University Globalisation and the reconfiguration of Italian studies In the past few years, academics whose areas of study have traditionally had a national focus have had to consider how far globalisation has called into question the continued validity of that focus. In the case of Italy, since the global financial crisis of internal economic policy and political affairs have increasingly been shaped by European directives. Migratory flows into and through Italy from many source countries have brought with them a new tide of multiculturalism and multilingualism, which reactionary forces may deplore but are unable to stem. Information and communications technologies have brought about new forms and speeds of connectedness between Italy and the wider world. Italian products from food to films are redefined on global markets and new meanings are assigned to them. At the same time, a growing Italian academic and intellectual diaspora has disconnected Italian expertise and cultural belonging from residence within Italy s borders. In this paper, I will consider some of the implications of these changes for the various fields of Italian studies, both those dealing with contemporary Italy and those concerned with earlier eras, and for the training of future specialists. What does it mean to do Italian studies today and what is it likely to mean tomorrow? John Gatt-Rutter La Trobe University Reading Italian Australian lives Over the last three decades there has been an increasing number of full-length life-writing texts by and/or about Italian Australians, with an often evanescent dividing line between autobiography and biography. In fact, I am studying Italian Australian autobiographies and biographies as a single composite group. Mostly written in English, they claim citizenship within Australia as Italians. Those of the first and second migrant generations are predicated on the paradigm of a migration narrative, while those of the third or later generations articulate a rediscovery of the culture of origin. These full-length Italian-Australian life-writing texts number at least sixty, and collectively emphasise an individualist perspective, whilst broadly sharing a common narrative paradigm. There are also at least a dozen publications each comprising a number of much shorter, predominantly oral, histories by a group of people. These few publications collectively add up to some five hundred life histories. This area of study poses an intriguing set of problems for an Italianist as traditionally defined. Knowledge of Italian language or languages no longer seems to be crucial. A knowledge of Australian social history and social culture would appear to be more relevant. Does this area belong to Italian studies at all? Here, textual analysis veers away from literary valence to discursive valence, which is, of course, equally speculative. To the social scientist or the historian, the discursive valence of life-writing texts, speculative though this is, is likely to be as or more valuable than their highly dubious documentary valence. Experiential issues of space and place, of belonging and identity, endeavour and achievement, dominate migration and transcultural life writing. 13

14 Vivian Gerrand University of Melbourne Donne di Roma: Belonging in the digital paintings of Fabrice de Nola Since 2006, Belgian-Sicilian visual artist Fabrice De Nola has been creating oil on canvas paintings with QR codes (a communication system based on universal spatial-visual symbols first pioneered by Toyota) containing texts and hyperlinks that can be read by mobile phones. In early 2009, an exhibition of De Nola s interactive painting series, Donne di Roma (Women of Rome), was held at Rome s Auditorium complex. The artworks review the positioning of myriad women living in Rome, offering a hopeful vision of belonging in Italy s capital. Poised at the centre of Rome s intercultural grassroots reality, Women of Rome unveils a techno-utopian vision in which to write and to reside, jus domicili, is to belong. Identities in De Nola s paintings emerge as hybrid, interstitial and multiple. Such multiplicity contests fixed conceptions of Italian-ness and jus sanguinis citizenship laws. The relational language of the spaces created by these texts works in various ways to represent new modalities of belonging that are constantly mapped anew via encounters that bring subjectivities in their particularity into being. De Nola s artworks support such belonging by inviting viewers, whoever they might be, to play a part in their evolution. De Nola s paintings thus affirm the existence of, and create, inclusive spaces in which no one is a foreigner: Rome appears as a dynamic site of cultural interaction in which identity remains open not solely to what is present but, also, to the coming community that is yet to emerge. Keywords: Belonging, digital painting, intercultural, migration, potential. Vera Gheno Università di Firenze L Accademia della Crusca alle prese con le sfide del terzo millennio L Accademia della Crusca, nonostante un immagine polverosa, è sempre stata all avanguardia nell uso della tecnologia in ambito linguistico, creando grandi corpora di lingua (come il LIR- Lessico dell Italiano Radiofonico e il LIT-Lessico dell Italiano Televisivo), riversando in rete il suo patrimonio documentario e librario (come le 5 Impressioni del Vocabolario o l Archivio Digitale o, ancora, seguendo con attenzione il dibattito sull uso dell inglese come lingua esclusiva per l alta formazione ( e collaborando da vicino con il mondo della scuola per esplorare i cambiamenti nell ambito della didattica dell italiano ( Una delle ultime mosse, dopo una presenza quasi decennale sul web tramite il sito è stata lo sbarco sui social network, in particolare Facebook e Twitter. Come si trova la Crusca sui social network? Quali sono gli insegnamenti che un antica istituzione linguistica può trarre dai nuovi mezzi di comunicazione? E cosa si aspettano i navigatori della Rete dalla Crusca? Dopo più di un anno di permanenza sui SN, siamo pronti a tracciare un bilancio di come la presenza sui social abbia influito sulla percezione dell Accademia della Crusca (soprattutto in Italia). Un altra questione è quella riguardante il contenuto di tale presenza. Nel 2014, in un epoca che Naomi Baron definisce tendenzialmente di linguistic whateverism, con una spiccata attitudine a rivolgere una scarsa attenzione alla precisione grafica e ortografica, e in un paese come l Italia, in cui c è una grossa percentuale di semialfabetizzati e analfabeti di ritorno e funzionali, cosa può fare la Crusca attraverso dei canali meno formali della stampa tradizionale o delle conferenze? Keywords: Accademia della Crusca, Twitter, Facebook, Comunicazione Mediata dal Computer, Sociolinguistica dell Italiano Contemporaneo 14

15 Francesco Goglia and Veronica Fincati University of Exeter, Universidad Pontificia Comillas de Madrid Maintenance and use of immigrant languages in the Veneto region The Veneto region is among the regions with the highest number of immigrants (11.0% according to Istat). The majority of immigrants work in the local factories and in the services sector. The distribution of immigrants across the territory is even in both large and small cities. In recent years the process of family reunion has increased the number of immigrant children and teenagers. Children of immigrants account for 11.2% of the school population in the region (Anastasia and Fincati, 2011). The Veneto region s linguistic repertoire includes Italian and the Veneto dialect, and there is a situation of de facto bilingualism with diglossia in which Italian is the H language and the Veneto dialect is the L language. Immigrant languages enrich this bilingualism. This paper is based on research supported by the British Academy (SG110908), which entailed the distribution of 149 sociolinguistic questionnaires in three secondary schools with a high percentage of students with immigrant backgrounds in the provinces of Treviso and Padova. The questionnaires aimed to collect information on language choice, maintenance and attitudes. The pupils who filled in the questionnaire belong to 23 nationalities 56% of the sample were Moroccan, Romanian, Albanian and Chinese, the four main immigrant groups in the region. This study reveals that the use of Italian is prevalent in the school context or in contacts with local people, while immigrant languages are maintained in the family context with an emerging role of Italian within the family, mainly with brothers and sisters. The use of the Veneto dialect is also attested particularly with peers. Results also show different degrees of maintenance and use of immigrant languages according to different immigrant groups. Isobel Grave University of South Australia Mediating metaphor in Italian English English Italian literary translation The paper explores metaphor from the perspective of the translator, attempting to understand better which characteristics of this linguistic resource promote, or conversely, inhibit the translator s mediation. The language pair is Italian and English, the source texts are from both languages and are all works established in the literary canon of their respective cultures. On the face of it, the existence of synonymous words in a language pair yields referential equivalence until the multiple meanings of the word in question are unpacked. Such is the case of the metaphorically used Italian verb portare in an Ungaretti poem; in it are packed both the meanings of wear and carry, and the message of the poem in the original coheres around this polysemy. This instance is the point of departure for exploring a range of strategies translators into English have used to mediate such polysemy in a metaphorical framework. The extent to which the meaning of a word may be viewed as being made up, at least in part, of the meanings of other words (Cruse, 1997) implies that any discussion of metaphor must look at its contextual relations and the strength of collocational constraints. The first example is the Dantean metaphor of the keys ( le chiavi serrando e diserrando/ the keys locking and unlocking, Inf.13, 58-60); the commensurability between the ST and a number of translations of this image points to the acknowledged conceptual simplicity of complementaries and the widespread representation of opposites across languages. Counter examples are provided by an Italian translation of Patrick White s The Eye of the Storm where several metaphorical collocations support the findings of Kenny (2001) that collocation can be the site of creative mediation on the part of the translator. 15

16 Tracey Griffiths University of Melbourne Un vello che più che d'or fino splender parea: Literary Colour and Fashion in Early Modern Venice At the end of the thirty-fourth canto of Ludovico Ariosto's epic, Orlando furioso, during a journey back from the moon, the apostle St John takes the knightly champion Giovanni Astolfo to visit the palace of the three Parche, the Fates of Graeco-Roman mythology. In the palace, the Fates have rooms filled with linen, silk, cotton and wool, in a variety of colours, which they are busily spinning into life-threads. Ariosto tells us that some are belli, and others brutti, opposing categories which seem, at first glance, like the lists found in contemporary fashion magazines, itemising what is currently in and what out. But, despite having established these categories, Ariosto fails to allocate the fibres he lists to one or the other, or, more importantly for my purposes, to nominate the colours belonging to each. In this, he differs from other writers of the period, who were less reticent in evaluating specific colours. Jehan Courtois, for example, in his manual on heraldic colours, debates the relative merits of each as he ranks them, nominating gold as the most beautiful. He evaluates the colours aesthetically, morally and on a scale of nobility, and, although he does not explicitly mention economic values, his ranking corresponds closely to the relative costs of fabrics in each of these colours. This paper follows coloured threads through some of the literature read in early modern Venice, exploring the colours of written clothing in connection with fashion, and focusing particularly on the ways in which these colours were valued. Keywords: history early-modern Venice colour clothing textiles fashion Luigi Gussago La Trobe University The role of comparative literature in Italian Studies: the example of the Picaresque novel This paper attempts to underline the importance of comparative literature not only as an area of intersection between distant national cultures and languages, but also in the light of Italian studies in particular, as a result of a stimulating contrast with other cultural experiences. In order to survey more than one option of literary comparisons, I will follow Ulrich Weisstein s account of comparative methods, such as influence and imitation, reception and survival, thematology, etc., with a focus on the European context. On a doubtless lower key to Goethe s ambitious plan of a Weltliteratur, I will describe the evolution of one of the oldest forms of story-telling, the picaresque novel, and its influence on recent Italian prose. Originating in late-renaissance Spain as a polemical response to the conformism imposed by the Catholic Counter-Reformation, this kind of narrative centred on a rogue s farcical adventures has crossed frontiers and divides incessantly, from Britain to Germany, Italy, Russia and France, to name but a few, becoming the unreliable messenger of Enlightened modernity and its inevitable quandaries. In more recent history, the pícaros have joined the voices of Post-War disillusionment and the outcry announcing the end of all ideologies, in keeping with their usual understatement and unyielding self-indulgence. In this perspective, the novels of contemporary Italian authors who have reshaped the figure of the rogue in a modern way, e.g. Stefano Benni, Aldo Busi, Cesare De Marchi, etc., can be better appreciated when compared with other representatives of a similar picaresque anti-epos. Keywords: Comparative Literature, Italian Studies, Picaresque Novel, Contemporary Italian Literature 16

17 John Hajek and Yvette Slaughter University of Melbourne Is this the end of the Italian wave in Australia? What happens when demography and education come together? Since mass migration began to Australia after the Second World War, the wave of Italians arriving in the country has forged an indelible path across the Australian landscape. Just as Australia s identity and demographics have changed fundamentally over time, so have the characteristics of the Italo-Australian community in Australia. This paper utilises data from Australian censuses as well as on the study of Italian in schools to identify areas of success, ongoing concern, and change in the Italo-Australian community particularly on the language front. First, the presenters use census data to track the changing demography of Italo-Australians. Based on home language, country of birth and ethnicity statistics, they look at patterns of shift across ages groups, time and location, as well as at correlations between identifying as Italian and the use of the language in the home. They also consider the implications of a new sudden influx of young Italians landing on Australian shores. Second, they give consideration to the learning of Italian in Australian schools and the possible implications for assisting language maintenance in the Italian community, as the number of Italianborn residents in Australia declines. While Italian has become one of the most studied languages in Australia, the impact on the maintenance and development of bilingualism among those of Italian background appears to be largely negative for reasons identified during our presentation. Given current demographic and educational trends across the nation, they ask whether we might be witnessing the end of the Italian wave that began to hit Australian shores in the post-war period. Keywords: demographics, migration, language education, sociolinguistics, Roger Hillman Australian National University Verdi and Cinema The link between opera and cinema, dominant sites of cultural history in the 19 th and 20 th century respectively, is perhaps strongest in the case of Italy. Of Gallone s 1937film Scipione l Africano, Jeremy Tambling writes: we may see grand opera reaching its apotheosis in cinema, the medium of twentieth-century Italian popular culture, a fulfilment of Italian opera. 2 For Gramsci, popular reception of Verdi operas led to a whole repertory of clichés, 3 a kind of musical library of pulp fiction. Verdi s music is crucial for an understanding of the engagement with history in films by some postwar Italian directors, notably Bertolucci (in the direction of Gramsci) and Visconti. Beyond that, the status of Verdi as freedom-fighter and political icon was drawn on by the Italian political spectrum to underpin false analogies between the Resistance and the Risorgimento, as a way of rendering the checkered history of Italy in World War II less complex and more comfortable. In Italian film history, the swansong to this direction aptly comes with the Tavianis use of the Verdi Requiem in The Night of San Lorenzo, after which Verdi in particular seems to return to the fold that was also ongoingly occupied by Italian opera, namely global music (cf. the three tenors). The national vis-à-vis the international resonances of Verdi, on soundtracks far from confined to Italian films, make him a rich object of research into this balance. The bigger issue is the 2 Jeremy Tambling, Opera and the Culture of Fascism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985),

18 relationship between history and myth. It converges in a figure like Verdi, both in his biography (the fortuitousness of his name, as initials, serving as a rallying call to Italian unification) and his reception. The use (Syberberg s Hitler) and avoidance (by most directors of the New German Cinema) of Wagner can serve as a contemporary counter-example. Music in film evokes not just a particular era, but the subsequent reception of that era in relation to other aspects of the film narrative. It suggests, in other words, nothing less than the simultaneity of historical layers and debates. Keywords: Verdi cinema cultural memory John Kinder University of Western Australia Anglicisms in Australian Italian in the 1850s: testing universals in diachrony The systematic study of language borrowing was established in the 1950s (Weinreich, Haugen). The earliest studies of Italian in migration contexts focused almost exclusively on borrowing and were brought to full scientific rigour in the early 1980s by the work of Bettoni, who adopted Clyne s taxonomy of transference. In the half-century since then the body of research into Italian in Australia and other migration settings gives rich analysis of the processes of borrowing and insights into language structure. These analyses and insights will be tested in this paper against a corpus of written Italian produced in the 1850s. The Martelli letters are a set of private correspondence, written in Western Australia between 1854 and This corpus is distinctive, with respect to most studies of Italian in Australia, since it is from a century before mass migration, it is written and it was produced by a person highly proficient in standard Italian (as well as in English). The paper will demonstrate that the trends identified in post-1950s migration Italian are consistently present already in this earlier corpus of written Italian. In particular patterns of integration at the levels of morphology, syntax and discourse are remarkably consistent with more recent corpora. Some significant exceptions will be identified and discussed. The project will also contribute to back-dating the presence of a number of common Anglicisms in the Italian language. Keywords: Italian language, language contact, 19th century John Kinder University of Western Australia An Italian in 19th century Western Australia: Raffaele Martelli and his networks The presence of Italians in nineteenth-century Australia is usually accounted for in descriptions of lone travellers aristocrats, political refugees, missionaries who forged their own fortunes in difficult colonial territory and generally disappeared into anonymity. Such travellers or migrants may, however, have belonged to wide-ranging and active networks of persons who shared information, ideas and material support. One such figure is Raffaele Martelli. Born in Ancona in 1811, Martelli was a priest and professor at the local seminary and the local liceo, and was in good relations with the large Jewish population of Ancona. He participated in the First War of Independence as chaplain of the Battaglione Universitario Romano. He found it increasingly difficult to remain in the Papal States as events unfolded during 1848, with the Papal Allocution and the War, and then with the Repubblica Romana of Through a series of chance encounters, and a coincidence of friendships, he travelled to the Swan River Colony in 1853 and lived his remaining 27 years there, in comparative anonymity. His letters, however, and those of his friends, reveal ongoing contacts with various parts of Italy, Malta, Spain and France. This network exchanged information about personal and public life, swapped books, newspapers and photographs, put 18

19 persons in contact with others of potential interest in the circles of missionaries, church authorities, the Roman art world. This paper will describe the network and will argue that, while most of the participants in the network have left little trace of their individual lives, the network itself made a significant contribution to nineteenth-century Australia and also, in part, to cultural life in Italy. Keywords: Travel, migration, 19th century Sara King National Archives of Australia Promoting innovative Italian Migration History teaching in Australian universities using contemporary archival sources Migration records held by the National Archives of Australia have been a long-standing major source of evidence for researchers and postgraduate students with an interest in Australian migration studies. However, in recent years, shifts in technology and in the approach to dissemination of information of the National Archives allow for significant integration of migration primary sources in the teaching of undergraduate subjects. In particular, the contemporary process of digitisation of migration records significantly increases the capacity to unlock original, casespecific material traditionally accessible only through national and state offices as they are now available online. With over 8 million records and 23 million pages already available in a digital format, undergraduate students now enjoy unique opportunities to become accustomed with archival sources and gain innovative perspectives on migration history. This reverses the physical engagement with archival research and offers teachers new opportunities to bring the archive to the classroom. Importantly, this technological shift has even stronger implications for distance learners. Keywords: contemporary archival sources; digital records; migration history; Italian diaspora Alice Loda & Francesco Borhesi University of Sydney Expanding, re-thinking, re-writing: non-native Italian writers and the Italian literary tradition It is now more than twenty years since Italian migrant writers stepped on the national literary scene. Their peculiar voice has raised growing attention worldwide and has created new methodological and critical issues, starting from the contested role they play within the Italian literary tradition. Despite their significant contribution, non-native Italian writers have suffered a process of isolation, being in most cases separated from the rest of the Italian literary tradition. But can migration be considered as a literary category? Can authors with very different poetics go under the same label just because of their shared migrant condition? Is there any common aesthetic aspect able to eventually justify this categorisation? This paper explores the boundaries of the Italian literary canon in order to identify the position of non-native Italian writers, with a particular focus on poetry. On one hand, it proposes a theoretical synthesis of some key-concepts that are animating the global debate on contemporary literature. On the other, based on textual evidence from selected poets, it proposes an extended taxonomy for Italian contemporary literature. Keywords: migration literature, multilingualism, contemporary Italian poetry, transcultural writing 19

20 Rocco Cesare Loiacono University of Western Australia Practical aspects of legal translation: the translation of an Italian land sale contract This paper examines the difficulties associated with the translation of contracts concluded between companies or individuals of two different countries. These difficulties arise from the nature of legal language, which has both a universal and a specific character: universal in that it distinguishes itself from ordinary language usage in all cultures, yet particular in that the legal language of each nation is linked to the peculiar culture and traditions of that nation. This intercultural aspect of legal translation becomes even more problematic when one considers that contracts are prescriptive legal texts, since they have the fundamental objective of determining the rights and responsibilities of the parties in a particular situation. The translation of a contract at an international level must have the same binding effect, and outline with precision these rights and responsibilities, with respect to the original language text. Any misinterpretation on the part of the translator in this regard could lead to (potentially costly) disputes. Such requirements underline the increasing need for translations of legal texts which convey appropriately in both languages the meaning and objectives of the original. In an increasingly globalised world, the need to bridge the legal and cultural divide between nations is of growing importance. Many Australians are acquiring land in Italy given the favourable exchange rate of recent times. Italy is a civil law nation; Australia is a common law nation, thus two distinct legal cultures are involved. This paper will analyse various problematical translations in an Italian contract for sale of land and propose possible resolutions that can bridge the legal and cultural divide whilst at the same time ensuring that the meanings of the terms in question are transmitted in the target text so as not to pose interpretation problems. Keywords: Legal translation Italian / English land sale contract Laura Lori Australian National University Italia Per poter riflettere consapevolmente sul futuro degli studi di italianistica nel mondo e in particolare in Australia è necessario capire a fondo la mentalità italiana contemporanea. Dalla costruzione ad Affile del monumento al Generale Graziani, riconosciuto criminale di guerra, al dibattito sullo ius solis, gli italiani sembrano, nella migliore delle ipotesi, impreparati ad accettare la multiculturalità tanto quanto sembrano continuare a rifiutarsi di riconoscere le responsabilità dell epoca coloniale. Cieca verso il passato e sorda al futuro l Italia sembra davvero condannata ad un eterno presente di disoccupazione, corruzione e nepotismo in cui, gattopardescamente, tutto cambia per rimanere sempre uguale a sé stesso e in cui l Altro non smette mai di essere tale. L intenzione di questo intervento è di tratteggiare brevemente la rappresentazione dell Altro per eccellenza, ossia la donna africana, nella letteratura italiana contemporanea, per cercare di contestualizzare i continui attacchi al Ministro dell Integrazione Cécile Kyenge e valutare come evitare di allevare generazioni xenofobe e sensibili alle sirene dell estrema destra che cercano d incantare l Europa nel tempo della crisi. Gregoria Manzin University of Melbourne Margaret Mazzantini and the Horror of the Other Margaret Mazzantini is an actress and writer, daughter of the Italian writer Carlo Mazzantini and the Irish artist Anne Donnelly. In this paper I will look at two of her most successful novels, Non ti 20