Dr Loredana Polezzi
Associate Professor (Reader)
Academic Director, Warwick Venice Centre
Teaching and research interests
- Travel writing
- Translation Studies
- Colonial and Post-Colonial Italian Writing
- Italian as a Foreign Language
Contact details
Room H412
Tel: 024 7652 3253
Email: L.Polezzi@warwick.ac.uk
Academic profile
Dott.Ling.Lett. (Siena), MA, PhD (Warwick)
Loredana Polezzi studied Modern Languages at the University of Venice and then at the University of Siena, where she obtained her first degree in 1987. She later completed an MA in Italian Studies (Applied Linguistics) and a Phd in Translation Studies at the University of Warwick. In the early nineties she taught at the University of Birmingham, before returning to Warwick, where she is currently Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer. In the past few years she has also held the post of Director of the Humanities Research Centre (1999-2000 and 2001-2002) and has been Visiting Professor at the University of Siena (Arezzo) and Milan Catholic University (Brescia).
Her research focuses on the history of travel writing and the connection between geographical and social mobility on the one hand and, on the other, the theories and practices of translation. She has written widely on travel to Italy, as well as on contemporary Italian travel writing. Her monograph Translating Travel: Contemporary Italian Travel Writing in English Translation (Aldershot & Brookfield: Ashgate, 2001) is devoted to the critical debate concerning Italian travel literature and to the effects of translation on the reception of twentieth-century Italian travelogues. Her interest in translation and mobility is also reflected in the special issue of The Translator devoted to ‘Translation, Travel, Migration’ (Autumn 2006), which she guest-edited. She is currently working on a monograph devoted to representations of Africa produced by Italian travellers during the colonial and post-colonial period. A series of articles on this topic have already appeared in journals such as Modern Italy, Italian Studies, Anglistica, Romance Studies. She is co-editor, with Jennifer Burns, of Borderlines: Migrazioni e identità nel Novecento (Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Editore, 2003) and, with Charlotte Ross, of In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson, 2007).
Synergies between Loredana Polezzi’s research on the literature of Italian colonial and economic emigration and Burns’ research on immigration literature have led to the creation of a module on these subjects in the Birmingham-Warwick MA in Italian Studies. Burns and Polezzi also organized a conference at Warwick in 2002, entitled ‘Borderlines’, which brought together scholars from around the world to discuss the impact of emigration, internal migration and immigration, as expressed in literary texts and cinema, on the notion of Italian national identity. Papers from this conference were subsequently published in the bilingual volume Borderlines (see above).
Developing these connected research itineraries still further, Burns and Polezzi applied in 2005 for funding from the AHRC, under their special project on ‘Diasporas, Migration and Identities’. Their bid was successful, providing funding for a series of workshops in 2006-7, closing with a two-day colloquium (June 2007), on the topic of ‘Mobility and Identity Formation: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the “Italian case”’. These events took the specific case of Italy, and its multiple histories of migration outwards, inwards and within, and place it in the context of concepts and studies of migration in other national contexts and in other disciplines, such as English, French and German Studies, Sociology, Law, Film and Theatre Studies. Viewed from these alternative perspectives, additional insights can be gained into the impact of mobility on Italian identities, and, reciprocally, light can be shed by Italian experiences and cultural phenomena on similar processes in other cultures and disciplines.
Publications
Monographs
L. Polezzi, Translating Travel: Contemporary Italian Travel Writing in English Translation, Studies in European Cultural Transition, 12 (Aldershot & Brookfield: Ashgate, 2001)
Edited and Translated Volumes
L. Polezzi and S. Ouditt (eds), Studies in Travel Writing, special issue on ‘Travel Writing and Italy’, 16:2 (June 2012);
L. Polezzi and C. Ross (eds), In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson, 2007)
L. Polezzi (ed.), The Translator, special issue on 'Translation, Travel, Migration', 12:2 (Autumn 2006)
J. Burns and L. Polezzi (eds), Borderlines: Migrazioni e identita' nel Novecento (Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Editore, 2003)
R. di Napoli, L. Polezzi, A. King (eds), Fuzzy Boundaries? Modern Languages and the Humanities (London: CILT, 2001)
Lady Bell, Piccolo manuale di giochi per viaggiatori, ed. and trans. by L. Polezzi (Palermo: Sellerio, 1990)
Selected Articles
L. Polezzi, ‘Translation and Migration’, Translation Studies, 5:3 (2012), 345-56
S. Ouditt and L. Polezzi, ‘Introduction: Italy as Place and Space’, Studies in Travel Writing, 16:2 (2012), pp. 97-105
L. Polezzi, 'Migration and Translation', Handbook of Translation Studies, ed. by Yves Gambier & Luc van Doorslaer, vol. 3 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012), pp. 102-107
L. Polezzi, ‘Questioni di lingua: fra traduzione e autotraduzione’, in Leggere il testo e il mondo: vent’anni di scrittura della migrazione in Italia, ed. by F. Pezzarossa and I. Rossini (Bologna: CLUEB, 2012), pp. 15-31
L. Polezzi, ‘Precarietà’, in Precarietà e Postautonomia, Quaderni della Libellula (2011), ed. by M. Jansen and F. Colleoni
L. Polezzi, ’Dialoghi di frontiera: l’italianità declinata in culture’, interview by S. Pitari, FormaFluens (January-March 2011),pp. 7-11
L. Polezzi, 'Polylingualism and Self-Translation in Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete and Giose Rimanelli's Familia, in A. Ledgeway and A. L. Lepschy (eds), Into and Out of Italy: Lingua e cultura della migrazione italiana (Perugia: Guerra, 2010), pp. 137-46.
L. Polezzi, ‘Lingua, identità e storia in Christ in Concrete di Pietro di Donato’, in F. Sinopoli (ed.), La Storia nella scrittura diasporica (Rome: Bulzoni, 2009), 137-61.
L. Polezzi, ‘Intercultural Nonsense? The Humour of Fosco Maraini’, in E. Tarantino and C. Caruso (eds), Nonsense and Other Senses: Regulated Absurdity in Literature (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 313-34.
L. Polezzi, ‘L’Etiopia raccontata agli italiani’, R. Bottoni (ed.) in L’Italia e l’Etiopia 1935-1941. A settant’anni dall’Impero fascista (Bologna: il Mulino, 2008), 285-306.
L. Polezzi , 'La mobilita' come modello: ripensando i margini della scrittura italiana’, in A. Gnisci and N. Moll (eds), Studi Europei e Mediterranei, Studi (e testi) italiani 22 (Rome: Università degli Studi di Roma, La Sapienza, 2008), 115-28.
L. Polezzi, ‘L’Etiopia raccontata agli italiani’, in R. Bottoni (ed.) L’Italia e l’Etiopia 1935-1941. A settant’anni dall’Impero fascista (Bologna: il Mulino, 2008), 285-306.
L. Polezzi, ‘Mobility’, in M. Baker and G. Saldanha (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 2nd edn, revised and extended (London: Routledge, 2008), 172-78.
L. Polezzi: ‘Between the Exotic and the Heroic: Re-reading the African tales of Italian travellers’, Fogli di anglistica, 1-2 (2007), 9-24.
L. Polezzi, ‘“Mal d’Africa” and its Memory: Heroes and antiheroes in pre- and postwar readings of the Italian presence in Africa’, in D. Hipkins and G. Plain (eds), War-Torn Tales (Peter Lang: 2007), 39-64.
L. Polezzi, 'White, Male, and Italian?: Performing Masculinity in Italian Travel Writing about Africa', in L. Polezzi and C. Ross, In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy (Madison: Faireliegh Dickinson, 2007), pp. 29-55
L. Polezzi, 'Introduction: Translation, Travel, Migration', in The Translator, special issue on 'Translation, Travel, Migration', guest ed. Loredana Polezzi, 12:2 (Autumn 2006), 1-20
L. Polezzi, 'Mixing Mother Tongues: Language, Narrative and the Spaces of Memory in Postcolonial Works by Italian Women Writers', Romance Studies, 24:2 (2006), 149-58 and 24:3 (2006), 215-25
L. Polezzi, 'The Mirror and the Map: Italian Women Writing the Colonial Space', Italian Studies, 61:2 (Autumn 2006), 191-205
L. Polezzi, ‘Non solo colonie: l“Africa” raccontata da scrittrici italiane contemporanee’/‘Non solo colonie: “Africa” in the work of contemporary Italian women writers’, in J. Burns e L. Polezzi (eds), Borderlines: Migrazioni e identita' nel Novecento (Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Editore, 2003), pp. 107-23 and pp. 309-21
L. Polezzi, ‘Between Gender and Genre: The Travels of Estella Canziani’, in G. Hooper and T. Youngs, eds, Perspectives on Travel Writing (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 121-37
L. Polezzi, 'Vittime o traditori? Vecchie e nuove metafore del tradurre e del traduttore', Semicerchio, xxx-xxxi (2004), pp. 7-10
L. Polezzi, ‘Imperial Reproductions: The Circulation of Colonial Images across Popular Genres and Media in the 1920s and 1930s’, Modern Italy, 8.1 (Spring 2003), pp. 31-47
L. Polezzi, ‘Aristocrats, Geographers, Reporters…: Travelling through ‘Italian Africa’ in the 1930s’, in C. Burdett and D. Duncan (eds), European Travel Writing in the 1930s (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002), pp. 187-204
L. Polezzi, ‘Did Someone Just Travel All Over Me? Travel Writing and the Travelee’, In J-Y Les Disez and J. Borm, Seuils & traverses: Enjeux de l’?criture du voyage, 2 vols (Brest: Universit? de Bretagne Occidentale, 2002), vol. II, pp. 303-12
L. Polezzi, 'Travels through Translated Africa', Anglistica, special issue on 'Texts in Transit', 5.1-2 (2001), pp. 79-103
L. Polezzi, 'Esotismi-eroismi: motivi d'Africa nell'immaginario fascista', in A. Brilli and F. Chieli, eds, Immagini e retorica di regime (Milan: Motta, 2001), pp. 51-54
L. Polezzi: ‘Reflections of Things Past: Building Italy through the Mirror of Translation’, New Comparison, 29 (Spring 2000), pp. 27-47
L. Polezzi & R. Di Napoli, ‘What Language Does Italian Culture Speak?’, in K. Seago and N. Mc Bride (eds), Target Culture – Target Language?, AFSL/CILT Current Issues in University Language Teaching Series (London: CILT, 2000), pp. 93-115
L. Polezzi, ‘Different Journeys along the River: Claudio Magris’s Danubio and Its Translation’, MLR, 93.3 (July 1998), 678-94
L. Polezzi, ‘Oltre la fine
L. Polezzi, ‘Rewriting Tibet: Italian Travellers in English Translation’, The Translator, special issue on Translation & Minority, guest editor Lawrence Venuti, 4.2 (November 1998), 321-42
L. Polezzi, ‘Thomas Jones: autobiografia e viaggio nelle memorie d’un paesaggista gallese in Italia’, Intersezioni, 18.1 (April 1998), 67-84
L. Polezzi, ‘L’antipellegrino: ribaltamenti di un modello
L. Polezzi, 'Concordancers in the Design and Implementation of Foreign Language Courses', Computers and Education, 23.1-2 (August/September 1994), 89-96.
L. Polezzi, 'Piero a Bloomsbury', in A. Brilli (ed.), Piero della Francesca nella cultura europea e americana (Arezzo: Universita' degli studi di Siena, 1993), pp. 21-39
L. Polezzi, 'Concordancing and the Teaching of Ab Initio Italian Language for Specific Purposes', ReCALL, 9 (November 1993), pp. 14-18
Textbooks and other FLT materials
Italia 2000, Multimedia Italian Course (Milan: Giunti, 1999); co-author and member of methodological committee of the Italia 2000 consortium
L. Polezzi and R. Peressini, Italianissimo 1 Activity Book (London: BBC books, 1994)
L. Polezzi, Short Stories in Italian, BBC Radio 4, December 1994
L. Polezzi, Short Stories in Italian - 2nd series, BBC Radio 4, November 1995
Other
L. Polezzi, ‘Ospitalita' '/’Hospitality’, French trans. ‘Hospitalite' ’ by J.-Y. Le Disez, in I. Berne' and J.Y. Le Disez (eds), Ecriture en partage…: Brest-Finistere allers-retours (Brest: Langues du Tonnerre/hopala!, 2003), pp. 48-49
L. Polezzi, 'Estella's Travels', in Louisa Starr Canziani and Estella Canziani: Two Artist Travellers, exhibition catalogue, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 29th March - 15th June 2003, pp. 6-10
PhD students supervised
Monia Andreucci, ‘The Translation of Contemporary Multilingual Italian Writing into English’.
Serena Bassi, ‘Imagining Today’s Italy through Translation: An Analysis of Italian Contemporary Literature in English Translation in the British Publishing Market’.
Giorgia Carta (co-supervision with English), ‘The Other Half of the Story: the Interaction between Original and Translated Literature for Children in Italy’.
Mariarita Martino (with Jennifer Burns), ‘An Analysis of Scopophilia in an Intersemiotic Context: Four Italian Case Studies’.
Caterina Sinibaldi, ‘Translating for Children under the Fascist Regime in Italy’.
Filippo Trentin, ‘Rome 1946-1975: Intellectual Testimonies of a Modernizing Project’.
Giorgia Alu' (with the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies), ‘Beyond the Observation of the 'Traveller': The Other and the Self in the Writings of Anglo-Sicilian Women (1848-1910)’.
Tiziana Giordano (with the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies), ‘Re-thinking the Links between Fiction and Historiography: A Comparative Study of Contemporary British and Italian Women's Writing’.
Daria Mizza, ‘Instructional Technology, L2 Writing Theory, and IFL:
A Case-study Conducted in a British University among Tutors and Students’.
Tiziana Serafini (with Ann Caesar), ‘Dagli anni di piombo agli anni di carta: rappresentazioni sociali e autobiografiche dei brigatisti rossi’.
Paola Toninato (with the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies), ‘The Rise of Written Literature among the Roma: A Study of the Role of Writing in the Current Re-definition of Romani Identity with Specific Reference to the Italian Case’.
Annunziata Videtta (with Jennifer Burns), ‘Re-visioning Representations of Italian Migrant Women in Textual Renditions of the Italian Presence in Britain’.
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