Guaranteed session (LLC 20th- and 21st-Century Italian, Roundtable) for MLA 2027 (7 to 10 January in Los Angeles). 

Romancing the Humanities: Multilingualism and Italian Studies 

In October 2025, a well-known channel of Catalonia, Tv3, decided to include the city of Alghero, in Italy, in their weather forecast segment since a variant of Catalan is spoken there. Their decision was met with an uproar of indignation from the center right party in Spain, accusing them of “meteorological nationalism.” Comments on the social media page of the newspaper La Nuova Sardegna show instead that people from Alghero appreciated their inclusion since their city is often left out of the Italian weather forecast due to its perceived marginality. What might appear to some an “expansionist delirium” on the part of Catalonia, highlights the intertwined histories and literatures of Italian and other Romance languages—connections that persist to this day. It is not by chance that many Italianists in North America are housed in Departments of Romance Studies—or other similar formations—which have been built on and fostered the linguistic intimacy of Romance languages and their speakers’ cultural networks. What does it mean to work in Italian and across one or more Romance languages in disciplinary terms? What kind of examples exist that encourage a translinguistic methodology in Italian Studies that exemplify these institutional frameworks? What does it look like to teach Italian literature by taking the Romance Studies’ framework seriously?

From cultural movements to the movements of people and their literary expressions, this roundtable invites twentieth- and twenty-first-century case studies focusing on specific literary or cinematic works that put Italian in conversation with those of another Romance language, reflecting also on their methodological approaches and the disciplinary effects of this multilingual work.

Topics may include:

  • Using multilingual/transnational methodological frameworks for a specific case (for example, Mediterranean Studies, Global South Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Diaspora Studies, Translation Studies, Reception Studies)
  • The role of multilingualism for authors such as Antonio Tabucchi, Fabio Morábit, Adrián Bravi, or Carlo Coccioli
  • Interpersonal collaborations in cinematic productions
  • Cultural mediators across Italian and other Romance languages
  • The role a city (Paris, São Paulo, Barcelona, Buenos Aires) has played in Italian cultural productions

Please send a brief bio and abstract to Giulia Riccò (gricco AT umich,edu)  and Saskia Ziolkowski (saskia.ziolkowski AT duke.edu) by March 23rd.