Dr Claudia Dellacasa
- Lecturer (Italian) (Italian)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9982-818XBiography
Before working at the University of Glasgow as a Lecturer in Italian, I was an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin (School of English, Drama and Film), working on a project titled 'Intersectional Eco-Polyphony: Cross-Cultural and Cross-Species Dialogues in Contemporary Women's Writing'. At UCD, I was an active member of the Environmental Humanities research strand. Earlier on, I taught between the Romance Seminar and the International Literatures area at the University of Tübingen (DE), and in the Department of English and American Studies at Augsburg University (DE), with a focus on ecocriticism and post-humanism.
I obtained my PhD at Durham University (UK), with a project on the contact between Italian author Italo Calvino and Japanese culture in the late 1970s, which I read as the epitome of Calvino’s gradual relativisation of Eurocentrism, logocentrism, and anthropocentrism. My thesis was awarded the British-Italian Society Postgraduate Prize in 2021. In the context of this research, in 2019 I spent 3 months at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto.
My MA thesis in Italian Linguistics investigated the linguistic structure of Calvino’s novel Il barone rampante. My previous BA thesis was also a linguistic work, which approached Calvino’s Le città invisibili with the tools of a lexical, syntactical, and structural comment. During both my MA (in Modern Philology) and BA (in Modern Literature), I was based at La Sapienza University of Rome.
I am an editor of the literary magazine La Balena Bianca and an Honorary Fellow in the Durham Centre for Culture and Ecology. I represented postgraduate students in the Modern Humanities Research Association between 2018 and 2019, in which context I was editor of the peer-reviewed journal MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities. I am also co-founder of Notes in Italian Studies, an online open-access journal funded by the Society for Italian Studies, and EDI representative for the SIS.
Research interests
My current research is in the field of the environmental humanities, focusing on Italian and Anglophone texts that gesture towards what I define an ‘intersectional eco-polyphony’ – an understanding of experimental poems and eco-fictions where the categories of species, cultural, and gender identities are mutually constitutive, and where this mutuality is reflected in the very form of the texts. Most of the authors I am currently working on share an interest or are actively involved in Buddhism.
Both in my research and in my teaching, I work at the intersection of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature. My PhD project, on which my first monograph is based (Italo Calvino and Japan: A Journey through the Shallow Depths of Signs, Legenda 2024), explores Italo Calvino’s fascination with Japanese literature and Zen Buddhism. This is the first study to restore to the Italian author’s writing the dynamics of East-West dialogues, addressing Japanese gardens and temples, but also literary and artistic expressions, as the spaces through which Calvino developed a landmark feature of his distinctive cultural ecology: a renewed awareness of the interdependency between human and other-than-human forms of life and communication.
My main research interests are:
- modern and contemporary Italian literature
- comparative literature, philosophy, and spirituality
- East-West dialogues
- material ecocriticism and biosemiotics
- eco-feminism and post-colonial ecocriticism
Grants
|
2022 – 2024 |
Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship Irish Research Council, Dublin (IE). |
|
2021 – 2022 |
Teach@Tübingen Postdoctoral Fellowship University of Tübingen, Tübingen (DE). |
|
2019 |
AHRC International Placement Scheme International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), Kyōto (JP). |
|
2017 – 2021 |
AHRC Northern Bridge Fully funded doctoral studentship. Durham University (UK). |
Supervision
I am interested in receiving proposals for BA/MA dissertations and PhD research projects in the following areas:
- modern and contemporary Italian literature
- critical studies of the Italian environment (in connection with plant studies, animal studies, ecofeminism, environmentalism of the poor, ecological conflicts)
- comparative readings of Italian and Asian traditions
Teaching
After delivering classes in Italian literature and language across the degree programme at Durham, where I obtained the Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2021, I designed and coordinated modules in the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Tübingen (International Literatures and Italian), for both BA and MA students, focusing on ecocriticism and posthumanism. These include the module ‘Representing Human Absence. A Cross-Cultural Approach to Italian Literature and Art beyond the Human’, which addressed Italian narrative, poetic, pictorial and photographic traditions from the nineteenth century onwards, in conversation with works from the English, American, French, German, Russian, and Japanese traditions. In 2021/2022, for the MA in American Studies at the University of Augsburg, I also designed and convened a module entitled ‘Dialogues beyond the Human’, which applied material, post-colonial, and feminist ecocriticism to relevant books from the contemporary scene of environmental writing.
Professional activities & recognition
Prizes, awards & distinctions
- 2023: Emerging Researcher Award (University College Dublin Earth Institute)
- 2022: Top-ranked postdoctoral scholar in the domain of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (Government of Ireland Maurice J. Bric Medal of Excellence)
- 2021: Best PhD thesis in Italian Studies in the UK and Ireland (British-Italian Society)
- 2020: Durham University Student Achievement Award (Durham University)
Research fellowships
- 2023 - 2023: Fondazione Cini - Centro Vittore Branca Residential Fellowship
- 2022 - 2024: Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship
- 2021 - 2022: Teach@Tübingen Postdoctoral Fellowship
- 2019 - 2019: Arts and Humanities Research Council International Placement Scheme
- 2017 - 2021: Arts and Humanities Research Council Northern Bridge
Editorial boards
- 2022: La Balena Bianca. Rivista di Cultura Militante
- 2022 - 2024: The Italianist
- 2020 - 2022: Notes in Italian Studies
- 2018 - 2019: Modern Humanities Research Association Working Papers in the Humanities
Professional & learned societies
- 2023: EDI representative, Society for Italian Studies
- 2018 - 2019: Postgraduate representative, Modern Humanities Research Association
