Teaching as a way of creating Italian transnational literature: A mission of the Italian Diaspora Studies Seminar at the University of Calabria

Abstract

In this essay, I will illustrate the mission and the most significant innovative teaching activities promoted by the Italian Diaspora Studies Seminar, a research center founded in 2017 at the University of Calabria, where I work. The Seminar aims to promote scholarly research into the abovementioned fields while building educational programs inspired by them. In particular, we investigate the perspective of specific Italian transnationalism that identifies itself with the network of Italian diasporic literature disseminated worldwide. Our goal is not limited to research; we seek to pursue a proactive perspective. It is a fact that contemporary writers of Italian heritage are generally unaware of contemporary Italian writers and that many of them are not familiar even with the Italian canonical masterpieces from the past, and the same goes vice versa. For this reason, our mission is to create new bridges to fill these gaps. One of the purposes of the “Italian Diaspora Seminar” is the ambition to investigate the opportunity to create, both theoretically and pragmatically, an inclusive ground in which to detect and promote new connections among Italian, diasporic, and migrant Italian contemporary writers. Our goal is to reinforce a sense of community that will lay the foundations for the growth of inclusive, inter-dialoguing, and unified Italian transnational literature.