Please join us on Wednesday, November 10 at 12pm (Eastern) for a research presentation by Nicola Paladin, Virtual Visiting Scholar at the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks. Professor Paladin will share his work on the LTit – Letteratura tradotta in Italia project, which is dedicated to the circulation of foreign literature in Italy.

This event will be hosted with the Digital Scholarship Group as part of the Digital Humanities Office Hours series held virtually on Wednesdays at 12pm (Eastern).

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. RSVP here.

Talk abstract:
My presentation will be divided in three parts: in the first one, I will present LTit – Letteratura tradotta in Italia, a digital database dedicated to the circulation of foreign literature in Italy, and outline the theoretical intersections that frame the project. Particularly, its purpose is to systematize data on Italian translations and editions published during the 20th century, connecting original texts with their different translations and editions. Data on texts are complemented by information about significant cultural mediators of foreign language literatures (translators, authors, literary critics, and publishers), to enable the reconstruction of trajectories and relevant system of relations within the literary society and the “world of letters.” LTit wishes to map the entire scenario of foreign literature translated in Italian, both as a frame and as a system divided in distinct literatures. 

In the second part of my presentation, I will briefly relate my contribution to the database concerning the mapping of the circulation of US literature in the Italian literary field. I will focus on the quantitative side of my contribution, considering the construction of such a section and discussing the practical, but also theoretical, problems that I happen to face. In the third part, I will move to my research and a more qualitative side of my analysis, and I will present some of the first few results that I have elaborated while working on the mapping of US literature translated in Italian.   
 

Speaker biography:

Nicola Paladin is assistant professor in North American literature at “G. D’Annunzio University” at Chieti-Pescara. He holds a PhD in “Textual Sciences” at “Sapienza” University of Rome with a dissertation on the relationship between the literature of the American Revolution and the 19th-century narratives on the Independence War. He was a visiting scholar at IFUSS (International Forum for US Studies), at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His main research interests include 19th-century American literature, war literature, comics studies. He is currently working on a digital database (LTit – Letteratura tradotta in Italia), focused on mapping the circulation of US literature in the Italian literary field, with a specific interest in literary anthologies of US literature in translation.

Project description:

LTit is a digital database whose ambition is to gather data on Italian translations published during the 20th century, connecting original texts with their different translations and editions. Data on texts are complemented by information about significant cultural mediators of foreign language literatures (translators, authors, literary critics), and publishers, to enable the reconstruction of relevant relations within the literary society and the “world of letters.”