First published in 1988, Textus is the leading journal of English studies in Italy. Peer reviewed and indexed by the main international databases, it is dedicated to promoting scholarly exchange among Italian and international researchers. Each issue is jointly edited by an Italian and a foreign scholar of international standing and addresses a topical area of language, literature and cultural studies. With its unique coverage of English studies in Italy, Textus is a forum for new critical and theoretical approaches and an invaluable resource for academic research and teaching.
Editor in Chief
Carlo M. Bajetta (Università della Valle D’Aosta)
Editorial Board
Silvia Bruti (Università di Pisa), Stefania Maria Maci (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) e Massimo Sturiale (Università degli Studi di Catania) – English Language Issue
Silvia Antosa (Università degli Studi di Enna “Kore”) e Elisabetta Marino (Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”) – English Cultural Studies Issue
Carlo M. Bajetta (Università della Valle D’Aosta) e Rocco Coronato (Università degli Studi di Padova) – English Literature Issue
Issues
The tables of contents of the latest and previous issues are available on the publisher’s website: Textus – English Studies in Italy.
The latest issue is Textus (2019, n.3), Inventing and Regulating: the Eighteenth Century between Experiment and System, edited by Robert DeMaria, Jr., and Lia Guerra.
Members interested in editing an issue of Textus must send a proposal to the Editorial Board.
The proposal should include the topic, the names of the editors (member editor, international guest editor and copy editor) and an abstract (500 words max.).
Stylesheet: Textus_Stylesheet
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CALL FOR PAPERS – CULTURE ISSUE 2, 2021
Viral Transcultures: Critical Teleconnectivities on the Edges of the ‘New Normal’
Editors:
Lorena Carbonara (Università della Calabria), Annarita Taronna (Università di Bari), Christopher Larkosh-Lenotti (UMass Dartmouth). Copy editor: Laura Centonze
In the wake of the unpredicted emerging scenarios created by the current pandemic, what we may call “the new normal”, this thematic issue of Textus aims to investigate the cultural processes that characterize our contemporaneity and the implications of the sanitary and financial emergency in terms of identity, privilege, language and the ecology of it, belonging, borders and citizenship, with a specific focus on English-speaking countries.
We are at the same time witnessing a reinforcement of the “us vs them” paradigm and rhetoric (e.g. the use of the term “Chinese virus” in place of the scientific appropriate term), a massive use of social networking and the practice of flash mobs (e.g. people singing from balconies), an incredible flow of fake news and an increase in creative alternatives (as witnessed everyday on social networks), and also sensationalism, triumphalism, tribalism.
In the media, on one hand, there is a tendency to stress the horizontal impact of the situation at all levels of society (with the consequent rhetoric “we are all on the same boat”); on the other, social differences and inequalities are higher than ever (“my quarantine is not like your quarantine!”). There is even an overturning of roles, since the centres and peripheries of the world are negotiating new relationships (as in the case of the U.S./Mexico border).
We invite scholars to investigate on the contradictions inherent in the pandemic world(s) with a trans-disciplinary and comparative approach using old and proposing new theoretical frameworks, since it is possible that diverse paradigms will be soon required to cope with the numerous changes in our “viral transcultures”.
We need to think and rethink ourselves as individuals, communities, parents, lovers, travellers, teachers, researchers, politicians, social workers, healthcare professionals, etc. We need to reconfigure the idea of contact and teleconnectivities and create a new vocabulary, new metaphors, to talk about the relationship with the “Other”, who has recently become our nearest neighbour. Most of all, we have to re-position ourselves as citizens of a world that is momentarily loosing its transnational shape and enlarging its borderlands.
Topics will include, but not necessarily be restricted to:
- The role of old and new media in the narration of the pandemic
- Climate discourse old and new
- Creativity, resistance and social networking
- The perception of isolation, fear, threat, grief, rites and ceremonies
- Old and new borders, border walls, forms of patrolling, security and border crossing
- The implications of teaching and learning on-line and teleconnectivities at all levels of schooling, questions of accessibility for people with different abilities
- Old and new contact zones and questions of proximity in the viral (trans)cultures
- Individualism vs Collectivism
- The emergence and deployment of new forms of commonality
- Public self-awareness and self-disclosure
- Paradigmatic shifts in critical thought and cross-cultural communication as a result of the covid-19 crisis
- Changes to migration activism and civic engagement, inclusion
- Cultures of welcoming, friendship, and hospitality
- Questions of travel restrictions and their effect on cross-cultural learning
- Queer, trans and other related responses to pandemic culture and activism against the backdrop of HIV/AIDS and other forms of social stigmatization
- Politicized viralities and their metaphors, from “The Spanish Flu” and HIV/AIDS to the present day
We encourage contributions by scholars in the fields of Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, Gender Studies, Disability Studies, Ecocriticism, Semiotics, Translation Studies, Critical Discourse Analysis, Migration Studies, Area Studies, Queer Theory, Studies in Bi- and Multilingualism, Ethnic Studies/Critical Studies in ‘Race’/Racialization, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Literary and Critical Theory.
References
Adorno T., W., Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2019.
Arendt H., On Revolution, New York: Viking Press, 1963.
Berger M., ed., The Crisis of Criticism, New York: New Press, 1998.
Boaventura de Sousa S., Another Knowledge is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies, London: Verso, 2007.
Clandinin J., Engaging in Narrative Inquiry, London and New York: Routledge, 2013.
Cazzato L., Anglo-Southern Relations from Deculturation to Transculturation, Lecce: Salento Books, 2013.
Dabashi H., Can Non-Europeans Think? Foreword by Walter Mignolo, London: Zed Books, 2015.
Freire P., Pedagogia da indignação: cartas pedagógicas e outros escritos, São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2000.
Glissant É., Poetica della Relazione, Macerata: Quodlibet, 1990, 2007.
Goodley D., Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, SAGE Publications, 2017.
Huggan G., Tiffi H., Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment, New York: Routledge, 2015.
Marx K., Le 18 Brumaire de Louis Bonaparte, Paris: Editions Sociales, 1969.
Mignolo W., The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Durham and London: Duke Univesrity Press, 2011.
Santos M., Por uma outra globalização: Do pensamento único à consciência social, Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2000.
Thapar R., ed., The Public Intellectual in India, New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2015.
Tsuda Y., “The hegemony of English and strategies for linguistic pluralism: Proposing the Ecology of Language Paradigm”, in M. K. Asante, Y. Miike, & J. Yin, eds., The Global Intercultural Communication Reader, 2nd ed., 445–456, New York: Routledge, 2014.
Welzer H., Wir sind die Mehrheit: Für eine offene Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2017.
Wodak R., “‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Inclusion and Exclusion- Discrimination via Discourse”, in Delanty G., Wodak R., Jones P., eds., Identity Belonging and Migration, Liverpool University Press, 54-77, 2008.
Zaccaria P., La lingua che ospita. Poetiche, Politiche, Traduzioni, Roma: Meltemi, 2017.
Žižek S., Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism, London and New York: Verso, 2015.
Žižek S., Virus: catastrofe e solidarietà, Milano: Ponte alle Grazie, 2020.
Abstract submission deadline: 30 May 2020
Notification of acceptance: 30 June 2020
Preliminary papers to the editors: 30 September 2020
Revised peer-reviewed papers to the editors: 20 February 2021
Final versions from the editors to the publisher: 30 April 2021
Please submit your abstract of approximately 500 words to:
lorena.carbonara@unical.it; annarita.taronna@uniba.it
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CALL FOR PROPOSALS Textus n.3 –2021 LITERATURE ISSUE
AIA members who are interested in editing the 2021 n. 1/2/3 (Literature) issue of Textus are invited to send a proposal to Carlo Bajetta (c.bajetta@univda.it) and Rocco Coronato (rocco.coronato@unipd.it rocco.coronato@unipd.it) by 20 July 2020. Prospective editors should provide a preliminary call for papers including a working title, a brief description of the topic they are proposing (500 words max.), the name of a foreign scholar of international standing who has agreed to co-edit, and the name of a copy editor. All proposals will be examined by the Textus Editorial Board for the literature issue (Carlo Bajetta and Rocco Coronato) and their decision, submitted to the AIA Executive Board for approval, will be communicated to the editors by 30 July 2020; the call for papers will be issued by 30 August 2020, and the deadline for sending abstracts is 30 September 2020.
Call for proposals deadline: 20 July 2020
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All Textus calls for papers and proposals are open only to A.I.A. members.