Transnational and decolonial Italian Studies: Beyond the focus on curriculum renewal

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, my work has been shaped by transnational approaches, which have provided epistemological and pedagogical tools for exploring and developing new ways of learning, teaching and thinking about Italian histories, cultures and languages. These transnational approaches have critically challenged the dominant frame for the teaching of Italian language and culture, which had been typically shaped by a narrow and normative focus on the relation between the nation, its main language, and its canonical literature. Instead, transnational Italian studies have recognised the multilingual, multifaceted and multi-sited nature of Italian cultures, and the need to explore them beyond the narrow boundaries of the nation and its best-known texts (see Bond, 2014; Burdett and Polezzi, 2020; Burdett et al., 2020; Burns and Duncan, 2022; Polezzi, 2022). Intersecting with postcolonial, intersectional, transcultural and decolonial theories, methodologies and pedagogies, transnational Italian studies have opened up great opportunities for curriculum renewal and, at times, the development of more diverse language departments. Furthermore, the transnational approach has allowed a reflection on the future of Italian Studies that escaped the rigid confines of the nation, to dialogue more openly and productively with other language departments and disciplines, and to develop multilingual, transcultural and intersectional courses, programmes and research projects. More specifically, with regards to my own professional trajectory as a scholar of migration, the transnational approach has also allowed me to include migration history, migration studies and transcultural relations between migrants and First Nations people as key aspects of Italian language and culture programmes (see for instance Ricatti, 2018, 2020, 2021). As Dereck Duncan (2022: 112) recently argued, any reflection and practice on diversity and decolonisation in Italian Studies has to ‘start from the positionality of the