Professor Fulvio Pezzarossa teaches Sociology of Literature at
the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of
Bologna. He is currently teaching both for the three-year BA
degree and for the two-year MA degree. Students from the Faculty of
Arts and Philosophy can also include Sociology of Literature in
their study programme.
He was in the board of the teachers of the PhD in Culture letterarie, filologiche, storiche of the University of Bologna; then in that of Letteratura classiche, moderne, comparate e postcoloniali (World Literature and Cultural Studies), now joined with Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne.
As for scientific research and didactics, Prof. Pezzarossa has
worked on literary and historical phenomena of the Renaissance,
with particular regard to the expressions of historiography and the
collections of memoirs, as well as to cultural manifestations in
the Padanian area, in the north of Italy. This kind of research is
also interrelated with his activity as editor of the journal
«Schede Umanistiche», an eminent voice that has been, for twenty
years, part of the research centre “Bologna Renaissance and
Humanities Archive”, within the Department of Italian
Studies.
In the latest years, Prof. Pezzarossa has focused his scientific
research on migrant literature written in Italian by non-native
authors. This is a very recent phenomenon in Italian culture, but
it has grown rapidly and successfully. Our country is facing what
in other European countries is a well-established production, but
Prof. Pezzarossa has largely contributed to increase the interest
in Italian migrant literature through national and international
conferences and seminars, textual analysis and research,
experiments on different reading methodologies linked to the areas
of cultural studies. In particular, he has studied remarkable
thematic items in the migrant writers, like the metaphor of the
house, the detective novel (written by migrants or natives) as
medium of the image of repulsion of the otherness, the cultural and
symbolic value of food and the different expressions of racism.
Moreover he has focused for the first time the features of of
the texts written by second generation authors.
He has also worked on behalf of the literary productions of the new
migrant writers, thanks to the organization and coordination of
several events like book launches and seminars with the most
relevant authors. In particular, Prof. Pezzarossa has been for many
years head of the jury of the Eks&Tra literary prize, which
promotes the oldest and most prestigious prize for migrant writers
in the Italian language. Together with the Eks&Tra association,
he has also promoted the first Intercultural Creative Writing
Workshop ever held in Italy, which took place over spring and
summer 2007, in collaboration with the Department of Italian
Studies of Bologna. The experience has been very successful and has
received a certain resonance in the national press. Prof.
Pezzarossa has edited the volumes which collect the best works
produced during the Workshop (Scarpe sciolte,
2009;Passaparole, 2010 ; Casamondo, 2011;
Intrecci, 2012; Un passo dopo, 2015; Mari&Muri, 2016).
Moreover, since 2008 were published the issues of the journal
«Scritture Migranti. Rivista di scambi interculturali», the first
academic journal in Italy concerning the topic of the migrant
writing. Professor Pezzarossa is the journal's editor and the
scientific and editorial boards boast of an international profile.
The main study areas on which the journal concentrates are the
complex issues of interrelations and connections deriving from the
international phenomena of cultural migrations.
He has promoted the International Conference Leggere il
testo e il mondo. Vent'anni di scritture della migrazione in
Italia, which took place in Bologna in October 2010, with the
support of University of Bologna and many others cultural institutes. The
Conference gathered the most important migrant writers of Italy and
many experts from Universities of Italy and other countries. The
conference proceedings was published in Autumn 2011 (CLUEB, Bologna)
In recent years he has published a number of articles investigating the literary production of migrant writers in Italy. He has focussed in particular on the use of language and on the formal structure of migrant narratives, as well as on the relationship between these writings and various social issues that are particularly relevant for contemporary society, such as racism and terrorism.
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the death of Pier Paolo Pasolini he has published the book La camminata malandrina. Ragazzi di strada nella Roma di Pasolini (Modena, Mucchi, 2015, with M. Righini), an innovative anthropological interpretation of Pasolini’s Roman novels.