Foto del docente

Fulvio Pezzarossa

Alma Mater Professor

Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna

Adjunct professor

Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies

Curriculum vitae

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.