My research interests revolve around the question of how culture is produced, circulated and consumed across languages and national borders. The Warwick Commission on Cultural Value will be a key critical forum to discuss these issues. I hope we will engage in reflection on the way in which phenomena such as migration, plurilingualism and translation contribute to the vitality of culture. An equally central question will be how language barriers, or the assumption of linguistic homogeneity, affect the visibility and status of cultural production as well as, crucially, of cultural producers. The role of education in promoting cultural exchange and in sustaining the bio-diversity of cultural systems is crucial, yet often undervalued. So I particularly welcome the Commission’s emphasis on a cultural ‘ecosystem’ – something which I believe is much more than just another metaphor.

Biography

Loredana Polezzi is Associate Professor in Italian and Academic Director of the Warwick Venice Centre. She is also the Academic Lead on the Connecting Cultures Global Research Priority theme.

Her research focuses on the history of travel writing and the connection between geographical and social mobility on the one hand and, on the other, the theories and practices of translation. She has written widely on travel to Italy, as well as on contemporary Italian travel writing.

She is co-investigator in the project 'Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures' which was recently awarded 1.8 million by the AHRC. The project will look at the Italian communities established in the UK, the US, Australia, South America, Africa and at the migrant communities of contemporary Italy. It will focus on the cultural associations that each community has formed, their cultural production and their translation strategies.

Staff page: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/italian/staff/polezzi/

Email: L dot Polezzi at warwick dot ac dot uk