For the next few months, you won’t see new activity on this website as we transform this into a much more interactive, online space for the new project. The website, once launched, will be a dynamic space for co-writing across artistic disciplines and for exploring and sharing theories of interartistic and intermedial practice. We hope to create a hub for those of you engaged with these kinds of ideas and practices. Please check back here next November to see the new website.

Our research questions for Interart/Intermedia

These questions follow on closely from what we were doing in the first, networking, phase of this project. We’ve refined them and we’re looking now specifically at the relationship between interartistic practice and experimental creativity.

Our research goes beyond the narrow focus of monodisciplinary research to reveal a more comprehensive picture of interartistic encounters and new kinds of experimentation. We challenge and amend established ideas of cultural centres and peripheries, to focus attention on individuals and groups who are actively engaged in creative boundary-crossing and on institutions who fostered or hindered interartistic exchange. Our project introduces a new and original focal point: we seek to examine how a multidisciplinary approach subverts widely accepted canons; what looks central under the lens of the monodisciplinary microscope may not be so from an interartistic one.

These are the questions:

Why has interartistic practice changed so markedly over the course of 20th and 21st century? What has influenced these changes?

Why have avant-garde and activist artists critiqued and transgressed the boundaries between the arts in 20th and 21st century Italy? What effect has this had on creativity?

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, interartistic practice has been palpable in periods of uncertainty and radical social change, frequently associated with the avant-garde. It also appears to have emerged most strongly where political and cultural conventions are challenged, especially by activists. The first area our project explores is the transgressive nature of interartistic and intermedial creativity.

What theories do we need to develop in order to discuss hybrid cultural objects and avant-garde interartistic practice?

We will fashion a theoretical discourse to facilitate new research across the arts and media and underpin work done in our own project. This will highlight the social, creative and psychological dynamics of interartistic creativity, rather than the demands and constraints of disciplinary fields.

Our planned outputs

In the next phase, we’ll be moving from the exciting network of people established in the first phase to producing some significant publications, an exhibition, workshops, teaching material and setting up a research centre. This is what we have planned:

A monograph, Rupture and Renewal, that aims to rewrites the cultural history of Italy in the 20^th and 21^st centuries from an interartistic perspective;

A monograph dedicated specifically in the relations between the arts in Italy in the Digital Age;

A further edited book that will provide the theoretical underpinning for interartistic research for a broader intellectual community;

Sample interartistic/intermedial teaching material for secondary schools;

Together with the Estorick Collection, an interartistic exhibition in London, a catalogue, and a CPD day for museum curators;

3 workshops on theories of interartistic practice to take place in London and Birmingham;

A Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Modern Languages to be set up at the University of Birmingham (UK).

We will also be developing dedicated events for postgraduates and postdocs. Much of the work we will be doing is targeted at informing ideas about interartistic practice and empowering people to explore, in a theoretically informed way, interartistic practice.

The rest of the current website here belongs to the first phase of the Interdisciplinary Italy project (Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2015: art, music, text), which has now closed.

We thank all those who have supported us in the first phase of this project and helped us to develop this second phase.

Clodagh Brook (Principal investigator, University of Birmingham), Florian Mussgnug (Co-investigator, UCL), Giuliana Pieri (Co-investigator, Royal Holloway), Emanuela Patti (Senior Research Fellow, University of Birmingham)

L'articolo News of the second phase of this project (2015-2018) sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

On 14 May Dr Giuliana Pieri interviewed Mr Peter Langdale, currently teaching at North London Collegiate School, in north London. We explored issues related to the use of different media and the way in which a broad range of disciplines (especially within an inter-artistic focus) can be introduced in the curriculum. The absence of an Italian A-level textbook was also discussed as both a challenge for teachers of Italian but also an opportunity for the creation of new material. In the 30-minute long interview you will find plenty of examples and ideas that Peter uses in class. The strongest message from Peter’s experience is that different media and a variety of disciplines work together very well; they engage the students; they make the curriculum relevant; and bridge the artificial gap often created between language and its cultural context. The need to foster a better dialogue between teachers of Italian in the state and public sector, and between secondary school teachers and the higher education sector was also a focus of our discussion.

L'articolo Interdisciplinarity in the Classroom: Interviews with teachers sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

Peter Langdale [PL] is currently Head of Italian and Academic Tutor at North London Collegiate School. He was previously Head of Modern Languages at Merchant Taylor’s School, Northwood and at St George’s British International School, Rome. He began his teaching career at Dulwich College where he introduced Italian at GCSE and A Level. Other activities include editing the Independent Schools Modern Languages Association Newsletter and membership of the Italian Committee of ALL.

Carmela Amodio-Johnson [CAJ] has been a teacher of Italian since 1982 and has taught a wide spectrum of levels in many London Schools and Institutions. She was GCSE & Level Examiner for Edexcel, member of ATI, ALL and SIS, and Chair of ALL Italian Committee of six years. She organised and run several successful Italian Inset Days, and retired in 2012.

CHOICE AND FREEDOM

1. How much choice do you have when it comes to designing the curriculum?

[CAJ] Very remotely as a teacher of Italian of GCSE, A/S and A2 in Secondary Schools I have been involved in designing the Curriculum. On the contrary in Adult Education at the end of the 1980s and through the 1990s, the Head of Modern Languages would appreciate my input due to my cultural and linguistic expertise as a native teacher.

[PL] The first aspect is, of course, whether Italian is taught at all in the secondary curriculum and then at what stage it is introduced and examined. I am not aware of any statistics but I do know of schools that introduce it in Year 7, 9 or 10 leading to GCSE in year 11. A small number of schools such as my own introduce Italian as an ab initio course to A level or Cambridge Pre-U in year 12.

That Italian is taught at all in secondary schools is rarely down to independent senior management decisions. Many of the most thriving Italian departments were born originally because of the enthusiasm of individual teachers (hired to teach another language or subject). In other cases, Italian began to be taught for demographic reasons (large Italian immigrant communities in the area, for instance).

Individual Italian teachers/departments in secondary schools have little or no input into the amount of teaching time or resources available as these are determined at MFL department or whole school level.

2. How far is the syllabus pre-designed?

[CAJ] Exam Syllabi can be updated or changed every tree-four years minimum.

[PL] In schools where Italian is taught, the syllabus is largely determined by outside factors such as

• national curriculum and/or frameworks
• available resources
• examinations that pupils are expected to sit (by far the most constrictive)

All of these tend towards a design of the content/topic aspects curriculum around a set of “general topics” which are shared with all other modern languages. At GCSE these are what you might find (AQA):

Lifestyle, Health, Relationships and Choices

Free Time and the Media, Holidays

Home and Local Area, Environment

Education and Work

At A level, these develop into the following (Edexcel), the first four clearly designed to follow on from GCSE:

Youth culture and concerns

Lifestyle: health and fitness

The world around us: travel, tourism, environmental issues and the (Italian) speaking world

Education and employment

Customs, traditions, beliefs and religions

National and international events: past, present and future

Literature and the arts.

Within these “topics” these is a great deal of teacher discretion in how they are taught and with what materials. The reality is that up to GCSE, teachers will tend to rely on textbooks such as Amici, especially where they have been written with an eye to our examination system. At sixth form level there are no textbooks written for the purpose; I am told that the market is not large enough to justify this. The result is that teachers have to look for teaching resources in a wide range of books (mainly published in Italy), magazines and increasingly the internet. They then design the teaching of individual topics around the available material, their own particular interests and experiences.

3. Do students have elements of choice in what they study? For example, could they learn about different periods/topics according to their interests?

[PL] The element of individual choice is very limited in the syllabuses as at present designed. In theory, able students at GCSE could undertake a piece of research of their own choice for their writing or speaking controlled assessments, but in practice these tend to be rather mechanical and limited by the linguistic level reached by that stage and the limited examination requirements.

At AS level, students have to choose and prepare to one of the four topics in italics above for their oral exam (how culturally specific that will be is very much at the discretion of the teacher).

At A2, students have to choose and prepare an issue for their oral exam. This may or may not be culturally specific (over the last few years my own students have chosen issues ranging from why Berlusconi should not be prime minister to advocating the learning of classical languages for all).

Until the last revision of A Level, students had to choose and individually prepare a topic for their oral exam that had to be culturally specific, but alas, this was dropped. It has however been revived by the Cambridge Pre-U syllabus (my students are currently preparing a wide range of topics from “il Palio di Siena” to a novel by Sciascia).

There is then the requirement to study a film, play or novel. Theoretically this is meant to be prepared individually, but I am not aware of any department that does not teach this, having chosen the work on behalf of the pupil.

[CAJ] Yes they do. In fact, although their choice in both GCSE and GCE is limited by the Specifications set Topic Areas, these entail wider and varied sub-topics. Also students can negotiate with their teacher for both Speaking and Writing Units, topics in which they have a particular interest or that appeal to them more.

INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN TEACHING AND MEDIA

4. What opportunities are there to look at social media or consider new narrative practices using technology?

[PL] Within the topics at GCSE and A level there is clearly the opportunity to look at social media as a phenomenon, their growth and the impact on their lives and those of others. However, if the question means studying how social media are being used in a cultural dimension and in developing new narrative practices, that is probably well beyond the scope of A Level.

[CAJ] I have exploited towards the end of the 2000s in the classroom and still do at times in my private tuition now, the use of the Internet and especially You-Tube and Facebook in order for my pupils to have live and updated information and resources. Pupils can also for their homework, research on their own at home or in a Language Lab. Again Facebook, Twitter, Video-conferencing and Skype whenever financially and curricular academically possible are and could become the new tools for enhancing both teaching and learning.

5. Do you get in guest speakers from different places/organisations of interest? If so, do you think specifically how these people may talk about art/technology/music etc, i.e. what interdisciplinary perspectives they might bring in?

[PL] In my school we provide a quite exceptional range of extra-curricular talks and events. We get in a range of speakers in many subject areas, though I would hazard a guess that this is not universally the case (constraints on funding, geography etc.).  Given small numbers for Italian, we cannot justify speakers just for Italian students, so we try to get them in in one of two contexts:

a) Weekly talks open to all years 11 to 13.

b) Modern Languages symposia held once a year geared to all MFL students.

Recent Italian talks have been by speakers from UCL (we are London based) and have been focussed on Film. At the same time, speakers for other languages have given talks on anything from medieval French literature to Brazilian popular music.

It is worth mentioning of course that in many schools study of matters Italian will come into other subject areas, notably History (typically fascism and the Risorgimento) or Art History.

(We also, rather uniquely, have a weekly series of open lectures given by members of staff and I have tried to ensure an Italian presence there. I have given lectures on “Dante and Primo Levi: two visions of Hell” and at the request of the English department another on Dante and TS Eliot.)

[CAJ] I have indeed invited guests visitors to come and talk or give lectures to my classes, for example Professor Arturo Tosi from Royal Holloway University gave after school time a power point illustrated talk on £The Commedia Dell’Arte” to an audience of mixed students of Italian and Drama. The talk was followed by a dance and movement workshop on the main Characters of the Commedia, performed by the Drama students. I always provide the students with the related vocabulary and spend some lessons on the topic the Speaker would deal with beforehand. The visitor-speakers bring in with them, together with their interesting life experience and professional skills, the inspiration and stimulus for the learners of how the study of the Italian Language could be embedded in a more varied and viable Curriculum at both Secondary School and University.

6. Do you go on trips to places of interest and incorporate mobile learning activities? Is the choice of these places influenced by ideas of interdisciplinarity in learning?

[CAJ] Most of the outings, trips and exchanges organised and delivered during my thirty years of teaching Italian in London have been planned by keeping in mind some ideas of interdisciplinarity: Art + History of Fascism & Italian Language at The Estorick Collection of Italian Modern Art in Islington; Latin + History of Roman London & Italian Language at The Museum of London; Fashion + Design & Technology and Italian Language at the Armani Exhibition at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly. In those days I used hand-outs, maps and paper questionnaires; nowadays I would use tablets and mobiles for the learners to download back up maps, information and assign activities and tasks.

[PL] We organise trips where possible in London, to exhibitions, galleries etc. (and to the cinema and theatre where appropriate). Recently we visited the Estorick Collection in Islington with a guide in Italian, and we are hoping to repeat this with the Italian fashion exhibition at the V&A later this year.

Clearly, trips such as these are subconsciously influenced by ideas of interdisciplinarity awareness and understanding of different aspects of Italian culture and society.

Trips to Italy in holiday time are another important aspect. It is virtually impossible to fund full-scale school trips for the small number of A Level students I have, but I do regularly take year 10 students who are not studying Italian on a trip to Florence and I have also piggy-backed on an Art History trip to Italy. Schools with larger cohorts of Italian students do organise successful exchange programmes with schools in Italy.

7. What media are commonly used to support learning activities? For instance films, tv, internet, music, art etc.

[CAJ] The media commonly used are TV, films on video and mostly on DVDs, Audio & Music CDs, Computer (Power Point activities and tasks on Magic Board), and Internet.

[PL] The internet is now a crucial source of teaching materials (newspaper articles, blogs, and grammar exercises, audio and video material…). There are an increasing number of sites which can point students and teachers to suitable material (e.g. for listening and cultural topics, news.centrodiascolto.it).

TV. Via the internet, it is now possible to access a fantastic variety of TV programmes from soap operas to documentaries. In practical terms one can advise students to spend a little time watching Italian programmes (for instance via rai.tv), but in class its most effective use is as audio-visual material for studying historical and political issues (for instance via La storia siamo noi or Blu notte).

Music, mainly in the form of popular songs to back up or reinforce grammatical points of as starting points for discussions on topics. Examples might include Celentano (il ragazzo della via Gluck) and Gaber (Quant’è bella la città) when studying issues of town versus country or the post war economic boom alongside reading extracts from Marcovaldo and other material. Encouraging pupils to listen to and learn songs can be very motivating and profitable. I have used extracts from opera as well as popular song. I have also used extracts form opera to introduce grammar points (eg passato remoto using Vissi d’arte and other arias.) I have also used an extract from Monteverdi’s Orfeo to talk about the pastoral in year 13 enrichment classes.

Film. It is worth distinguishing here between film as an object of study (as might be chosen as an alternative to the study of a literary text) and as a support, backup or illustration when studying a topic. For example, there is no shortage of films illustrating issues to do with organised crime or terrorism, but it is unlikely that any would be studied in their entirety when studying the topic. Let us not forget however, a film as the end of term “sweetener” the opportunity to spend the last two or three lessons of the term or year enjoying watching a suitable film.

Art. Less common to use art or photography as they are essentially wordless and therefore do not provide new vocabulary or expressions per se. However, images are often used for a variety of purposes such as a stimulus for speaking or (descriptive) writing. However, it might be possible to incorporate works of art in the study of Italian history such as these:
Or posters such as these when talking of the post-war economic boom (or classic TV adverts for the same):

8. Can you talk about a specific example of interdisciplinary teaching?

[CAJ] In March 2009 as the teacher of Italian at Latymer Upper I was asked by Mrs Barbara Romito Head of Languages at The Latymer Preparatory School to help and work jointly in the planning and coordination of a special event for the primary children called “The Italian week”. The event saw the involvement of a team of teachers from the Prep School and a few from the Upper including almost all the disciplines: Mats, Science, Geography, Music, Art, Drama, Dance, Italian Language, and Latin. The whole of the Prep building was covered with the pupils’ art-work items and posters reminiscent of the most famous Italian Cities and People like Leonardo, Galileo, Michelangelo and others. Each day of the week had a theme and all classes were engaged: for the Science lesson a visitor Speaker arrived dressed as Galileo Galilei to surprise the pupils who later worked on an experiment switching from English to basic Italian science terminology and using all apparatus labelled in Italian. My Students of A2 Italian performed a mini slapstick Comedy based on Commedia Dell’Arte’s characters for the joy of their younger peer and it all ended with the tarantella being danced by teachers and pupils alike!

[PL] A recent example would be viewing Bellocchio’s La bella addormentata when studying the topic of euthanasia/assisted suicide through the story of Eluana Elgardo (along with short television clips of statements from politicians).  This was only a partial success as more work would be needed to refine what aspects or passages from the film to concentrate on – the pupils found the film rather confusing!

RESOURCES

• If you could influence a move towards interdisciplinary teaching practices, what are three things you would do?

[PL]

1. Influence examination boards/Ofqual in the construction and design of new A levels (or teaching frameworks) so as to make the prescription top-down.
2. Commission/write models for teachers to use, i.e. exemplar teaching units, possibly with materials, but certainly providing teachers with the structure and incentive to teach elements of a GCSE or A level course in this way.
3. Training for teachers. Could the next phase of the project involve a teacher conference?

[CAJ]

1. CURRICULUM DESIGNINING: I would try to influence the people at the very top, Head of School, Director of Studies, my own HOD about introducing interdisciplinarity via giving them practical examples of it in my subject.
2. TRAINING STAFF: all teachers should receive a proper training about interdisciplinarity with specialist talks and hands-on workshops.
3. MICRO-PROGRAMME: start with a micro-programme of a week, a month perhaps and try a combination of subjects; assess and evaluate the pro and contra and good luck!

• What resources would you need in order to bring more interdisciplinarity in your teaching?

[CAJ] I reckon to have access to the Internet through mobile learning tools such as portable devices like mobiles, tablets so that the students can read and download the required information. We have to take into account of course the students’ progress and knowledge of the language and perhaps suggest them accessible Italian sites that we as teachers have tried already.

L'articolo New resource page for secondary school teachers and lecturers sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

Of the many iconic images that filled two very busy days, one seemed to be particularly significant in the context of an interdisciplinary dialogue: Michelangelo Pistoletto, Venus of the Rags [Venere degli stracci], 1967, 1974 (Tate Modern) which formed part of the analysis by Prof. Robert Lumley (UCL) of the role of monuments and anti-monuments in Italian art as central vehicles for national identity and its critique in modern Italy. Pistoletto’s Venus, facing a mountain of rags, is in the words of Lumley “gently mocking” the grandiosity of the monument. The choice of medium is significant: Venus is not a precious marble statue reminiscent of the grand narrative of classical art but she is made of cement a material with very modern connotations. The rags are the tangible representation of the ephemeral and the everyday celebrated in Arte Povera. Politics, art practice, economic and social history and theory are some of the disciplines which could make this work their own by looking at the role of counterculture and social and political unrest in Italy in the late 1960s and 1970s.

What are your iconic image(s) of Italy?

L'articolo Iconic Images in Modern Italy: Politics, Culture and Society. sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

The first event is next week: Come pensare per immagini? Luigi Ghirri e la fotografia / How to think in images? Luigi Ghirri and photography, at The British School at Rome, mercoledì 9 ottobre 2013, dalle 9.30 alle 19.30. The event is free and open to all. See here for details.

L'articolo New interdisciplinary project on photographer Luigi Ghirri sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

I introduced the panel and the first session, Literature across borders, with the paper Dalla Galassia Gutenberg alla Galassia Internet: storie e narrazioni transmediali attraverso i media which mapped the development of media transmedia narratives in XXI century Italian fiction from Wu Ming to Scrittura Industriale Collettiva. In the next paper, Transmedia and Genre Narrative: Some Observations on United We Stand by Simone Sarasso and Daniele Rudoni, Marco Amici focused on a specific case study to investigate the new digital genre of net graphic novel and how this enacts a multimodal representation between fiction and history. In the third paper, La comunità convergente: memorie condivise e narrazioni in rete, Emanuela Piga examined the transmedial extension of the novel Manituana by Wu Ming and the role of communities around the collective’s blog Giap, looking at the conceptual relationship between “open work” and “open source”. The second session, Rethinking Adaptation and Reception in the Era of Convergence Culture, started with Marina Guglielmi’s paper on the reception of classics in Walt Disney comics and fan-fictions. In the second paper, Mariposas in volo: analisi spaziale di un adattamento, da Sergio Atzeni a Salvatore Mereu, Giulio Iacoli examined practices of intermediality between Sergio Atzeni’s novel and Salvatore Mereu’s film, focusing on the visual translation of space and the narrator. Finally, Ilaria Masenga’s paper, Coming of Age in the Social Media Era: Literature, Readership and Fandom in Contemporary Italy, explored readers’ response and fandom in Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s Facebook fan page. The following debate was lively and stimulating addressing questions like power and representation, new media and ideologies, communities and collective identity.

L'articolo Italian Transmedia Culture: Stories and Storytelling Across Media by Emanuela Patti sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

L'articolo Panel on Interdisciplinarity in Teaching by Giuliana Pieri: Society for Italian Studies Biennial Conference, Durham, 8th July 2013 sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

L'articolo Interdisciplinarity in the Secondary Modern Languages Curriculum, failed experiment or way forward? by Peter Langdale: Society for Italian Studies Biennial Conference, Durham, 8th July 2013 sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

In the paper, the first question posed by Dr Brook was whether interdisciplinary practice could strengthen the position of the discipline. She discussed what happens when Italian Studies lecturers work across campus to create networks (for a formalisation of this process, see Columbia University’s The Italian Academy founded 1991), or how working with those in other fields outside of academia facilitates impact cases and helps the discipline grow its public engagement profile, thus strengthening its position nationally.

However, she also addressed the threat of disaggregation. In his book, The University in Ruins, Bill Readings challenges some of the ambitious claims made for interdisciplinarity, suggesting that the term is malleable, and can be easily appropriated in pursuit of the market-orientated university’s aims. In other words, interdisciplinarity has as much to do with Universities managing budgets and being flexible to the demands of the marketplace as it does with the admirable aims of intellectual dialogue and co-operation, since merging departments into interdisciplinary programmes can be a form of downsizing and cost-cutting (Readings, 191). This is not to say that interdisciplinarity is bad, per se, but that we need to be careful of how it is used. The second danger that needs to be faced is that of losing a sense of an overarching shape or sense to the disciplines. It is by means of disciplines that thinking traditions take shape and they have contributed immensely to the production of knowledge (Mills in the HEA’s Interdisciplinarity: A Literature Review, 2007), and to its curation and defence. They promote rigour and depth, which provides a good foil to the breadth of interdisciplinarity. If the discipline changes rapidly and in different ways from University to University it is hard to defend the need to have anything specific at all within its borders. While interdisciplinary brings benefits, these potential threats need to be taken on board.

In the paper, Dr Brook also explored a second question: how can we use interdisciplinarity (and pluridisciplinarity) to make teaching more interesting and worthwhile for students. She explored various possibilities, including clarifying student pathways with students, rethinking our introductory courses so that they also pose questions about the discipline and what questions get asked within it and who its players are (and are not), asking students to co-write essays with fellow students from other Departments, like History of Art or Architecture, inviting guest lecturers from other Departments to give classes on our courses, and using the Year Abroad better as a living laboratory for art, architecture, cinema, music. Here too, there are, of course, potential obstacles, such as the time-consuming organisation of team teaching and pedagogical issues around replacing depth of understanding with breadth.

Italian Studies is already an interdisciplinary, or probably more exactly, a pluridisciplinary discipline. We have film and literature in our Departments in a pluridisciplinary way, but how often do we bring them together and ask, for example, how has cinema affected writing in Italy? Dr Brook ended the presentation by suggesting that we think more about where the gaps in our interdisciplinary/pluridisciplinary practice lie. Who are we not working with and why? Why are we working so little with Education, with Psychology, with Music, even English and IT, and into the hard sciences? Our discipline, if not looked at with due reflexivity, loses sight of the amount of knowledge not accessible to it by the limits of its boundaries. We need too to be more aware of our interdisciplinary practice and to communicate this to students and to find the right balance in our courses between breadth and depth in our courses.

This is a time of change and challenge for Italian Studies. The relation of this discipline to others is crucial to navigating the threats of disaggregation and strengthening our hand.

L'articolo Panel on Interdisciplinarity in Teaching by Clodagh Brook – Society for Italian Studies Biennial Conference, Durham, 8th July 2013 sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.

Pierpaolo Antonello’s contribution to the third Interdisciplinary Italy Workshop held at University College London, Saturday, 11th May 2013, can be accessed here:

experimentexperience powerpoint

ExperimentExperience paper

L'articolo Interdisciplinary Postmodernism: Re-thinking the Sixties by Pierpaolo Antonello (Cambridge) sembra essere il primo su Interdisciplinary Italy.