Mila Milani
PhD candidate in Italian Studies
Address: Department of Italian Studies, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, Samuel Alexander Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester. M13 9PL.
Email: mila.milani@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
PhD title: How To Be A Poet, Translator and Editor: Attilio Bertolucci and the Modernization of The Italian Literary Canon
Supervisory panel: Dr Francesca Billiani, Mr Spencer Pearce, Professor Nigel Vincent, Dr Francesco Maria Ciconte.
Discipline areas: Translation Studies; Sociology of Translation; 20th century Italian literature and poetry; Comparative Literature.
Research specialism
The research project, funded by AHRC and SLLC, investigates the relationship between publishing houses and the practice of translating contemporary poetry in Italy, from the Fifties to the late Seventies.
The post-war period coincides with a proliferation of translations in the catalogues of the Italian poetry publishing houses, when Italy, after emerging from the Fascist dictatorship, started entering into a more fruitful dialogue with its European and extra European counterparts. The aim of the thesis is thus to unveil both reasons and effects that this “translating turn” had on Italian poetry publishing field and, more broadly, on the cultural context of that day. To this end, the project examines, through a sociological approach, primary archival material belonging to some key Italian poetry publishing houses of different size and presence on the market, namely the elitist Scheiwiller, and the leading Mondadori and Einaudi.
Therefore, by carrying out an extensive archival research in the benefit of Italian history of culture, the research project intends to offer an exhaustive overview of the relationship between publishers' policies, poetry translation practices, and modes of cultural modernization in post-war Italy, thus contributing to the topical debate within both Italian and Translation Studies.
Publications
- (2012, forthcoming) “Soffici between Marinetti and Apollinaire” in Daly, S. and M. Insinga (eds) The European Avant-Garde: Text and Image. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing [Book Chapter].
- (2011) Book review of Gisèle Sapiro (ed) Les contradictions de la globalisation éditoriale, Studi Culturali 3: 492-3.
- (2009) “Pavese & Joyce: monologhi interiori e immagini-racconto”, Poetiche 1: 39 – 61 [Academic Journal Article].
- (2007) “Soffici e Apollinaire: Chimismi, Alcools, Simultaneità e Calligrammes tra futurismo e orfismo”, Poetiche 9 (3): 587 – 621 [Academic Journal Article].
Conference Papers
- Reconsidering the Role of Semi-Periphery: Strategies of Publishing Foreign Poetry in Post-War Italy”
19 January 2012: BCLA/SOAS Research Conference “Comparing Centres, Comparing Peripheries”, London. - “Redattori & traduzione: il ruolo di habitus e capitale simbolico nella pubblicazione di poesia straniera nel Secondo dopoguerra”
22 November 2011: “Tra i libri degli altri: il lavoro editoriale tra progetto culturale e strategie di mercato”, University of Trento (Italy). - “Du centre à la périphérie: les stratégies éditoriales d’Einaudi (1964-1979)”.
10 November 2011: 15 min paper in French at workhosp ARTlas, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. - “Pocket-sized Contemporary Foreign Poetry in Post-War Italy: Einaudi’s Collezione di poesia”
7 July 2011: 2011 SIS Biennial Conference, University of St Andrews.
20 May 2011: Joint Postgraduate Day (Manchester, Leeds, Durham), University of Manchester. - “Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry in Post-War Italy: a Bourdieusian Perspective”.
30 October 2010: International PG Conference in Translation and Interpreting, University of Manchester.
5 June 2010: SIS (Society for Italian Studies) PG Symposium, University of Warwick. - “Pavese & Joyce: Interior Monologue and immagini-racconto”.
27 February 2010: Graduate Conference in Italian Studies, University of College Cork. - “Cesare Pavese ‘Visible’ Translator of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man during Fascism”.
27 November 2009: 2nd CLAI (Comparative Literature Association of Ireland) International PG Symposium, Trinity College Dublin.
23 May 2009: SIS PG Symposium, University of Oxford. - “Soffici and Apollinaire: Chimismi, Alcools, Simultaneità and Calligrammes between Futurism and Orphism”.
25 September 2009: European Avantgarde PG Conference, University College Dublin.
29 November 2008: 1st CLAI PG Symposium, Dublin College University.
Academic qualifications
- 2009-2012: PGR in Italian Studies, University of Manchester.
- 2007-2009: 2-year Master Degree Course in Comparative Literature (Languages: English and French) with distinction, University of Bologna.
Dissertation on Cesare Pavese as a translator of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man during Fascism— research period at Trinity College Dublin. - 2003-2006: First Degree with honors in Foreign Languages and Literature (English, French and Portuguese), University of Bologna.
Dissertation on the relationship between Soffici and Apollinaire - research period at Université de Paris VII.
Professional career
- Intern at publishing houses (in Bologna, 2009 and in Paris, 2006)
- Translator in the Centre for Translation, European Parliament, Luxembourg (2007)
- Intern at Italian Department - Trinity College Dublin (2007) [Revision of UGs' translations/homework; literary translations]