Edited volumes by Luca Raimondi
Between, V, Vol. 10, 2015: http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/issue/view/53
Questo numero di ... more Between, V, Vol. 10, 2015: http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/issue/view/53
Questo numero di Between raccoglie gli atti del convegno annuale di Compalit, L’immaginario politico. Impegno, resistenza, ideologia, che si è svolto a Bologna nel dicembre del 2014. È stato un convegno molto ricco e partecipato, che ha visto succedersi undici relazioni plenarie, più di cento comunicazioni organizzate in sessioni parallele, la presentazione di Between e del manuale di Letterature comparate curato da Francesco de Cristofaro, e un’intensa e affollata conversazione serale con due membri del collettivo Wu Ming. E ora questo ricchissimo numero della rivista in cui è confluita gran parte delle relazioni tenute a Bologna. Ovviamente molte cose sono cambiate rispetto al progetto originario e all’elaborazione progressiva del convegno: prospettive inedite, nuovi spunti di riflessione, nodi problematici emersi nel vivo delle sessioni e delle discussioni che ne sono seguite e che hanno trovato espressione nei saggi raccolti qui, ognuno dei quali ha rilanciato a sua volta nuove domande e interrogativi specifici. L’articolazione così ampia del numero, la pluralità di sguardi, competenze e approcci critici rappresentano dunque plasticamente l’orizzonte contraddittorio e problematico in cui ci muoviamo.
Papers in peer-reviewed journals by Luca Raimondi
Literary Geographies, 6(2), pp. 178-184., 2020
As blossoming trees and chirping birds began to paint and populate the sunlit skies of Europe in ... more As blossoming trees and chirping birds began to paint and populate the sunlit skies of Europe in the heyday of the first wave of Covid-19 pandemic, the largely urban, flat-dwelling population of the continent found itself swiftly cooped up following the implementation of national lockdowns and shielding measures. During the first days of a confinement that promised to only be temporary, many discovered the unexpected pleasures of working from home and took an early delight in bread-making, Netflix binge-watching, and catching up on the latest book arrivals. But with lockdowns extended, whether locally or more widely, and social distancing becoming the new normal, it didn't take long for a new relationship with 'home' to develop. Forget Ithaca, a place of nostos-in Covid-19 times, home is no longer a fixed abode to return to after one's grand adventures or petty errands, but a safe haven where to stay, day in day out, and preferably not to leave. Under these new circumstances, two sets of spaces have risen to prominence over the past months: the physical space of balconies, verandas, and other such outdoor appendages to houses and apartments; and the virtual space of video conferencing platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. From impromptu balcony concerts and front porch socialising, to live-streamed workouts and virtual hangouts, both sets of spaces have become central in the public narrative of lockdown, since in their own different ways, they have allowed people to find relief from homebound isolation and reconnect to the social world beyond the walls of their homes. It therefore seems apposite that these 'threshold spaces' (Iampolski 2020), blurring the boundaries of the house and the street, private and public, would provide symbolic form and a technological platform to a pioneering cultural initiative launched during the pandemic.
This is the case of Le Thinnai Kreyol, a collaborative multimedia project co-founded by Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Professor of English Literature at King's College London, and Franco-Tamilian writer Ari Gautier. Le Thinnai Kreyol is structured in the form of a ‘virtual veranda’ where the hosts and a series of invited guests periodically gather to engage in dialogue on pre-selected topics, with the interaction of a live video audience. The project was born out of the need to re-connect among distant collaborators (Kabir is based in the UK and Gautier in Norway), as well as the urgency, after a couple of cancelled events due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis, to initiate a wider transnational conversation on creolised cultures in spite of the restrictions to travel and in-person meetings. But while the social media environment where the project resides is clearly symptomatic of the virtual spaces made salient by the pandemic, the prime and primary inspiration behind the symbolic architecture of this space are not the verandas of quarantined households, but the main ‘spatial frame’ (to use Marie-Laure Ryan’s terminology (2012)) of Gautier’s second novel, Le Thinnai (2018), from which the project also derives its name. It is precisely the transposition of a narrative location (the thinnai of the title) into an online environment suited for the pandemic age, and the spatial resignification that follows (from local value to global relevance), that I see as an emblematic case study of the fate of literary geographies in time of isolation.
Nuova Corrente, 167, pp. 49-69, 2021
Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy (2008-2015) unfurls across an amphibious geography that radiates from... more Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy (2008-2015) unfurls across an amphibious geography that radiates from India to either side of the Indian Ocean, following the movements of a coolie-and-opium ship and the mobile lives of its community and tracing the history of the region under colonial rule and the influence of free trade capitalism. After briefly considering the elements that qualify Ghosh’s work as one of (neo-)historical fiction, in my essay I take a detailed look at the paratextual apparatus, narrative devices and tropes of the novels, to deploy a symptomatic reading that sees the trilogy as a literary manifestation of the recent wave of historical scholarship foregrounding spatiality and focusing on the Indian Ocean region. At the same time, I examine how the blurring of boundaries between fiction and history writing embraced by the author has shaped the way the novels have been received, interpreted and critiqued by professional historians.
Introduzione al volume "L’immaginario politico. Impegno, resistenza, ideologia". Eds. S. Albertaz... more Introduzione al volume "L’immaginario politico. Impegno, resistenza, ideologia". Eds. S. Albertazzi, F. Bertoni, E. Piga, L. Raimondi, G. Tinelli.
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/2233
Questo numero di Between raccoglie gli atti del convegno annuale di Compalit, L’immaginario politico. Impegno, resistenza, ideologia, che si è svolto a Bologna nel dicembre del 2014. È stato un convegno molto ricco e partecipato, che ha visto succedersi undici relazioni plenarie, più di cento comunicazioni organizzate in sessioni parallele, la presentazione di Between e del manuale di Letterature comparate curato da Francesco de Cristofaro, e un’intensa e affollata conversazione serale con due membri del collettivo Wu Ming. E ora questo ricchissimo numero della rivista in cui è confluita gran parte delle relazioni tenute a Bologna. Ovviamente molte cose sono cambiate rispetto al progetto originario e all’elaborazione progressiva del convegno: prospettive inedite, nuovi spunti di riflessione, nodi problematici emersi nel vivo delle sessioni e delle discussioni che ne sono seguite e che hanno trovato espressione nei saggi raccolti qui, ognuno dei quali ha rilanciato a sua volta nuove domande e interrogativi specifici. L’articolazione così ampia del numero, la pluralità di sguardi, competenze e approcci critici rappresentano dunque plasticamente l’orizzonte contraddittorio e problematico in cui ci muoviamo.
Scritture Migranti, Dec 22, 2013
Chapters in edited volumes by Luca Raimondi
Amitav Ghosh’s Culture Chromosome: Anthropology, Epistemology, Ethics, Space, edited by A. De and A. Vescovi, 2021
This essay investigates Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy as an Indian Ocean epic that bears the traces... more This essay investigates Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy as an Indian Ocean epic that bears the traces of recent transnational scholarship on the region. Focussing on the Indian Ocean is a way of subverting dominant Eurocentric historiography. The essay examines the themes and spatial motifs around which the novels are organized and the ways in which the spatial dynamics operating in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean world are represented. The Indian Ocean was an open space where different cultures came together, which Ghosh utilizes as a background for his narrative project. In particular, the article problematizes the notion of modern epic, proposing the alternative notion of postcolonial epic, and looks at the Indian Ocean as an alternative space from which colonial history may be written.
Teaching English Language Variation in the Global Classroom, edited by M.D. Devereaux and C.C. Palmer, 2021
This chapter discusses the experience of designing and teaching a core undergraduate course in En... more This chapter discusses the experience of designing and teaching a core undergraduate course in English linguistics with a World Englishes perspective. Inspired by Kumaravadivelu’s postmethod pedagogic principles and by scholarship challenging the monoglossic ideology and racialised logics on which English language education is rooted, the course aims at introducing the fundamentals of English morphology and word formation while promoting an inclusive, egalitarian, and decolonial view of the English language. Lessons are organised in three teaching blocks and follow a four-step procedure that ensures a balance between frontal teaching, discussions, practice, and reflection. The teaching material includes a range of texts and videos presenting examples of standard and innovative word-formation patterns in several varieties of English (sample material is available in the eResources section online). The contents and structure of this course are designed to enable students in higher education to develop non-adversarial attitudes towards speakers from any region of the Anglosphere and to promote a higher degree of ownership of the English language. The chapter concludes with a lesson plan with suggested activities and references for teaching a themed class on innovative word formation in Indian English.
Ecocriticism and Geocriticism: Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Spatial Literary Studies, edited by R.T. Tally Jr and C.M. Battista, 2016
In the field of literary studies, ecocriticism and geocriticism are currently acknowledged as the... more In the field of literary studies, ecocriticism and geocriticism are currently acknowledged as the disciplines that most prominently and consistently engage with the question of human spatiality, examining the connections between ecology, geography, and fictional representations. Risen out of individual scholarly efforts grounded on the critical categories of place (as natural environment) and space (as real-and-imagined referential world), they emerged in the early 1990s and at the beginning of the twenty-first century as recognizable branches of literary investigation that bring in a variety of methodologically diverse approaches under a common subject heading and a shared theoretical framework. Given their methodological flexibility and their distinctly exploratory agenda, ecocriticism and geocriticism originate a set of critical practices that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries— for instance, those isolating literature from other nonliterary domains, or the ones that replicate the crisscross of national frontiers—and can be informed by peculiar perspectives, such as the postcolonial angle that will be maintained and emphasized all through this chapter. In fact, postcolonialism is less an independent discipline or a fixed, unitary theory than a “wide-ranging political project” that aims at reorganizing Western fields of knowledge formation around issues of (neo)colonial and imperial domination, economic exploitation, and resource dispossession in the so-called Global South (a rather slippery, “antigeographical” label that applies to different microcosms across the North—South hemisphere divide).
A combination of geocriticism, ecocriticism, and postcolonialism, made possible by their inherent dynamism and transdisciplinary reach, is at the grounds of my discussion. I will first venture to outline the modes of interaction between these fields—or rather “currents”—of literary criticism. I will then test the critical possibilities of the resulting integrated approach by presenting a reading of a specific region in the Indian subcontinent, the Sundarbans forest that lies southeast of Kolkata, on the Bay of Bengal. I will look at a range of fictional and nonfictional representations of the place and identify in this intertextual chain the roots of different conceptions and local practices of environmental activism.
Book reviews by Luca Raimondi
African Studies Quarterly, 2017
Translations by Luca Raimondi
Il Tolomeo, 23, 2021
- Necropoetica (Nécropoétic), p. 43. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/007.
- Tragedia cotonale... more - Necropoetica (Nécropoétic), p. 43. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/007.
- Tragedia cotonale (Tragédie Cotonnale), pp. 49-50. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/010.
- Alegroparai (Alegroparai), p. 55. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/013.
- Negrodalitalità (Négrodalitalité), p. 61. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/016.
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Edited volumes by Luca Raimondi
Questo numero di Between raccoglie gli atti del convegno annuale di Compalit, L’immaginario politico. Impegno, resistenza, ideologia, che si è svolto a Bologna nel dicembre del 2014. È stato un convegno molto ricco e partecipato, che ha visto succedersi undici relazioni plenarie, più di cento comunicazioni organizzate in sessioni parallele, la presentazione di Between e del manuale di Letterature comparate curato da Francesco de Cristofaro, e un’intensa e affollata conversazione serale con due membri del collettivo Wu Ming. E ora questo ricchissimo numero della rivista in cui è confluita gran parte delle relazioni tenute a Bologna. Ovviamente molte cose sono cambiate rispetto al progetto originario e all’elaborazione progressiva del convegno: prospettive inedite, nuovi spunti di riflessione, nodi problematici emersi nel vivo delle sessioni e delle discussioni che ne sono seguite e che hanno trovato espressione nei saggi raccolti qui, ognuno dei quali ha rilanciato a sua volta nuove domande e interrogativi specifici. L’articolazione così ampia del numero, la pluralità di sguardi, competenze e approcci critici rappresentano dunque plasticamente l’orizzonte contraddittorio e problematico in cui ci muoviamo.
Papers in peer-reviewed journals by Luca Raimondi
This is the case of Le Thinnai Kreyol, a collaborative multimedia project co-founded by Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Professor of English Literature at King's College London, and Franco-Tamilian writer Ari Gautier. Le Thinnai Kreyol is structured in the form of a ‘virtual veranda’ where the hosts and a series of invited guests periodically gather to engage in dialogue on pre-selected topics, with the interaction of a live video audience. The project was born out of the need to re-connect among distant collaborators (Kabir is based in the UK and Gautier in Norway), as well as the urgency, after a couple of cancelled events due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis, to initiate a wider transnational conversation on creolised cultures in spite of the restrictions to travel and in-person meetings. But while the social media environment where the project resides is clearly symptomatic of the virtual spaces made salient by the pandemic, the prime and primary inspiration behind the symbolic architecture of this space are not the verandas of quarantined households, but the main ‘spatial frame’ (to use Marie-Laure Ryan’s terminology (2012)) of Gautier’s second novel, Le Thinnai (2018), from which the project also derives its name. It is precisely the transposition of a narrative location (the thinnai of the title) into an online environment suited for the pandemic age, and the spatial resignification that follows (from local value to global relevance), that I see as an emblematic case study of the fate of literary geographies in time of isolation.
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/2233
Questo numero di Between raccoglie gli atti del convegno annuale di Compalit, L’immaginario politico. Impegno, resistenza, ideologia, che si è svolto a Bologna nel dicembre del 2014. È stato un convegno molto ricco e partecipato, che ha visto succedersi undici relazioni plenarie, più di cento comunicazioni organizzate in sessioni parallele, la presentazione di Between e del manuale di Letterature comparate curato da Francesco de Cristofaro, e un’intensa e affollata conversazione serale con due membri del collettivo Wu Ming. E ora questo ricchissimo numero della rivista in cui è confluita gran parte delle relazioni tenute a Bologna. Ovviamente molte cose sono cambiate rispetto al progetto originario e all’elaborazione progressiva del convegno: prospettive inedite, nuovi spunti di riflessione, nodi problematici emersi nel vivo delle sessioni e delle discussioni che ne sono seguite e che hanno trovato espressione nei saggi raccolti qui, ognuno dei quali ha rilanciato a sua volta nuove domande e interrogativi specifici. L’articolazione così ampia del numero, la pluralità di sguardi, competenze e approcci critici rappresentano dunque plasticamente l’orizzonte contraddittorio e problematico in cui ci muoviamo.
Chapters in edited volumes by Luca Raimondi
A combination of geocriticism, ecocriticism, and postcolonialism, made possible by their inherent dynamism and transdisciplinary reach, is at the grounds of my discussion. I will first venture to outline the modes of interaction between these fields—or rather “currents”—of literary criticism. I will then test the critical possibilities of the resulting integrated approach by presenting a reading of a specific region in the Indian subcontinent, the Sundarbans forest that lies southeast of Kolkata, on the Bay of Bengal. I will look at a range of fictional and nonfictional representations of the place and identify in this intertextual chain the roots of different conceptions and local practices of environmental activism.
Book reviews by Luca Raimondi
Translations by Luca Raimondi
- Tragedia cotonale (Tragédie Cotonnale), pp. 49-50. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/010.
- Alegroparai (Alegroparai), p. 55. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/013.
- Negrodalitalità (Négrodalitalité), p. 61. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/016.
Questo numero di Between raccoglie gli atti del convegno annuale di Compalit, L’immaginario politico. Impegno, resistenza, ideologia, che si è svolto a Bologna nel dicembre del 2014. È stato un convegno molto ricco e partecipato, che ha visto succedersi undici relazioni plenarie, più di cento comunicazioni organizzate in sessioni parallele, la presentazione di Between e del manuale di Letterature comparate curato da Francesco de Cristofaro, e un’intensa e affollata conversazione serale con due membri del collettivo Wu Ming. E ora questo ricchissimo numero della rivista in cui è confluita gran parte delle relazioni tenute a Bologna. Ovviamente molte cose sono cambiate rispetto al progetto originario e all’elaborazione progressiva del convegno: prospettive inedite, nuovi spunti di riflessione, nodi problematici emersi nel vivo delle sessioni e delle discussioni che ne sono seguite e che hanno trovato espressione nei saggi raccolti qui, ognuno dei quali ha rilanciato a sua volta nuove domande e interrogativi specifici. L’articolazione così ampia del numero, la pluralità di sguardi, competenze e approcci critici rappresentano dunque plasticamente l’orizzonte contraddittorio e problematico in cui ci muoviamo.
This is the case of Le Thinnai Kreyol, a collaborative multimedia project co-founded by Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Professor of English Literature at King's College London, and Franco-Tamilian writer Ari Gautier. Le Thinnai Kreyol is structured in the form of a ‘virtual veranda’ where the hosts and a series of invited guests periodically gather to engage in dialogue on pre-selected topics, with the interaction of a live video audience. The project was born out of the need to re-connect among distant collaborators (Kabir is based in the UK and Gautier in Norway), as well as the urgency, after a couple of cancelled events due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis, to initiate a wider transnational conversation on creolised cultures in spite of the restrictions to travel and in-person meetings. But while the social media environment where the project resides is clearly symptomatic of the virtual spaces made salient by the pandemic, the prime and primary inspiration behind the symbolic architecture of this space are not the verandas of quarantined households, but the main ‘spatial frame’ (to use Marie-Laure Ryan’s terminology (2012)) of Gautier’s second novel, Le Thinnai (2018), from which the project also derives its name. It is precisely the transposition of a narrative location (the thinnai of the title) into an online environment suited for the pandemic age, and the spatial resignification that follows (from local value to global relevance), that I see as an emblematic case study of the fate of literary geographies in time of isolation.
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/2233
Questo numero di Between raccoglie gli atti del convegno annuale di Compalit, L’immaginario politico. Impegno, resistenza, ideologia, che si è svolto a Bologna nel dicembre del 2014. È stato un convegno molto ricco e partecipato, che ha visto succedersi undici relazioni plenarie, più di cento comunicazioni organizzate in sessioni parallele, la presentazione di Between e del manuale di Letterature comparate curato da Francesco de Cristofaro, e un’intensa e affollata conversazione serale con due membri del collettivo Wu Ming. E ora questo ricchissimo numero della rivista in cui è confluita gran parte delle relazioni tenute a Bologna. Ovviamente molte cose sono cambiate rispetto al progetto originario e all’elaborazione progressiva del convegno: prospettive inedite, nuovi spunti di riflessione, nodi problematici emersi nel vivo delle sessioni e delle discussioni che ne sono seguite e che hanno trovato espressione nei saggi raccolti qui, ognuno dei quali ha rilanciato a sua volta nuove domande e interrogativi specifici. L’articolazione così ampia del numero, la pluralità di sguardi, competenze e approcci critici rappresentano dunque plasticamente l’orizzonte contraddittorio e problematico in cui ci muoviamo.
A combination of geocriticism, ecocriticism, and postcolonialism, made possible by their inherent dynamism and transdisciplinary reach, is at the grounds of my discussion. I will first venture to outline the modes of interaction between these fields—or rather “currents”—of literary criticism. I will then test the critical possibilities of the resulting integrated approach by presenting a reading of a specific region in the Indian subcontinent, the Sundarbans forest that lies southeast of Kolkata, on the Bay of Bengal. I will look at a range of fictional and nonfictional representations of the place and identify in this intertextual chain the roots of different conceptions and local practices of environmental activism.
- Tragedia cotonale (Tragédie Cotonnale), pp. 49-50. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/010.
- Alegroparai (Alegroparai), p. 55. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/013.
- Negrodalitalità (Négrodalitalité), p. 61. DOI: 10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/016.