Middle Passages

Area 10 – Scienze dell'antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche

Middle Passages is an introductory study for university students who need to use English while facing pressing issues of intercultural communication and representation. This collection of heterogeneous texts is provided with a series of language activities, guided discussions and critical reflections which offer a series of strategies for “inhabiting” English in the Mediterranean context. The openness and theoretical versatility of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies provide an ideal framework for investigating the complex intersections of people and cultures, languages and sounds that shape the Mediterranean shores. Suggesting a reading of the Mediterranean Sea as a repository of unsuspected cultural relations, crossings, and intersections, Mediterranean uses of English are here intended as a “Middle Passage”, a space crossed by multiple stories and power relations where the narration of migrants crossing the Mediterranean basin in search of a better future travel aside the wealthy routes of tourism, trade and the military. Manuela Coppola is currently a post–doctoral fellow in English Literature at the University of Calabria. She has researched and published on diaspora and migration literature, postcolonial studies and theory. Katherine E. Russo lectures at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and holds a PhD at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her research focuses on Postcolonial Literatures and Visual Cultures. She has published widely on appropriation and intercultural relations.

SINTESI