Major research areas: contemporary genre Italian literature, postcolonial Italian literature and literature of migration in Italy and Europe; Italian women writers (in history and contemporary); the role of literary texts in second language teaching and learning.

Piera Carroli was awarded her PhD in Linguistics in 2007 by the Australian National University (ANU). The title of her thesis was "World in a text, words in context" - Enhancing the role of literature in language learning. In 2008 she completed her Certificate in Higher Education at the ANU. In 1991 she completed a Master in Arts in Contemporary Italian Narrative at Flinders University, Adelaide. She has published on literature, applied / linguistics, pedagogy around the world (Italy, Australia, UK, USA, Brasil, Netherlands and South Africa). Her book Esperienza e narrazione nella scrittura di Alba de Cespedes (Ravenna: Longo, 1993) is the first literary monograph on the Cuban-Italian writer. In 2000 she was awarded the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Biografia Piera Carroli, nata in Italia, è docente di lingua, letteratura e linguistica italiana e responsabile dell'Italianistica presso l'Australian National University a Canberra, in Australia. Nel 2000 le è stato assegnato il premio "Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching" dal Rettore dell'ANU. Ha conseguito il Master of Arts in narrativa italiana (Alba de Cespedes) nel 1991 presso la Flinders University of South Australia e nel 2007 il Dottorato di Ricerca in Linguistica all'ANU. Ha pubblicato in campi di ricerca quali letteratura, linguistica, pedagogia, in Italia, Inghilterra, Australia, USA, Brasile, Olanda e Sud Africa. Attualmente si occupa di pedagogia della letteratura L2 e dell'insegnamento in chiave interculturale di lingua e letteratura. Nel 1993 ha pubblicato Esperienza e narrazione nella scrittura di Alba de Céspedes (Ravenna: Longo 1993), prima monografia edita.

 CURRENT PROJECTS1. Contemporary genre literature in italy, in particular noir written by women (e.g., Bolognaise writer Marilù Oliva) 2. 20th and 21th century 'migrant' literature: Towards a 'nomad' literature beyond national and 'European' borders As an educator of Italian studies in the antipodes, my research choices and practices are marked by my experience as a migrant. Interrogating naming practices and analysing texts concerned with issues emerging from the re-positioning of identities and subjectivities is an ethical as well as aesthetic imperative. Thus literary texts are situated within current topical discourses about the emergent Italian postcolonial literature within the field of the new letteratura della migrazione and the research questions whether such literatures be defined as ‘national’. Is this the opportunity to de-territorialise literature? Is a ‘transnational’[1] literature possible? Do these ‘new’ literatures demand new aesthetics? Overcoming the trauma of uprooting was a common preoccupation of earlier immigrant and exile literature which still recurs. However, in post 2000 fictions and narratives written by Italians of immigrant extraction, such as Igiaba Scego’s novel Oltre Babilonia[2] and the collections Quando nasci è una roulette [Being born is a roulette][3] or Scarpe sciolte : Racconti interculturali [Loose Shoes : Intercultural Tales],[4] common themes are the critical comparison of the different cultures and generational values and the claim for new spaces and new subjectivities, along the lines of the nomadic figuration and flexible citizenship proposed by Rosi Braidotti.[5] The literary domains are closely linked with the historical and political domains and the theoretical approach adopted: Braidotti’s figurations of ‘nomadic subjectivity’ and ‘nomadic ethics’. In addition, fictions written by Italian African writers from the Horn of Africa (e.g., Garane Garane’s Il latte è buono, [Milk is good][6] Igiaba Scego’s Oltre Babilonia, [Beyond Babylon] and Gabriella Ghermandi’s Regina di fiori e di perle[7] [Queen of flowers and pearls]), interrogate the past and re-write new histories and aesthetics with characters who resist different forms of colonisation; conversely, they celebrate differences, both cultural and gender. It is these equilibristi dell’essere [existential tightrope walkers], with their hybrid language, style and narratives, which innovate the cultural landscapes of Italy, [8] Europe and even Italian Studies in the Antipodes. [1] As suggested by Paul Gilroy (1993), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni. Press); and Debjani Ganguly (2008), ‘Literary Globalism in the new millennium. Postcolonial Studies, 11, 119-133. [2] Igiaba Scego (2008). Oltre Babilonia. Roma: Donzelli Editore. [3] Ingy Mubiayi and Igiaba Scego (2007). Quando nasci è una roulette: Giovani figli di migranti si raccontano (Milano: Terre di mezzo Cart’Armata edizioni). [4] AA.VV. (2009). Scarpe sciolte: Racconti interculturali. San Giovanni in Persiceto (BO): Eks&Tra Editore. Ed. By Roberta Sangiorgi. Introduction by Fulvio Pezzarossa. [5] Rosi Braidotti (1994). Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary feminist Theory. New York/Chichester: Columbia University Press; (2002). Gender, identity and multiculturalism in Europe. Badia Fiesolana: European University Institute; (2006) Transpositions: On nomadic ethics. United Kingdom: Polity Press. [6] Garane Garane (2005), Il latte è buono. Isernia: Cosmo Iannone Editore. [7] Gabriella Ghermandi (2007).Regina di fiori e di perle. Roma: Donzelli Editore. [8] As already noted by Nora Moll (2008), “Il rinnovamento viene da “fuori”? L’apporto degli scrittori migranti alla letteratura italiana contemporanea’, in Lingue e letterature in movimento: Scrittrici emergenti nel panorama letterario contemporaneo, ed. by S. Camilotti (Bologna: Bononia University Press), pp. 29-46. 2. Ongoing project on gender issues in Igiaba Scego's writings Dalla lesbofobia alla visibilità: Traiettorie verso la soggettività e sessualità nomadi nei romanzi di Igiaba Scego Se l’esiliato muore di nostalgia sradicato dalla sua terrai , Rhoda, esiliata, altra non solo a livello culturale ma anche sessuale, subisce una multipla disidentificazione a seguito del rifiuto della donna di cui si innamora. Di conseguenza, per cancellare il suo corpo e il suo desiderio altro, decide di auto distruggersi. Se l’esiliato e il rifugiato possono morire di dolore e l’immigrato sopravvive nella speranza di tornare al proprio paese, il ‘soggetto nomade’ (Braidotti 1994, 2002) invece riesce a superare il dolore dello sradicamento e della disidentificazione trasformandolo in energia positiva attraverso una serie di transizioni e traiettorie sostenibile e gioiose verso la sessualità nomade (Braidotti 2008). Da soggetto donna, nomade, posizionata fisicamente, a vari livelli, fisico, intellettuale ed emotivo tra diversi continenti, discipline ed affetti, ho sviluppato un interesse particolare forme postidentitarie culturali e di genere nella letteratura ‘postmigrante’ o ‘della diaspora’. Questo progetto propone un’interpretazione della rappresentazione di Rhoda e Mar e della dieresi dell’amore tra donne nei due romanzi Rhoda e Oltre Babilonia di Igiaba Scego, italiana e somala, anch’essa ‘trasversale’ e transnazionale. 3. ONGOING EU COST COLLABORATION TO ISO 901 ACTION PROJECT WOMEN WRITERS IN HISTORY My research background and academic expertise in women’s writings, including the development, coordination and teaching of the course “Women in Italian society”, in 2009 led to my successful application to become a member of the EU COST (European Cooperation in Science and technology) ISCH Action ISO901 Women Writers in History – Towards a New Understanding of European Literary Culture. The main objective of the Action is to create a strong collaborative international Research Network and to produce a Road Map outlining future systematic collaborative research in European women's literary history. The historiography of literature needs renewal. In particular women's contribution to European literary practice can and must be accounted for in a much more adequate way than current literary histories do. This COST Action lays the foundations for an innovative European-scale approach to this problem. The neglect of women as cultural agents is indeed an international phenomenon, directly relating to gender inequality in modern societies. International cooperation is needed in order to change things and demonstrate that women's growing presence, since the Middle Ages, prepared the way for their massive entrance into the "literary field" (Bourdieu) during the 20th century. Using recent theoretical insights (Moretti, Hutcheon, Valdés) and new technological means, the Action will prepare avenues for collective research by organizing a strong network of European (and other) researchers. At the end of the Action the network will be ready to carry out a large European research programme that contributes to a more balanced picture of western and Eastern Europe's culturalheritage. http://www.cost.esf.org/domains_actions/isch/Actions/women_writers_in_history. As an extended collaboration to the COST group project Women Writers in History, I will contribute from 2010 to the Female Biography Project coordinated by Gina Luria Walker and by editing entries of Italian writers of the 1803 Mary Hays’s Female Biography, specifically, Bianca Capello (1548-1587), Theodora Dante (1300) and Eleonora Gonzaga (1598-1655) from September 2011 –end of 2012). (http://www.pickeringchatto.com/major_works/memoirs_of_women_writers) FUTURE PROJECT : 4. WRITING NOMADS: A HISTORY OF ITALIAN WOMEN WRITERS Italy's trans-cultural history has produced writings by women who cross national and cultural boundaries. This project proposes a new cartography of their work, bringing together migrant and literature of the world, by past and present female writers.My project will contribute to a ‘different’, creole, literary history beyond national and mono-cultural borders. It will expand current discussions about world literature by including trans-cultural Italian women writers. A critical, historically grounded analysis of select writings will identify significant intersections between literary and life trajectories of trans-cultural writers from four distinct periods, from the Middle Ages to the new millennium. An innovative cartography of these authors, underpinned by a new theoretical framework, will show how these writers strive for a ‘nomadic’ subjectivity with their work. PAST PROJECTS: A Poetics of Inclusion ALBA DE CESPEDES': Celebrating a forgotten Cuban French forgotten Italian Writer My poetics of inclusion research includes my work and publications on forgotten writers such as Alba de Céspedes and my book Experience and Narration in the Writings of Alba de Céspedes (Ravenna: Longo, 1993) which sparked a resurgence of interest in this writer in Italy and abroad.  A reviewer commented: "Extreme critical rigour and intellectual passion are skilfully mingled in this publication […] The leading thread of Carroli’s analysis is the multi-faceted relation between experience and writing, for example between I author and I narrator […]"  “The Experience of Writing and the Writing of Experience”: Piera Carroli, Esperienza e narrazione nella scrittura di Alba de Céspedes, Book review of by Stefania De Biase (Centro donnawomanfemme, Rome), European Journal of Women's Studies (1995) 2 (2): 286-288. Available at: http://ejw.sagepub.com/content/2/2/286. See also: "Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture" edited by G. Moliterno (London / New York: Routledge, 2000) with entries on Italian women writers. In the late Nineties Gallucci and Nerenberg (American professors) invited me to contribute the first chapter "Alba de Cespedes Revisited" to their edited anthology of sholarly essays on de Cespedes, "Writing beyond Fascism: Cultural Resistance in the life and work of Alba de Cespedes (London / Ontario: Associated Presses, 2000).   WOMEN IN ITALIAN FOLK CULTURE Collated, grouped and analysed un / published lullabies (19th and early 20th century) from Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. Publication: The Role of Women in the Lullabies of Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. In Cicioni and Prusnter (eds), Visions and Revisions:Women in Italian Culture,  (Traditions and Transformations: Women in Society and the Movement Towards Liberation). Providence/Oxford: Berg.

EXAMPLES OF PROJECT LINKED TO THE PREMIO ITALIA:

CREATIVE WRITING INSPIRED BY THE THEME OF LA PIAZZA IN ITALY AND AUSTRALIA

 

Italian week celebrates ‘piazza’ theme

Dianna Budd"s artwork "Gelato in the Piazza" was a prize winner at ANU during Italian Week.
 

Filed un Literature, language & learning Autumn 2009 Piera Carroli. Photo: Belinda Pratten   Learning a second language can switch from labour to love when stories are used as a motivator by SIMON COUPER   In this age of culture wars, ‘literature’ has become a well-trammelled field of combat. On one side the grey coats extol the virtues of the high canon. On the other side the relativists grant access to the ranks for everything from Star Wars to cereal boxes.   Yet many educators have not left the field, so much as sidestepped the conflict. Dr Piera Carroli believes that literature can encompass the old and the new, the poetic and the pragmatic. She is no relativist. For her the value of literature comes from it being situated in particular places and times. And for her students, she is a sincere advocate of the role that literature can play in learning a second language.   Since 1997 Carroli has been Convenor of Italian in the School of Language Studies at ANU. She’s just published a book, Literature in Second Language Education, which is based on her research delving into how students perceive, study and learn from second-language literature.   But what kind of student was the professor herself? She spent a happy childhood in Romagna, Italy, but confesses to a “nomadic” inclination in her reading, using books as a means of escape to other places and possibilities.   “I’m a bit of a dreamer, but have always been pragmatic too. I’ve had this desire to travel and study languages from when I was quite small, and I’ve wanted to use languages in my work. I found this love of languages in literature. But I had to become very pragmatic when I was studying linguistics.”   Mixing practical and creative approaches to language was clearly something that Carroli developed early in life, as well as an appreciation that knowing how languages function was a way to empowerment.   “Learning languages, including your own language, gives you a lot of freedom – socially, educationally, even spiritually,” she says. “When I began teaching in Australia, I realised that some young people struggled with the underpinnings of language – the structure and metalanguage. In any democratic country everyone should have the opportunity to learn their first language well, and then others. If you do not know language well your options are very restricted. You will never be able to fully avail yourself of all the nuances that language offers, from the slang and dialect you may speak with your friends or grandparents, to academic or poetic forms.”   What does it mean to know a language well? Carroli was deeply influenced by her earlier studies in social linguistics, which links the way that language is used to social class and power. She was struck by the way that the diffusion of standard Italian in her native country – through things like universal education and news media – led to a freeing up of social mobility. People who might once have been discriminated against on account of their ‘lower class’ language use could instead mix it with the best of them.   Carroli talks about the importance of knowing different ‘registers’ within a language, which refers to the many scenarios that arise within a culture and the different kinds of speaking or writing they require. How we address a close school friend at the pub, for example, will be markedly different from how we address a judge in a courtroom.   To know a language well means that you can use different registers, recognise them and have an awareness of how language works, how important it is to use the right register in the right environment.     “To know a language well means that you can use different registers, recognise them and have an awareness of how language works, how important it is to use the right register in the right environment,” she says. “It’s important in Australia as well. If you are not highly competent in English, your employment opportunities will be restricted. And learning languages leads to the freedom to work in other cultures, or even just read of other ways of living.”   In her new book, Carroli puts forward the results of her own efforts to integrate the reading of Italian literature with the learning of that language. She says that her students can be daunted when confronted with an entire page of an Italian novel or short story, but that this initial trepidation soon gives way to curiosity and engagement.   She relates a recent example where students were asked to read The Three Tales of the Traveller, three linked stories by Stefano Benni, a writer known for his ironic political observations. In the third tale a group of travellers on a train complain about the heat, and then about newcomers to their country. Gradually it becomes clear that the different carriages are reflections of the various layers of hell in Dante’s Inferno.   Carroli says her students were impressed by the way the author linked contemporary political commentary with a venerable text. They drew from it reflections on universal human attitudes, but also connections closer to home, especially from the first tale “La Casa Bella” in which the traveller reflects on his decision to leave his beautiful home and land. One student related it back to her own experience of being forced off the family farm. Others drew a connection to the dispossession of Indigenous Australians.   As the students’ imaginations and intellects were engaged with this story, something else was occurring too. Little by little they began to internalise the way that language was being used, in both functional and idiomatic senses. Carroli connects this back to the sense of enjoyment that humans derive from stories.   “I think when you feel a sense of pleasure, you notice things more carefully or clearly, and you remember them well. One of the students said they didn’t realise what they were learning at the time, but it came back later – the images and the form. Some were visualisers, some focussed on words. In almost all of them this dimension of pleasure was crucial.”   “It was also very important to me to focus on form as well. That’s why we work so intensely. Sometimes we’d spend a couple of classes on just one paragraph. I encourage the students to infer the outcome, but also to link it very closely to the grammatical and lexical choices of the author. Why has he chosen those words, why those forms?   “When they answered I could see they were reproducing some of those forms in their language, so they had internalised it. You need that intensity to internalise it and reproduce it. They have a much stronger chance of learning the language if they start this process of internalisation immediately.”   Carroli’s successful approach has been recognised outside the classroom. She’s been a recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. The Italian Government has also been keen to build on the success of Italian at ANU, funding a lecturer position currently filled by Grazia Miccichè. The team has grown again with another ANU-funded position, filled by Patrizia Berti.   But at the core of this success is a love of language, and especially literature – something Carroli says she could not live without.   “I’m addicted. If I don’t have a book I feel lost,” she says. Her enthusiasm is clear, and the message simple: in a book can be found a new language and all the freedom it brings.   Piazza poetry   In 2008 Italian student Madonna Quixley won first prize in the literary component of the Premio Italia award, which is sponsored by the Italian Institute of Culture in Sydney. Her poem about sisters in the piazza is reproduced below in Italian and English.   Nella piazza di re giorgio v   È Brisbane, non è Bologna. È il municipio, non il tempio, solo una faccia della mia piazza preferita, solo il centro della mia città, della mia minuscola vita, nel principio, vicino al mio cuore, fuori.   Ancora è così maestoso, nella luce del sole del Queensland Le colonne corinzie, le palme quasi egiziane, due leoni di pietra, le guardie. Noi bambine, affettuose domatrici di leoni, baciavamo, abbracciavamo quei leoni placidi ogni volta che andavamo in centro.   La fontana la notte che bellissima vista! I colori dalle luci subacquee attraggono il turista rna immagini di depliant non trasmettono i giochi e il divertimento che provavamo certe notti della nostra infanzia, nelle nubi di goccioline. Ridevamo mentre i nostri gcnitori guardavano, noi frondiste.   Come i piccioni che fanno la cacca sulle statue, non percepivamo Ie macchie che facevamo sulle nostre facce ogni volta (sempre) che sceglievamo di odiare. E quando per la prima volta abbiamo pensato alle conseguenze dell’odio ci siamo sedute insieme nella nostra piazza preferita - fuori.   Mia sorella e io, bracci collegati, abbiamo protestato contro l’ apartheid, sedute, con i cartelli e tutti gli altri che credevano nell’uguaglianza, insieme, poi, nello stato d’emergenza che Bjelke-Peterson ha dichiarato, abbiamo ricordato il nostro passato nella piazza del nostro amico Giorgio quando, insieme, improvvisamente, abbiamo riso.   E abbiamo guardato i nostri leoni di pietra e ci siamo sentite coraggiose, cuor di leone mentre ricordavamo i baci e gli abbracci che gli davamo quando noi eravamo bambine e sapevamo, poi, solo, dovevamo comportarci odiosamente per proteggere i diritti umani in nome dell’ amore, fuori.   In King George Square   It’s Brisbane, it’s not Bologna. It’s the town hall, not the temple, only one face of my favourite piazza, only the centre of my city, of my miniscule life, in the beginning, close to my heart, outside.   Still, it’s so majestic, in the Queensland sunshine the Corinthian columns, the almost Egyptian palms two stone lions, the guards. We little girls, affectionate lion tamers, we used to kiss, we used to hug those placid lions every time we went to town.   The fountain at night what a beautiful sight! The colours of the underwater lights attract the tourist but travel brochure images don’t convey the fun and games we experienced certain nights of our childhood, in the spray we laughed while our parents watched us, we rebels.   Like the pigeons that poop on the statues we didn’t perceive the marks we made on our faces each time (always) that we chose to hate. And when, for the first time, we thought about the consequences of hatred, we were seated, together, in our favourite piazza, outside.   My sister and I, arms linked, we protested against apartheid, seated, with placards, and all the others who believed in equality, together, then, in the state of emergency that Bjelke-Peterson declared, we remembered our past in the piazza of our friend George, when, together, suddenly, we laughed. And we looked at our stone lions and we felt courageous, lion-hearted, while we remembered the kisses and hugs that we gave them when we were little girls and we knew then, only, we had to behave badly to protect human rights in the name of love, outside.   Filed under: ANU Reporter, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Arts

On Campus, News Briefs, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Arts

PROJECTS LINKED TO THE CELEBRATIONS LINKED TO THE 15OTH ANNIVERSARY OF ITALIAN UNIFICATION IN COLLABORATION WITH THE ITALIAN EMBASSY, THE MAE, AND THE LETTORE (Grazia Micciche').

One project will involve an Australia-wide writing competition by students on themes associated with Italian unification. Prizes for winners will include trips to Italy.

 RESULTS OF PROJECT INVOLVING STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS, APPROACHES TO, AND RESPONSES TO LITERATURE (Studies conducted with students of Italian at ANU)

My books (1993; 2008) have been, and continue to be cited in articles, thesis and papers (e.g., Chantelle, Warner, Language and Literature 2010, 19:226-229. http://lal.sagepub.com/content/19/2/226; Joanna Gavins. The year's work in stylistics (2008) Language and Literature 2009 18: 367 http://lal.sagepub.com/content/18/4/367)

Reviewers in scholarly journals have praised my latest book (2008).
For example:
"Piera Carroli’s book Literature in Second Language Education makes a compelling case for the inclusion of literary works in second and foreign language curricula. The book balances a rigorous engagement with theories from applied linguistics and literary studies and empirical data from classroom-based studies conducted by the author at the Australian National University in Canberra. Based on both theory and practice, Carroli advocates an approach that treats literary texts as something far more complex than just linguistic input, highlighting literature’s ‘different levels of meaning, its evocative capacity, its cultural content, its language styles and registers’ (p. 183). […]
Literature in Second Language Education answers the calls of Hall (2005) and Paran (2008) to investigate the actual results of literature in language teaching. The book provides valuable information for both educators and researchers concerning how students read foreign language literature and what pedagogies may best enable students to experience literary texts as dynamic sites for intercultural exploration. It is also notable that the majority of students interviewed in Carroli’s studies seemed to agree that literary texts should be included in all levels of language study, a finding that contradicts popular assumptions that literature has become irrelevant to our students. Her findings are an important reminder, however, that the relevance of literary texts lies in the particular kinds of aesthetic, affective and reflective skills that they enable and this must be central to both our theories and practices of teaching with foreign language literature. Review by: Chantelle Warner, University of Arizona, USA, Language and Literature, 19 (2), (20110: 226.

In June 2007 I was approached by Professor Anne Burns (Professor of Linguistics, Macquarie University) for information about my PhD thesis and copies of outline and chapters. Professor Burns, with Dr. Brian Paltridge (University of Sydney) and Dr. Gillian Wigglesworth (University of Melbourne) have been invited to prepare an article for CUP publishers on doctoral work on Language teaching in Australia and wished to include my thesis because it fitted the editor’s criteria “to showcase doctoral work in different countries in order to highlight research and to publicise thesis that may not otherwise be readily brought to attention though the applied linguistics literature” (Burns, A, Paltridge, B, Wigglesworth, G. (2008). Review of doctoral research in second language teaching and learning in Australia (2003-2006). Language Teaching, 41(2), 275–295)