Cecilia Schwartz
Contact
Name and title: Cecilia Schwartz
Mail: cecilia.schwartz@su.se
Phone: +468161591
Workplace: Department of Romance Studies and Classics Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Room B568
About me
I am a full professor of Italian, specializing in the transnational and translational dimensions of Italian literature. My research explores how Italian literature circulates and reaches foreign readers through various mediators, including translators, publishers, libraries, and universities. From a transnational perspective, I focus on the dynamics between (semi-)peripheral cultures with a particular emphasis on gender.
Between 2016 and 2021, I participated in the RJ-funded national research program Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures (www.worldlit.se). In 2021, I launched the partially RJ-funded project A Rome of One’s Own, where I examine women's mediation thorugh translations, literary writing, criticism end journalism in intercultural contexts, primarily between Sweden and Italy.
My current research focuses on Italian women writers, particularly in relation to the following aspects: the retelling of fascism, the World Wars, and the postwar period from a female perspective; Italian literature and #MeToo; and the feminization of the book market.
I teach Italian at all levels, mainly courses in literature.
Research areas: comparative literature, sociology of translation, transculturality, translingualism, reception, literary mediation, world literature, fantastic literature, children's literature.
Ongoing research projects
A Rome of one's own: translation, mediation and translingualism in 20th-century women writers in the interculture between Sweden and Italy
The project started in 2021 thanks to a research grant from RJ. Drawing on three women authors' writing and literary mediatorship, I investigate the conditions of intercultural processes during the first half of the 20th century. The project also aims to draw attention to their images of Italy, since previous research prioritised male writers' representations of the country.
"Circulation, Translation and Reception Across Borders: Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities Around the World"
The project aims to publish a research anthology on the translation, circulation and reception of Italo Calvino's Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities) in different countries, language areas and cultural contexts. In collaboration with Elio Baldi (Amsterdam University).
Concluded research projects:
“Made in Italy. A diachronic study of literary circulation and translation in the semi-periphery”
The project was part of the research program “Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literature” (RJ) and has a translation sociological profile aimed at highlighting different parts of the inflow and circulation of Italian literature to Sweden from the late 19th century to today. The project resulted in a large number of publications, including the monograph La letteratura italiana in Svezia. Autori, editori, lettori (1870-2020) (Carocci 2021, see review: https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/enthymema/article/view/19747/17662) as well as the co-authored volume Northern Crossings. Translation, Circulation and the Literary Semi-periphery (Bloomsbury 2022).
“Literary mediation of Romance languages in the Nordic countries”
The project aimed to highlight how literary texts from the Romance languages circulate in the Nordic region by focusing on intermediary individuals and institutions. The project was a collaboration with Mickaëlle Cedergren (SU) and foundend a research network from all over the Nordic countries. The network organized conferences, workshops and courses and published a special issue of Moderna språk (2016, n.2) on literary mediators.
“The narrated North: nordicity as form, function and fiction in Italian contemporary literature”
Based on theories of geocriticism, imagology and literary discourse analysis, the project investigated the construction of the North in contemporary Italian literature and travel literature.