Reimagining the Italian South: migration and translation in contemporary Italian Literature and Cinema

Images of Southern Italy as a place of arrival for migrants with different origins and backgrounds are in recent years proliferating on Italian medias, as well as in contemporary Italian literature and cinema. The unprecedented perspective on the mezzogiorno which presents the region as a place where people arrive and not only as a place of departure, represents a major change in the collective imaginary on the Italian South. This perspective today articulates itself with, and sometimes challenges, the longstanding representation of the South as the forever "backward" part of the country. This talk will present some of the major works which make up the ever-growing corpus of contemporary Italian texts focusing on contemporary migration to the Italian South. And, through analysis of specific case studies informed by translation theory and by decolonial, queer and feminist critique, it will investigate the representation, in this production, of different forms of agencies, of the hybridization of languages and cultures, and of new articulations of identities and forms of belonging.