Le pietre di Ca’ Foscari: Ruskin e il Palazzo

Our contribution concerns a phase in the history of the building that gives the University its name. When Ruskin came to Venice in 1845 he was horrified by the decayed state of the palaces on the Grand Canal, and by the drastic restorations in progress. In recording their features in measurements, drawings and daguerreotypes, Ca’ Foscari took priority, and his studies of its traceries constitute a unique witness. This work also helped generate new ideas on the role of shadow in architectural aesthetic, and on the characteristics of Gothic, which were to bear fruit in The Seven Lamps and The Stones of Venice. In his late guide to the city, St Mark’s Rest, Ruskin addressed «the few travellers who still care for her monuments» and offered the Venetian Republic’s laws regulating commerce as a model for modern England. Whether or not he knew of the founding of a commercial studies institute at Ca’ Foscari in 1868, he would certainly have hoped that it would teach principles of fair and just trading, as well as of respectful tourism.

La lingua dei segni italiana a Ca’ Foscari

This paper presents the Deaf Studies developed at Ca’ Foscari in the past 20 years. Teaching activities and research projects are presented and discussed. The goal of the Deaf Studies programme at Ca’ Foscari is not only to advance in the knowledge of sign languages, deafness, and language and communication disorders, but also to offer the teaching of the language and culture of the Italian Deaf community within a public institution, on a par with the spoken languages taught at the university. The Ca’ Foscari team is also engaged in accessibility and inclusion projects, in line with the 17 sustainable development goals of the United Nations (Agenda 2030).

Dal mito di Venezia alla Graphic Novel

Among the literary disciplines, the comparatism is that which, over time, is generally more affected by the dominant moods outside the academic sphere. Giving rise to the oscillations of consensus, sometimes attributed to the absence of a methodological status that is at least defined by representing a language and a nation (as is the case with national literatures), comparatism presupposes the support of a universalist or at least pro-European thought, perpetuating, in thetranslatio studiorum, the humanistic conception of literature as culture and as knowledge.

Inglese e anglo-americano a Ca’ Foscari (1950-70)

This contribution is partially taken from a personal Memoir, with an explanatory Note at the end, on the introduction and establishment of American Literature as an independent and ‘major’ subject at Ca’ Foscari in the early 1950s (the first time in Italian universities, which would later follow our example), and its interaction/collision with English Literature as such. In a crucial historical and political period, this stirred up problems, competition, and improvement in our curricula, opening new vistas and new perspectives for the next decades.

Gli insegnamenti di linguistica a Ca’ Foscari (1920-2018)

The present contribution reconstructs the history of Linguistics at Ca’ Foscari, from its inception within the language program of the Royal School of Commerce to its subsequent developments in the Schools of Foreign Languages and Literatures and Letters and Philosophy, and in the Department of Language Sciences, up to its current state.

150 della ‘lingua di Molière’ a Ca’ Foscari

For 150 years, from the foundation of the High School of Commerce to the present day, the French language has played a central role at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, due to the considerable number of students who have chosen to study it and to its importance in the life of the university. The professors, even with their personal stories, their ideas and activities, the educational planning of their courses, and the shifting balance between language and literature, are a sign of the cultural and didactic progress some meaningful aspects of which this article aims to highlight. Following the historical reconstruction from a diachronic perspective, many important factors of discontinuity and continuity will naturally emerge. Our proposal is to focus on those language factors that remain constant over the years, in particular on that early liaison between teaching and the professors’ didactic/scientific production.

Incroci di civiltà, undici anni di letteratura a Venezia: 2008-18

This contribution presents Incroci di civiltà (Crossings of Civilisations), Venice International Literary Festival. Specifically, it traces its birth within the former Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, its development in the two Linguistic Departments of the University, and the many Venetian collaborations that have made it recognisably unique in the Italian cultural landscape because of its thematic focus and engagement with crucial issues of our present-tense world.

Gli occhi di Laura

Laura Mancinelli is a highly esteemed scholar and one of Italy’s foremost contemporary writers. In the 1970s, she taught Germanic Philology (and subsequently History of the German Language) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice for eight years. In this period, she became fully aware of her passion for writing novels inspired by her medieval studies – albeit imbued with autobiographical details and witty self-mockery. This paper will explore the nature of her relationship with Venice and Ca’ Foscari through her own eyes, captured in the autobiographical novels as well as in the detective short stories with Superintendent Florindo Flores as main character. Archival research has also been carried out to provide a full picture of her Venice experience.

Lingua e letteratura (neo)greca a Ca’ Foscari: 1868-2018

The essay aims to outline the history of the teaching of Modern Greek at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice: it started with its foundation in 1868, with Costantino Triantafillis, and was interrupted for more than a century from 1890. This paper also deals with the history of the discipline from 1868 until today, with an eye on the connection with the political and cultural life of the country and on the relationship with other disciplines (such as Ancient Greek language and literature and Byzantine civilization). After an interval of a century classes of Modern Greek started up again at Ca’ Foscari in 1994-95 thanks to the teaching of Lucia Marcheselli Loukas. Since 1998 the teaching has been revived with a tenured professor and, in the last twenty years, it has trained graduate students and young scholars who today play a cultural and linguistic role of mediation between Italy and Greece.

Leggere Thomas Mann in Laguna

In the form of a personal memoir, this essay outlines the work of the distinguished scholar Ladislao Mittner (1902-75) and the development of German studies at the University of Venice in the second half of the 20th century. Mittner arrived at Ca’ Foscari in 1942 and took charge of German studies in the first Italian Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures (established in 1954), and became a point of reference for over thirty years. During these years, he decisively shaped the guidelines of the discipline at Ca’ Foscari. Due to his own plurilingual Hapsburg roots, he considered a good command of languages pivotal. This is why he can also be considered a pioneer of the establishment of German language teaching as an independent subject from literature, which was not a self-evident truth at the time. However, he also underlined the importance of the literary text through very refined critical tools. He was an acute philologist and a broad-minded historian who, from the very beginning, added to the German courses such subjects as Germanic Philology, History of the German Language, Philosophy and Music of the German-speaking countries, transforming German studies in Italy into a modern and open-minded field of studies, far from just technical knowledge. From the beginning his vision of the German world was in a context of comparative cultures. Mittner’s work provided the firm basis for the educational commitment required to meet the daily challenge of a multicultural Europe.