Case Study
Funded by: Roberts’ Fund for Researchers
On: book launch
Report written by: Arina Cirstea
Date: 15 July 2011
The Launch of Metamorphosing Dante
Most of us would have already noticed a significant increase in the number and
variety of events organised by early career researchers over the past year. Many of
them have been made possible by the availability of a pool of research money
provided by the Roberts’ fund for researchers. I have recently interviewed Dr. Fabio
Camiletti, Assistant Professor in the Department of Italian, on his experience of using
Roberts’ funding to organise a book launch.
The most significant conclusion of this brief interview was that the book launch has
literally ticked all the boxes to qualify as a multicultural, interdisciplinary and interinstitutional research event. Metamorphosing Dante. Appropriations, Manipulations
and Rewritings in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries has been co-edited by
Fabio in collaboration with scholars from the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry,
and is published in the Institute’s Cultural Inquiry series. According to the general
editors, the series aims to ‘indentify tensions both between and within different
cultures’ and develop ‘promising avenues of inquiry, experimentation and
intervention’.
The volume takes up this challenge by using ‘transdisciplinary routes’ to explore the
influence of Dante across a range of cultures, including European, African and North
American, and engages with the writings of Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka and Pier
Paolo Pasolini, to name but a few. In the effort to place Italian literature in an
international context, the various articles rely on a variety of disciplinary approaches,
from literary studies to postcolonial studies and psychoanalysis. As well as co-editing
the volume, Fabio has contributed an article, which makes it an even more important
addition to his CV. However, apart from securing a wider audience for research
published by a Warwick academic, this book launch has involved the university in an
exciting, and already successful, international initiative.
All the more so as Metamorphosing Dante represents a follow-up on an international
conference that took place in Berlin in 2009, when Fabio was a research fellow at the
ICI (the research project he carried out here between 2008 and 2010 is available at:
http://www.ici-berlin.org/profile/camilletti/). By mediating an encounter between ICI
scholars and staff and students in the Italian Department at Warwick, the book launch
has provided Fabio with the opportunity to strengthen existing research links as well
as capitalize on his personal network in order to open up new possibilities of
collaboration for Warwick researchers.
When prompted, Fabio had no hesitation in rating his book launch as an
‘exceptionally successful’ event. The launch was organised as a round-table seminar,
chaired by a guest scholar from the University of Birmingham, during which
participants had the opportunity to engage editors in an in-depth discussion of the
central issues tackled in the volume. Fabio felt that the question-and-answer session
was stimulating and well guided, and contributed to providing those present with a
fuller understanding of his research on the work of Dante, as well as that of his fellow
contributors. Moreover, through its informal, friendly atmosphere, it has provided
plenty of opportunity for postdoctoral researchers to communicate their own research
ideas to an audience including established scholars in their field.
Fabio’s only regret was that the event was not able to draw more interest from outside
the Italian department. To remedy this aspect, he came up with the idea of a crossdepartmental seminar series, with the aim of encouraging a dialogue between
researchers working on the nineteenth century across different literatures and cultures.
The Nineteenth-century Research Seminar Series, due to be inaugurated in October
2011, has recently been awarded Roberts’ funding. This project also represents the
most fruitful way in which Fabio has shared his ‘best practice’ so far, as the
application for funding has been submitted in collaboration with Dr Sotirios Paraschas
from the Department of French. Fabio has also continued his collaboration with ICI,
and a co-edited volume, Phantasmata, has recently come out in the Cultural Inquiry
series. As a follow-up on the launch of Metamorphosing Dante, he is also considering
the possibility of setting up a cross-institutional nineteenth century research network.
Fabio had previously benefited from Roberts’ funding in his position as a researcher
at the University of Birmingham, and confessed his disappointment at the news that
the programme will be discontinued. I would add that while the programme has
undoubtedly contributed to the development of his researcher profile, it has equally
benefited participating institutions, as through the various events that a researcher like
Fabio organises or attends the research culture of the home institution becomes known
in a wider context.
On a more general level, what caught my attention from the outset is that among the
scores of Warwick applicants for Roberts’ funding, Fabio is currently the only one
who required support for the organisation of a book launch. In my view, in the current
academic climate, an event that aims to publicize and celebrate one’s published
research is extremely beneficial to both individuals and institutions, and it would be
interesting to note if this successful model will be replicated in future applications. On
the other hand, with the Roberts’ programme ending in December 2011, and with
most departments aiming to cut down on their expenses, it is very difficult to predict
whether the organisation of such events by early career researchers will be at all
possible in the future.