History of the centre

TEXTL stems from the transformation of previous experiences.

In 2001 Remo Ceserani founded Citelc, Centro Interdipartimentale di Teoria e Storia Comparata della Letteratura (Interdepartmental Centre for the Theory and Comparative History of Literature), which brought together various departments of the University of Bologna and acted as a connecting hub between different disciplinary fields (comparative literature, Italian studies, foreign literatures, aesthetics, art, music, performance), with the aim of giving greater cultural relevance to interdisciplinary and transversal perspectives on the study of literature. Incorporated in the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies, with the acronym CeTeLC (Centre for Research on Literary Theory and Comparative Studies), and under the direction of Donata Meneghelli, it became a research centre that hosted and connected the main activities of the literary theory and comp-lit faculty members, both on the teaching and research levels (PhD thesis and seminars, projects carried out by post-doc researchers, organisation of conferences), with special emphasis on the following axes of investigation: theory and history of the modern and contemporary novel, theory of narration, genres and modes, literature and psychoanalysis, relations between literature and visual culture. 

Still under the direction of Donata Meneghelli, TEXTL was born from the desire to promote a study of literature in a materialistic and multimedia perspective. While maintaining strong disciplinary roots in comparative literature, literary theory and close reading, TEXTL pinpoints some specific lines of research on which to focus its activities and thinking, including: words and images in modernity and post-modernity; literature and visual culture; literature and material culture; materiality of literature; literary forms and typographic forms; old and new media; technical reproducibility.