Charles Burdett
Crolla Amato Prize 2019 | Cultural Studies
Panel Judge
Charles Burdett is Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Durham and Honorary Professor of Italian at the University of Bristol.
The principal areas of Charles Burdett’s research are literary culture under Fascism; travel writing; the Italian colonial presence in Libya and East Africa and its legacy; theories of inter-cultural and transnational contact; the representation of Islam and the Islamic world in recent Italian literature and culture.
An important part of his work concerns the theoretical frame through which we consider transnational contact and the implications for the disciplinary field of Modern Languages of the study of cultural translation in all its forms. This research interest lies at the heart of the AHRC beacon project of which he was Principal Investigator, Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures (2014-2017).
The project explores a series of critical instances of linguistic and cultural translation with a specific focus on modern Italy and the experiences of mobility that are embedded in its recent history. The project uses the Italian case as a template from which to develop a renewed model for the work of Modern Languages and its applications in the 21st century.
His most recent book, Italy, Islam and the Islamic World: Representations and Reflections from 9/11 to the Arab Uprisings (2016) examines some of the most significant voices that have made themselves heard in defining Italy’s relationship with Islam and the Islamic world in a period of remarkable geopolitical and cultural upheaval.
