Presentation
The aim of this PhD Course is to prepare young graduates to embark on an academic career in Literature and Linguistics, and gain competences in these fields, so that they will be ready to take up jobs in the culture industry and in teaching. The courses available are in English Studies, French Studies, German Studies, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan Studies, Linguistics, Onomastics, Romance Studies and Philology and Slavic Studies.
PHD PROGRAMME IN MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES, LINGUISTICS AND ONOMASTICS
Coordinator: Prof. Paolo Bertinetti
Duration: 3 years
Curricula: English Studies, French Studies, German Studies, Spanish Studies, Linguistics, Onomastics, Romance Studies, Slavic Studies,
The PhD Programme aims to develop academic research skills in key areas of literature and linguistics, using advanced methodologies relevant to each subject area.
English Studies
The aim of this curriculum is to train graduates so that they can access academic careers and high-profile positions in cultural institutions (in Italy and abroad) and organizations (both public and private) requiring expertise in the traditional areas of English studies, i.e. English linguistics, English literature, literature of Anglophone countries and Anglo-American literature.
The primary aim is to offer doctoral students the best opportunities to develop advanced research skills, acquire in-depth knowledge, understanding and expertise in their chosen field of research and compete with other scholars at an international level. This curriculum also aims at stimulating the active participation of each doctoral student in national and international conferences and the publication of significant research-based contributions. In the first year students will attend six seminars addressing main areas of English studies.
At the end of the first year, candidates are expected to write four essays (to be chosen from the topics dealt with in the seminars). After receiving a positive evaluation from the doctoral committee, candidates will be admitted to the second year. In the second year, once the supervisor has been assigned, students will attend two seminar series closely connected with the topic of their dissertation and write two essays. Starting from the second year and, if needed, throughout the third year, candidates are expected to spend a research period at an academic institution in an English-speaking country. The third year is entirely devoted to the writing of their doctoral dissertation.
French Studies
This curriculum promotes and organises courses, seminars, conferences and educational events aiming to gradually sharpen doctoral students competence to carry out high-profile academic research in Italian and foreign universities, as well as in public and private cultural institutions.
The final goal of this curriculum is to prepare highly skilled young scholars in the two main research areas , i.e. French linguistics and literature. In particular, as far as linguistics is concerned, the primary goal is to enable specialists to handle and analyse large spoken and written text corpora, in order to identify lexicological, terminological, rhetorical and pragmatic features of the French language, placing them in diachronic and synchronic, theoretical and applied perspectives (with reference to teaching and/or to drafting lexicographic repertoires as well as data banks for translations).
As for French literature, the goal is to provide doctoral students with critical and analytical resources that will enable them to carry out specialized research in their interest areas and in the relevant cultural and disciplinary fields. This curriculum aims to make young scholars capable to take an active role in an international context and participate in the debate on the chronological placement of literary history and of gender issues. The suggested approach places the literary text at the core of a methodological track which makes use of the most advanced philological approaches to the critical examination of a text and gives particular attention to theoretical reflection. Thus, the main research paths are threefold: representation, identity, history; textual expression and transmission of ideas; modernity, translations and theories.
German Studies
This curriculum organizes courses, seminars and educational events, aiming to gradually sharpen doctoral students linguistic, historical and literary competence, and enhance their analytical and critical skills for high-level research work, teaching, translating and cultural mediation at universities and public/private institutions in Italy and abroad.
The main objective of this PhD curriculum is to make young scholars highly competent in the wide realm of German culture, and thus ready to creatively face the challenges of our multicultural and cosmopolitan society. Our educational activities will be focused on the main research areas of specialization of the teaching staff. Students must spend a period in a German-speaking country, where they are expected to attend one or more seminars.
Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan Studies
The curriculum in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan Studies offers tertiary level academic training in the languages and literatures of the Iberian peninsula. It is divided into the areas of language/translation, and literature.
As regards language and translation, the possible research areas to focus on include theoretical linguistics, specialised discourse, pragmatics, comparative studies between Romance languages (Iberian languages and Italian), synchronic and diachronic linguistics, present-day translation theories and practice.
As regards literary studies, the approach to the various Iberian literatures refers to chronological periods starting from Medieval origins to contemporary production, with a constant attention to interdisciplinary aspects, both within the Iberian domain itself and in contact with other linguistic and cultural areas throughout the centuries.
Linguistics
This curriculum promotes and organises courses, seminars, conferences and educational events. The aim is to develop doctoral students competence to carry out high-profile academic research in Italian and foreign universities, as well as in public and private institutions.
The final goal is to sharpen young scholars competence in the various fields of linguistics, including important areas such as studies in corpus linguistics and in the automatic treatment of natural languages. In this PhD programme these are not only essential tools for modern lexicographic activity, but they can also lead to new developments in IT methodology. Corpus linguistics and natural language processing are directly linked to applied linguistics which, in connection to the teaching of Italian and modern languages, may offer answers to some of the challenges of modern times, getting more and more cosmopolitan and interconnected.
A long-standing and growing attention of the Department is addressed to Euro-Asian linguistics, which expands the research perspectives described above, with particular attention to the Arabic-Islamic world and to Japan. These languages and cultures themselves the object of research in the PhD programme are chosen by lecturers and doctorate students because they offer a valuable extension of the cultural and linguistic horizons which are crucial in the contemporary world and offer interesting challenges to present-day technology in text elaboration and processing.
Onomastics
The course aims to offer high-profile specialization in the history of the Italian language, with particular reference to the specific, and partly complementary, fields of toponomastics, anthroponomastics, and the historical study of lexis. This is the only PhD programme in Italy that ensures a training scheme specifically devoted to onomastics, considered as an independent and autonomous field of research and an area which attracts wide-ranging and diverse linguistic competences.
The goal of this curriculum is to train young scholars so that they can contribute to the advancement of the onomastic sciences, whose well-deserved role in the history of the Italian language has recently been acknowledged.
The research programme may focus on the examination of documentary corpora selecting specific space and time boundaries (preferably, but not exclusively, medieval), in order to extract a historical and linguistic overview of onomastic formations, with reference to place names, personal and family names, and, as far as the latter are concerned, first names (personal names), surnames, nicknames, as well as the structure of the system. Lexis is an integral part of the process, since toponyms and anthroponyms are in fact crystallisations of regional vocabulary, which may be selected as a specific research field by doctoral students.
The relation between teaching and research is guaranteed by the training programme, which alternates modules of systematic learning (specific lessons for doctoral students, series of lectures and seminars, participation in national and international conferences) and modules of laboratory work, in which theoretical and methodological tools for research will be introduced (laboratory of IT for textual analysis, use of tools for onomastic studies). The distribution of teaching and research workload will be balanced so that research training will take place in the first two years, and the third year will be mainly devoted to the drafting of the final thesis.
Romance Studies
This PhD curriculum aims to train students in the fields of Romance philology, literature, linguistics and dialectology, and in particular in the field of Romanian studies, which is the only curriculum of this kind available in Italy. The high academic profile of the staff guarantees an adequate organisation of the three years of specialisation, offering stimulating methodological approaches, careful and continuous supervision, and constructive collaboration.
Contacts with foreign universities and research centres offer doctoral students the opportunity to carry out research abroad and to be jointly supervised by highly qualified scholars in order to acquire suitable competences to act in a European scientific and cultural context . In particular the Universities of Bucarest and Cluj offer doctoral students specialising in Romanian studies the opportunity to improve their linguistic competence by granting them access to the manuscript library and texts which are difficult to find in Italy. Collaboration with the Universities of Lyon 3, Grenoble and Nice offers doctoral students the opportunity to become familiar with avant-garde research tools, thanks to contact with international research teams who work in the fields of lexicography, dialectology and in the compilation of linguistic atlases. Moreover the Romance Studies Institute of the University of Saarbrücken allows doctoral students to delve further into their research, thanks to the abundance of material related to Italian, Provencal and Romance Studies in general. The curriculum includes courses taught by the local teaching staff and by visiting Italian and foreign scholars.
Slavic Studies
The goal of the curriculum in Slavic Studies is to provide students with high-level competence in the language and culture of one Slavic country, combined with adequate familiarity with another culture of the Slavic area, in order to become acquainted with institutions, with the job market and with the cultural activities of these countries. Particular attention is paid to linguistic, literary, historical and cultural studies of the Polish, Russian, Serbian and Croatian areas, so that doctoral students will be able to exploit in full their cognitive and critical resources in order to carry out specialised research in the chosen field of investigation. Competence acquired in this doctoral programme can eventually be applied to tertiary level teaching, in the publishing field, and in corporate consulting in the Slavic countries.
To provide high-quality training, doctoral students will be offered seminars and lectures taught by Italian and foreign scholars. Doctoral students are also expected to attend seminars and conferences in the areas of Slavic linguistics, literature and history taking place in other Italian and foreign universities. Thanks to several cooperation agreements between our Department and prestigious research institutions in Eastern and Central Europe, students will be offered the opportunity to spend a study and research period in a Slavic country, with the support of local tutors, to collect material for their thesis and to improve their language competence.
- Paolo BERTINETTI (Coordinatore del Dottorato)
- Emanuele Ferdinando BARBERA - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Gabriella BOSCO - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Daniela CACIA - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Andrea CAROSSO - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Gianluca COCI - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Ruggero DRUETTA - Dip. Scienze economico-sociali e matematico-statistiche
- Krystyna Roza JAWORSKI - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Carla MARELLO - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Riccardo MORELLO - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Veronica ORAZI - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Paola PAISSA - Dip. Scienze economico-sociali e matematico-statistiche
- Elena PAPA - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Virginia PULCINI - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Antonio ROMANO - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Alda ROSSEBASTIANO - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Orietta ABBATI - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Nadia CAPRIOGLIO - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Pietro DEANDREA - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Giancarlo DEPRETIS - Università di Torino
- Gerhard FRIEDRICH - Dip. Lingue e letterature straniere e culture moderne
- Bruno MAZZONI - Dip. Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica, Univ. Pisa
- Giulio Cesare SCHIAVONI - Dip. Studi Umanistici, Univ. Piemonte Orientale
Members of the Teaching Staff affiliated to foreign universities
- Joseph BRINCAT - University of Malta
- Ana María CANO GONZÁLEZ - Universidad de Oviedo
- Emili CASANOVA - Universidad de Valentia
- Ulrich HEID - Universitaet Hildesheim
COLLABORATIONS WITH INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH CENTRES
- University College (London, UK)
- Queen Mary College (London, UK)
- Université Lyon III (Lyon, France)
- Universität des Saarlandes (Saarbrücken, Germany)
- Copenhagen Business School (Copenhagen, Denmark) Interlink
- University of Malta (Msida, Malta)
- Universitat de València (Valencia, Spain)
- Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
- Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ist. Iula, Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain)
- Universidad de Sevilla (Sevilla, Spain)
- Universidad de Salamanca (Salamanca, Spain)
- Universitat de les Illes Balears (Palma - Baleares, Spain)
- Universitatea din București (Bucharest, Romania)
- Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca (Cluj-Napoca, Romania)
- Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iaşi (Iaşi, Romania)
- Universität Heidelberg - InstitÜt fur Übersetzen und Dolmetschen (Heidelberg, Germany)
- Univerzitet u Beogradu (Belgrade, Serbia)
- MGLU Moskovskij Gosudarstvennyj Lingvisticheskij universite im. Morisa Toreza (Moscow, Russia)
- SPbGU, Sankt-Peterburgskij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet (Saint Petersburg, Russia)
- Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia)
- Polska Akademia Nauk (Warsaw, Poland)
- European Academy Bozen (Bolzano, Italy)
- The Kyoto University Of Foreign Studies (Kyoto, Japan)
- University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban, South Africa)
Ljiljana BANJANIN (L-LIN/21) Emanuele CICCARELLA (L-OR/22) Lucia CINATO (L-LIN/14) Carmelina CONCILIO (L-LIN/10) Marcella COSTA (L-LIN/14) Irene DE ANGELIS (L-LIN/10) Sonia DI LORETO (L-LIN/11) Cristiano FURIASSI (L-LIN/12) Fedora GIORDANO (L-LIN/11) Antonio Jose GOMES FOURNIER (L-LIN/09) Peggy KATELHOEN (L-LIN/14) Patricia KOTTELAT (L-LIN/04) Maria Margherita MATTIODA (L-LIN/04) Roberto MERLO (L-LIN/17) Matteo MILANI (L-FIL-LET/13) Maria Isabella MININNI (L-LIN/07) Monica PAVESIO (L-LIN/03) Rachele RAUS (L-LIN/04) Laura RESCIA (L-LIN/03) Silvia ULRICH (L-LIN/13)
Guido FRANZINETTI (M-STO/03 - DGSPES, Università del Piemonte orientale) Anna Luisa RUBANO (L-FIL-LET/12 - Dip. Beni culturali e di scienze del linguaggio, Università di Bari) Julijana VUCO (L-FIL-LET/12 - Department of Italian Language and Literature, University of Belgrade)
USEFUL LINKS AND EMAILS
- English Studies: Bertinetti Paolo, tel. +39 011 6702001 - E-mail: paolo.bertinetti@unito.it
- German Studies: Morello Riccardo, tel. +39 011 6703712 - E-mail: riccardo.morello@unito.it
- French StudiesGabriella Bosco, tel. +39 011 6704759 - E-mail: gabriella.bosco@unito.it
- Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan Studies: Veronica Orazi, tel. +39 011 6704780 - E-mail: veronica.orazi@unito.it
- Linguistics: Manuel Barbera - E-mail: b.manuel@inrete.it
- Onomastics: Elena Papa - E-mail: elena.papa@unito.it
- Romance Studies: Gianluca Coci - E-mail: gianluca.coci@unito.it
- Slavic Studies: Krystyna Jaworska, tel. + 39 011 6703432- E-mail: krystyna.jaworska@unito.it
for information and technical support: 011 6702001/2714
a. The academic programme consists of formal teaching (lectures specifically tailored for the PhD programme, lectures and seminars, participation in conferences in Italy and abroad) as well as research training, with a view to providing candidates with theoretical tools and advanced research methods.
Depending on the research projects selected, doctoral students will be assigned to work with teaching staff whose expertise includes the candidates' research fields. Therefore, a supervisor will be assigned when candidates' thesis titles are approved.
The PhD programme will organize specially designed training activities. Italian and international lecturers will be invited to hold lectures and seminars.
Training activities will be held at the University of Torino, at consortium members’ institutions and at foreign institutions, upon approval of the candidate's supervisor.
b. The Doctorate aims at training scholars who will be able to pursue academic careers or take on high-responsibility positions in public or private institutions requiring excellent competence in their specific cultural fields. The proportion of educational and research activities will be distributed so as to concentrate most of the instruction aimed at forming competent researchers in the first two years, while the third will be mainly devoted to the completion of the doctoral thesis. During their first year, after being assigned the thesis work corresponding to the chosen project, doctoral students will attend seminars concerning the main areas of their field of study. At the end of their first year they will turn in three written reports, in the form of long papers, and will be admitted to the second year on the basis of a positive evaluation of these papers by the teaching staff.
Depending on the different project typologies, an appropriate profiling form will be drafted for each doctoral student to certify activities performed on the basis of individual tuition and their correspondence with the Doctorate’s educational goals. This is necessary because of the wide range of different curricula.
In the second year, doctorate students will attend seminars focusing specifically on the topic of their thesis, and will submit reports on the seminar work. During the second year (and if necessary in the third year) candidates are expected to spend a research period related to the subject of their thesis at a foreign partner university. The third year is entirely devoted to the writing of the doctoral thesis.
c. Following a positive continuous assessment of seminar papers and positive evaluation provided by supervisors on the research work done during the doctorate programme, candidates will be admitted to the final exam. An extension may be granted only for reasons other than the quality of the research.
d. The Commission is responsible for the final evaluation, which will also consider the continuous assessment provided by the supervisors.
In the training period doctoral candidates, as said above, are expected to submit written reports on topics related to their research area. The best papers will be published in academic journals.
Admission to the final exam will be subject to the achievement of the required credits and to the approval of the thesis by the teaching staff in accordance with the supervisor’s proposal. In the event of a negative evaluation an extension may be granted, if justified by the progress of the research.
The final work at the end of the training period consists of a research thesis, which must be scientifically sound and original, theoretically well-grounded and thoroughly developed as far as the phenomenon under investigation is concerned.
e. The doctoral student’s academic productivity will also be taken into account, such as participation in local or national research projects, conferences and seminars at Italian and foreign universities, poster presentations, papers and articles submitted for publication. Besides published papers (contributions, research reports, the editing of proceedings, the compilation of encyclopaedic and dictionary entries), new types of multimedia products will also be considered (electronic databases, corpora, multimedia websites).
- English
- French
- German
- Linguistics
- Onomatstics
- Spanish, Portuguese and Cataln
- Romance Studies and Philology
- Slavic