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Staff profile

Overview

Dr Salvatore Campisi

Assistant Professor/Co-Director of Studies (Italian)

Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
Assistant Professor/Co-Director of Studies (Italian) in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures+44 (0) 191 33 43441

Biography

I completed a BA and MA (Laurea quadriennale vecchio ordinamento) in literature and foreign languages (English and German) at the University of Catania in 2004. I was awarded a PhD with a thesis on Hermann Hesse at the University of Salford in 2011.
I also hold the highest teaching qualification in Italian to non-native speakers (DITALS II), awarded by the Università per Stranieri di Siena, and I am registered as Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2019.

Before joining the University of Durham, I was Senior Language Tutor in Italian at the University of Manchester, where I had previously served as Senior Language Tutor for Italian and Less Widely Taught Languages for the Institution-Wide Language Programmes (IWLP), 2015-2017.
I received two nominations for best and most innovative lecturer in my faculty in the UMSU (University of Manchester Students’ Union) teaching awards 2013. In the past, I was also a Language Tutor in Italian for the University of Leeds (2013-2015) and the University of Salford (2005-2009).

I have extensively taught Italian for language specialists as well as IWLP students and members of the public, home as well as international students, undergraduate as well postgraduate. The modules I have taught include the lecture on phonetics/linguistics aimed at level-1 students (Manchester), translation (Salford, Leeds), and interpreting (Salford).

I am currently serving as the External Examiner in Italian (Lancaster University) and for the Italian IWLP courses at the University of Warwick.
I am an active member of the Society for Italian Studies.

Research interests
My doctoral thesis draws on my interest in the area of integration and interrelation between different forms of art: music and literature; the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk; cinema as an ideal platform of interaction between sound, images, and words. ‘Hermann Hesse and the Dialectics of Time’ explores Hermann Hesse’s relation with temporality through the examination of five interrelated themes which have time, or the timeless, as a common denominator: music, memory, metamorphosis, Hesse’s idea of eternity and its links with both Hesse’s ‘Humor’ and narrative irony.

I have published on the intersection between music and literature and have investigated the translation/adaptation of the lyrics of popular American and British songs from the 60s for Italian artists in order to make those songs more widely accessible to an Italian audience.

My scholarly interests have since developed in line with my teaching practice, focusing on independent and blended language learning (see ITALO project) as well as a closer integration between the cultural and linguistic dimensions, and an effective sequencing of grammar topics in relation to communicative competences as identified by the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages).

Both my teaching practice and pedagogical reflection have drawn on and engaged with the current debate on the decolonisation and transnationalisation of the Modern Languages curriculum.

Additional interests are the works of Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Luc Godard, and the use these film directors make of music. Among Italian filmmakers, I am particularly interested in Pasolini, especially his ‘Ciclo della vita’ (Il decameron, I racconti di Canterbury, Il fiore delle mille e una notte), and contemporary directors such as P. Sorrentino, M. Garrone, and P. Marcello.

Research interests

  • Independent and blended language learning
  • Cinema and language learning
  • Music and literature
  • Decolonisation and transnationalisation
  • Audio-visual translation