This volume collects the interventions of the post-doctoral fellows and PhD students of the University of Cluj Napoca, the University of Bucharest and the University of Florence (Mediterranean Cultures; Doctoral School of Comparative Languages, Literatures and Cultures, specialisation in Language, Literature, Philology: Intercultural Perspectives) presented in occasion of the seminar Storia, identit e canoni letterari ("History, identity and literary canons", Florence, 22-23 November 2011). The contributions are centred on the idea of canon, as a cultural construct founding modern national identities. Another trace is the literary and cultural hybridisations between different geographies. For the Romanian context, the contributions pay particular attention to the movements of the avant-garde of the early 1900s. Some contributions account for the most problematic aspects of the contemporary world using interdisciplinary approaches.

Gender discrimination continues to be a reality in several parts of the world, also in Europe. The aim of this book is to provide an overview of both European Union’s (EU) gender policies and gender balance in EU institutions. It does so by looking at gender equality policies and the EU legal system concerning gender equality, women’s representation within diff erent institutions (and more particularly in the European External Action Service), gender rights as a type of human rights and the EU’s role in the external promotion of womens’ rights in third countries. The analysis shows that women’s representation in the EU institutions has increased in the last decades and that the EU has strengthened its att ention to gender rights in its external relations as well, however the results of both att empts are far from being fully satisfactory.

How are modernity, coloniality, and interimperiality entangled? Bridging the humanities and social sciences, Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă provide innovative decolonial perspectives that aim to creolize modernity and the modern world-system. Historical Transylvania, at the intersection of the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, offers the platform for their multi-level reading of the main themes in Liviu Rebreanu's 1920 novel Ion. Topics range from the question of the region's capitalist integration to antisemitism and the enslavement of Roma to multilingualism, gender relations, and religion. Creolizing the Modern develops a comparative method for engaging with areas of the world that have inherited multiple, conflicting imperial and anti-imperial histories.

The book takes its lead from academic Annamaria Pagliaro’s experience straddling Australia and Italy over a thirty-year period. As both former colleagues and collaborators of Pagliaro, we editors intend to open a kaleidoscope of perspectives on the international research landscape in the fields of Italian and Anglophone studies, starting from Pagliaro’s own contribution to the creation of relations between the two cultures in the period that saw her work transnationally as Director of the Monash University Prato Centre (2005-2008).

Recent work on second language acquisition within the generative framework has pointed out interfaces (syntax-discourse, syntax-semantics, etc.) as a residual domain of vulnerability in L2. Rather than in core syntax, it is at the interface level that the divergence between native and non-native grammars has been shown to be more prominent. In this book the investigation of answering strategies and the focalization of new information subjects, which require access to the syntax-discourse interface, will be pursued. Data is collected through an oral elicitation task on Finnish and Italian, a rather unexplored language pair, in various stages of language development: advanced and intermediate L2 acquisition, L1 under L2 attrition, early bilingualism, child monolingual L1 development.

The years 1676 and 1774 marked two turning points in the social and legal treatment of madness in England. In 1676, London’s Bethlehem Hospital expanded in grand new premises, and in 1774 the Madhouses Act attempted to limit confinement of the insane. This study explores almost a century of the English history of madness through the texts of five poets who were considered mentally troubled according to contemporary standards: James Carkesse, Anne Finch, William Collins, Christopher Smart and William Cowper were hospitalized, sequestered or exiled from society. Their works cope with representations of insanity, medical definitions or practices, imputed illness, and the judging eye of the ‘sane other’, shedding new light on the dis/continuities in the notion of madness of this period.

This book arises from a three-year comparative research program concerning co-operative enterprises in Australia and Italy. The book explores the historical development, legal framework and the peak organisations of co-operatives in the two countries. Specific comparative chapters focus on consumer, credit, and worker-producer co-operatives. The book deepens the analysis of co-operatives by containing chapters that examine specific theoretical and empirical issues such as the theory of co-operative firms as collective entrepreneurial action. Monographic chapters include more in depth analysis of specific typologies of co-operatives, such as social and community oriented co-operatives, some of which were created to contrast organized crime in Southern Italy. The book concludes with an assessment of the implications of the project for public policy.