Rebecca Latcham-Ford
Doctoral Student in Literature - Rebecca’s thesis is entitled ‘Travelling to Italy: Italy in the Anglophone Imagination’.
Research project title
Travelling to Italy: Italy in the Anglophone Imagination
Supervisors
Prof Neelam Srivastava, Prof Charles Burdett (Durham) + Prof James Procter
Contact details
Email: r.latcham-ford2@newcastle.ac.uk
Research interests
- postcolonial literatures
- postcolonial Italy
- travel writing
- literatures of migration
- translation
- translingual writing
- reception studies
A brief outline of my research project
My research explores the representation of Italy in works by contemporary Anglophone writers, focusing on Nuruddin Farah, Caryl Phillips and Jhumpa Lahiri. The project compares these representations of Italy as a site of travel and migration, considering how the diverse postcolonial and transnational perspectives of these writers are articulated in relation to Italy. The reception of Italian translations of the texts is analysed to explore how external representations influence conceptions of Italian identity in the Italian cultural imaginary. The project argues that by analysing how these writers collectively imagine Italy in their narratives and how these narratives are translated, circulated and received in Italy, a new understanding of the contours and substance of the Anglophone postcolonial and transnational imaginaries is produced. As such, the project engages with a wider discussion of how Italy’s colonial past and more recent status as a site of migration impact the narratives that underlie the concept of Italy.