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Key Directions in Italian Studies

The four quarterly numbers of Italian Studies that will be published in 2020 mark the seventy-fifth issue of the journal. To mark the occasion, the Senior Editors decided to commission a set of collaboratively produced articles for a Special Issue dedicated to ‘Key Directions in Italian Studies’. For Volume 75 of the journal, the moment seemed right to invite colleagues to join us for an examination of areas of research that we view as representative of the state of the art in 2020 of Italian Studies as a discipline, and key to its future development. We sought to identify several broad thematic areas that are currently particularly productive across the arc of research fields and methods that the journal addresses, seeking to open dialogues between our contributors and our readers that could produce a long view and broad spread of discussion relating to the selected research areas. An important consideration was to identify topics that were not confined by traditional chronological divides but could put researchers in the early period into contact with researchers in the modern period, for the purposes of producing collaboratively written articles addressing their shared areas of expertise, and offering fruitful reflections for readers active in the many and diverse fields that make up contemporary Italian Studies as a discipline or set of disciplinary and methodological concerns. Each of the articles in this Special Issue is the result of collaborative dialogue between two or three scholars, who were invited to shape their response to the argument proposed in the way that seemed most fruitful to the writing team. They were asked to reflect, of course, on what they felt to be the particular contribution made by Italian Studies to the specified area. We also invited them to review their topics both as evolving from a tradition of scholarly work, long-standing or more recent in nature, and as offering scope for important future developments. Thus, the selected topics have already contributed to varying degrees to a reshaping or reorienting of Italian Studies as a discipline, and to the way that different methodologies or theoretical frameworks are seen as pertinent to Italian Studies research as it is currently developing. Co-writing holds a special significance: it is in itself a mode of academic writing that has moved from the margins to the mainstream of research in our journal which, over the past few years, has seen an increasing number of co-written articles and collaborations (in the shape of clusters of short essays, roundtable discussions, and mini-Special Issues); such developments reflect new modes of engagement between scholars and a desire to stretch disciplinary expertise. The identification of topics for our Special Issue was inevitably challenging, and readers will no doubt be surprised by both the exclusions and the inclusions in the chosen titles and article contents. Beginning with a large set of possible themes in our initial discussions about the Special Issue, we attempted to identify categories that would permit a range of methods, theories, and concerns to be articulated. Some themes were identified on the basis of their long-standing and continuing prominence within almost all departments and centres concerned with Italian Studies; other titles were formulated so as to let our contributors accommodate more established approaches or areas of scholarship alongside newly emerging ones within a broadly conceived remit. Several of our themes have provided opportunities for reflection on the way that scholarly practice is evolving