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italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies Dear all, I am sending a memory of Giuseppe Gigliozzi written by one of his friend and colleague. Although written by one person, I think this remarkable text expresses the feelings and represents the views of everyone who knew Giuseppe and his story both as a scholar and a man. The letter is dedicated to all the 'italianisti' who had the fortune to meet, at least once, Giuseppe's unforgettable smile. Domenico Fiormonte -------------------------------------------------------------------- Long live the ghost in our machines Giuseppe Gigliozzi died after a short illness on Sunday, 28th October. One month ago, he was appointed associate professor of Italian Literature at Rome "La Sapienza" University. Giuseppe was a pathologically modest man whose reputation rests on his considerable pioneering achievements. In a system where tradition is power, he took on vested interests, persuaded the ‘deciders’, created a ‘school’ based on true Socratic principles, leading by example alone, without flaunting any of the trappings of authority. His pupils, or rather spiritual colleagues, received not just theoretical and practical instruction in a new and exciting intellectual domain, they also absorbed a permanent lesson about devotion, human devotion. Long after local conflicts about TEI Lite and such like have subsided, victims of a quickening pace of change both in techniques and (more importantly) aims, the primary teaching of Giuseppe will be still operative – offering us a model of ‘why’ we should engage in the discipline, and what its fundamental stance is towards intellectual enquiry. Giuseppe’s early career was as a standard literary critic and historian, specialising in twentieth century Italian literature (Alvaro, Bilenchi, Jovine. Malaparte, Silone, Pirandello). I say ‘standard’ only in that there is, in that field, a tradition and a recognised cursus honorum. But Giuseppe wasn’t really standard at all. Even then, there was a quizzical tone (as far from conventional ‘professorese’ as could be imagined) and desire to challenge commonplaces, which set him apart form his contemporaries. This independence, innate, and possibly (as I suspect) wryly cultivated, did wonders in securing a consistent lack of support for the advancement of his career as a conventional critic. Luckily, he had other ideas, and they were powerful ones. Like the pioneers Padre Busa and Tito Orlandi, Giuseppe became precociously aware, even when, as in the early days the technical material itself was very crude, that informatics solutions were an extremely promising avenue not just for linguistics but for the much more demanding applications of literary and philological study. With little in the way of institutional or financial support, but with a gift for inspiring intellectually committed students, and wheedling assistance from outside bodies not normally associated with university activity, he set up pilot computing projects which have become models imitated elsewhere. Anybody who has entered his office (the mythical number 10 in the Faculty of Letters) will have seen, improbably compressed into all the available space, a history of hardware from the beginnings of desktop technology to the present day. But the real museum is virtual. It is what he, and particularly the young teams he had a gift for inspiring, were able to do intellectually with the meagre equipment at their disposal. It was this sense of teamwork that put the Rome Faculty of Letters Computing Centre (CISADU), at the forefront of philologically sound, as opposed to technomegalomanic developments. The hallmark was always an economy of means to service academically ambitious enquiry. One of the most characteristic aspects of Giuseppe’s work has been the perception (earlier than most) that the partners in digital humanities are not necessarily all housed in universities. His own outreach was considerable, in journalism (newspapers, radio and TV), in the exciting environment of software houses, in library science and lexicography, and even in surprisingly responsive government departments. As a result of this outreach, his pupils, unusually for a mandarinesque education system like Italy’s, had a firm grasp of commercial and public realities, and moved seamlessly between worlds which apparently had little in common. Perhaps the greatest contribution, however, has been his influence in getting the ‘subject’ (and I hesitate to use the singular) legally recognised as a university discipline. Characteristically, this apparently prosaic, ‘administrative’ target became, in Giuseppe’s hands, an exciting and overarching debate about the intellectual construction, or rather de-construction and re-construction of university education in general, combining the historical rigour of the past with the need to equip students as ‘future-proof’ for the real world outside. Those who want a detailed, English language impression of Giuseppe’s tireless activity, his wide interests, his outreach and curiosity, would do well to consult his entry in CISADU biographies http://rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it/crilet/personal/gigliozzi/gigliozzi.htm . For those of you who have the good fortune to read Italian, Giuseppe’s unique style of communication, unaffected, humorous but always to the point, presenting new angles as a matter of principle, can be savoured in an interview about digital archives transcribed for http://www.glocal.org/1999/001/e_forum.htm. His is a ghost which inhabits my machine, and needs no upgrade. ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join italian-studies YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave italian-studies to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/italian-studies.html