Presenting at an Honors College-hosted symposium!
Author: Caden Hall | Majors: Political Science, Criminology, and Sociology | Semester: Fall 2022
My name is Caden Hall, and I’m a senior Political Science, Criminology, and Sociology student within the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. I spent this past semester working under Dr. Ryan Calabretta-Sajder in the Italian section of the World Languages department on a survey of the works of Italian auteur Pier Paolo Pasolini. This research led to the development of an Honors College-hosted symposium celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth which I was given the opportunity to present at. When the research effort is finally concluded, we will have assembled an online digital humanities project including an interactive timeline of Pasolini’s life. Additionally, we will construct a map of Italy detailing which regions and cities were most relevant to him and his work. I hope to take these publication credits with me as I go off to graduate school for my Master’s in Public Administration, and later in life as I try to start a career in public policy.
The works of Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose influence bridged across Italian cinema, poetry, theatre, and politics, have scarcely been translated into English. Despite Pasolini being a shaping force in the development of all those fields throughout the mid-20th century, many students abroad lack the accessibility necessary to engage with his material. The purpose of this research is to close that gap a bit more.
My journey with this project is perhaps unlike most others, as I didn’t seek this research out. I was approached by my future research mentor, Dr. Calabretta, at an Italian end-of-year celebration about potentially becoming involved with a research team studying Italian theatre. I had previously been involved with the department, and so the opportunity to work on a team with peers on a topic I knew I loved was irresistible (and Honors College funding was delicious icing on top of my opportunity cake). Our team mostly worked independently, with irregular meetings that served as progress checkups. My specific task was to read and watch as much of Pasolini’s theatre as possible for the purposes of developing a presentation on the topic. This eventually formed into my talk at the symposium titled “Feminist Dreams and Social Nightmares: The Entrapments of Gender in Pasolini’s Calderón.”
Undergoing this research was difficult, to say the least. Pasolini’s theatre, compared to the rest of his bibliography, is difficult to obtain. I was luckily able to loan copies of books that contained collections of plays like his from other universities, but that just led me to my next challenge: Pasolini’s plays are entirely written in Italian. While I’ve taken six semesters of the language and studied abroad in Italy, there is very little that can prepare you for translating 60-year-old poetic theatre. To my great fortune, I was able to find videos of live performances of his plays that helped me understand their content (both thematically and literally) much better. Our research team cohort was a big boon in helping me get through some of the more disheartening work; we all communicated regularly and made it abundantly clear that we were all in the same boat (or the same storm, at least).
Now that the first semester is finished, we will be continuing our research by focusing on developing the digital humanities site itself. To do so, we’ve started consulting with the director of the World Languages and Digital Humanities Studio, Dr. Curtis Maughan, who has already passed on a ton of knowledge to our group. This segment of the research will be a lot more cooperative and less independent than the prior semester’s, which I am really looking forward to!