Marta Arnaldi is a Senior Departmental Lecturer in Italian at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford. Prior to this, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo, a Laming Research Fellow, and an Extraordinary Junior Research Fellow in Italian at The Queen's College, University of Oxford. She held a number of research and visiting fellowships at several institutions, including the Ashmolean Museum (as Ashmolean Teaching Fellow), Columbia University, Yale University, and the University of Oslo. Marta holds four degrees in Italian and comparative literary studies: BA Turin, MA Pavia, MSt Oxon (AHRC-funded), and DPhil Oxon (AHRC-funded, awarded in 2019). Her interdisciplinary education includes two years of medical training at the Turin Faculty of Medicine and Surgery.
Research
Marta has published widely on modern and contemporary Italian literature (nineteenth-century to the present), with a focus on poetry as interdisciplinary discourse, transnational practice, and catalyser of change. Her first monograph, The Diasporic Canon: American Anthologies of Contemporary Italian Poetry 1945-2015 (2022), explores Italian poetry’s potential for mobility and transformation by tracing its reception in the United States and translation into English as an expression of the culture of Italian migration to North America. Coedited with Luca Paci, Alibi: Prima antologia bilingue di poesia italiana nel Regno Unito (2022) is the first bilingual anthology showcasing the radical and polychromous voices of living poets and translators of Italian origins migrated to the United Kingdom. As the author of three award-winning poetry collections (Itaca 2016, Mare Storto 2022, and Intraducibile 2022), Marta has also approached these topics through creative methods and as a form of lived experience, thus contributing to the understanding of Italian poetry as a transnational presence.
Similarly, Italian poetry's capacity to transcend national and disciplinary boundaries lies at the heart of Translating Illness, a medical humanities project founded by Marta in 2019 thanks to a double award from OUP-Oxford John Fell Fund and Wellcome Trust. The project enjoyed an international expansion as part of the Oslo project Bodies in Translation: Science, Knowledge, and Sustainability in Cultural Translation (2022-2024, The Research Council of Norway). As principal investigator of Translating Illness and leader of its literary strand, Marta published in two main areas: epidemic literature, especially Manzoni and Camus (e.g., 'Contagious Otherness: Translating Communicable Diseases in the Modern Italian and Francophone Novel', Open Library of Humanities 2022), and literature and psychiatry, including questions of epistemic injustice, with a focus on poets such as Amelia Rosselli, Margherita Guidacci, Alda Merini, Vivian Lamarque, and Antonella Anedda (e.g., 'Illness as a Foreign Tongue: Therapeutic Translation in Contemporary Italian Women's Poetry', Literature and Medicine 2022). Co-organised with John Ødemark and in collaboration with OCCT and The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, the conference Translation and Medical Humanities marked a key moment in the life of the project by bringing into dialogue more than 500 researchers (2023). Marta is currently completing her second monograph on these topics.
A third area of interest, one that has emerged as an expression of the close links between the medical, the technological and the ecological, looks at the writing of nineteenth-century poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi as a prism for examining the Anthropocene. Marta's initial findings are included in her book chapter 'Giacomo Leopardi in the Anthropocene: Translating the Non-Human from Animals to AI' (forthcoming with Bloomsbury) and were presented at the Society for Italian Studies SIS Postgraduate Colloquium in a paper titled '"The New Order of Things": Leopardi and AI' (2023).
Teaching
Undergraduate teaching
Marta's teaching focuses on two main areas: Renaissance Italian literature (1430-1635), and modern and contemporary Italian literature (19th century-present).
She lectures on all aspects of the early modern and contemporary periods both for Prelims and FHS.
Marta also teaches translation (English-Italian), a discipline that closely aligns with her research interests.
As Ashmolean Teaching Fellow (2023-24), Marta has designed and teaches, by using the Museum's objects, a variety of courses, including the course 'Translational Ruptures' on the poetic and cultural encounters between Ugo Foscolo and the Pre-Raphaelites, and 'Material Renaissance', on the synergy between art and literature in early modern Italy (e.g., Michelangelo, Alberti, Leonardo).
Postgraduate supervision
Currently, Marta is co-supervising a doctoral thesis analysing self-narratives by damaged dancers. As Co-Director of the Oxford Medical Humanities Summer School at Green Templeton College, she designed and delivers the 'Decolonising Medical Humanities' module. Additionally, she served as Academic Mentor for the MSt students in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation, with whom she closely worked on theoretical, methodological, and stylistic aspects.
Books
Arnaldi, M, The Diasporic Canon: American Anthologies of Contemporary Italian Poetry 1945-2015 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2022). 302pp.
Arnaldi, M, Mare storto (Milan: Montedit, 2022). Jacques Prévert International Literary Prize 2022.
Arnaldi, M, Intraducibile, with an Introduction by Alice Loda (Lecce: Besa Muci, 2022).
Arnaldi, M, Itaca (Milan: Montedit, 2016). Jacques Prévert International Literary Prize 2016 and Elena Violani Landi International Literary Prize, Centre for Contemporary Poetry, University of Bologna.
Co-edited volumes
Arnaldi, M, and L Paci (eds.). Alibi: Prima antologia bilingue di poesia italiana nel Regno Unito (Rome:Ensemble, 2022). 330 pp.
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
Arnaldi, M, ‘Giacomo Leopardi in the Anthropocene: Translating the Non-Human from Animals to AI’, Writing Cultural History in the Anthropocene, ed. by Marit. Ruge Bjærke, Brita Brenna, Anders Ekström and John Ødemark (London: Bloomsbury). In press.
Arnaldi, M, ‘The Translational Turn in Narrative Medicine: A Study of Margherita Guidacci’s Neurosuite', in Translational and Narrative Epistemologies, ed. by Mona Baker and John Ødemark, Translation, Pôle éditorial Prairial Lyon Saint-Étienn. In press.
Arnaldi, M., 'Alda Merini and the Making of Lyrical Psychiatry’, in Routledge Handbook of Medicine and Poetry, ed. by Alan Bleakley and Shane Neilson (London: Routledge). In press.
Arnaldi, M, ‘Medical Humanities in the Italosphere', The Polyphony, 28 July 2023.
Arnaldi, M, and C Forsdick, ‘Medical Humanities’ Translational Core: Remodelling the Field’, The Polyphony, 30 August 2023.
Arnaldi, M, ‘Illness as a Foreign Tongue: Therapeutic Translation in Contemporary Italian Women’s Poetry’, Literature and Medicine 40.2 (2022), 295-325.
Arnaldi, M,‘Translational Futures: Notes on Ecology and Translation from the COVID-19 Crisis’, in The Languages of COVID-19: Transnational and Multicultural Perspectives on Global Healthcare, ed. by Steven Wilson and Piotr Blumczynski (London: Routledge, 2022), pp. 249-265.
Arnaldi, M, E Engebretsen and C Forsdick, ‘Translating COVID-19: From Contagion to Containment’, Journal of Medical Humanities, 43 (2022), 387–404.
Arnaldi, M, ‘Contagious Otherness: Translating Communicable Diseases in the Modern Italian and Francophone Novel', Open Library of Humanities, 8, 1 (2022).
Arnaldi, M, ‘Transnational Melancholia: Depression and Exile in Italian Women’s Poetry from the Early-Modern to the Contemporary’, in Women in Transition: Crossing Boundaries, Crossing Borders, ed. by Maria-José Blanco and Claire Williams (London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 133-148.
Arnaldi, M, ‘Terapia della traduzione nel Purgatorio di Dante’, ‘Purgatori della letteratura italiana’. Special Issue ed. by Fabio Camilletti, Quaderni d’Italianistica, 41.2 (2021): 9-32.
Arnaldi, M, ‘The Translational Imagination’, in Poetry in the Clinic: Towards a Lyrical Medicine, ed. by Alan Bleakley and Shane Neilson (London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 295-298.
Arnaldi, M, ' "Ithaca is Someone, Ithaca is You": On Creative Writing and Scholarship', The Oxford Polyglot, 2 (2022).
Arnaldi, M, '"Un'Altra Volta, Fuori di Me": Anthologisation and English Translation of Saba, Ungaretti and Montale', in Echoing Voices in Italian Literature: Tradition and Translation in the 20th Century, ed. by Teresa Franco and Cecilia Piantanida (New Castle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2018), pp. 301-323
Arnaldi, M, "L'infinita prossimità". Michael Palma editor e traduttore di Giovanni Raboni', in La scatola a sorpresa. Miscellanea in onore di Maria Antonietta Grignani, ed. by Giada Mattarucco, Margherita Quaglino, Carla Riccardi and Silvana Tamiozzo Goldmann (Florence: Cesati, 2016), pp. 399–405.
Arnaldi, M, 'Moving Wor(l)ds: Translation as Transformation in Poetry and Dance', Logios: Journal of Arts and Humanities Research, 1 (2016): 30-34.
Arnaldi, M, ' "No One's Mother Tongue": Intervista a Giulio Lepschy', Autografo, 53 (2015): 165-174.
Arnaldi, M, ' "Color di lontananza". Le forme del silenzio nei Poemi Conviviali di Giovanni Pascoli', Quaderni Borromaici, 2 (2015): 7-20.
Arnaldi, M, 'Gli autografi inediti di Vento Largo. Il paesaggio dei sentimenti: varianti e geografia dell'anima', Resine, 141-42 (2015): 72-83.
Arnaldi, M, 'Vento largo. Evoluzione di una storia: varianti dell'incipit e dell'explicit', Autografo, 51 (2014): 31-61.
Selected Key notes, Invited lectures, and Conference Papers
'"The New Order of Things": Leopardi and AI', Society for Italian Studies (SIS) Postgraduate Colloquium, Taylorian Institution Library, University of Oxford, 2 December 2023.
'The Art of Falling: Depression and Desire in Leopardi, Pascoli and Montale', Comparative and World Literature Through the Lens of Modernist and Translation Studies, Networking Workshop Université Libre de Bruxelles ULB–University of Oxford, Maison Française d'Oxford, 13-14 November 2023.
'Il canone fantasma e lo spettro della traduzione. Antologizzare la poesia italiana contemporanea negli Stati Uniti', Invited lecture, Università della Svizzera Italiana USI, Lugano, 17 October 2023.
‘Translating Illness in Research, Policy and the Clinic: A Clarion Call from the Humanities’, Migration, Identity, and Translation Network (MITN), University of Warwick, 8 March 2023.
‘Translational Medical Humanities’ roundtable, The Health Humanities Consortium Conference, Cleveland, Ohio. With Kirsten Ostherr (organiser), Eivind Engebretsen, Charles Forsdick and John Ødemark, 18 March 2023.
'Translational Futures: Notes on Ecology and Translation', Where Are We Now? The Location of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Durham, 21 April 2023.
‘The Foreign Connection: On Illness, Poetry & Other Tongues’, Translational and Narrative Epistemologies, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, University of Paris, 22 November 2022.
‘Alibi: Italian Poetry in the UK’, key note, Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, 25 May 2022. Lecture recordings here.
‘Translation and the Borders of the Future’, invited talk. Critical Borders: Theories, Experiences and Narratives of Cultural Mobility, Society of Fellows, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 11 March 2022.
‘Translation Caught in the Act: An Interactive Workshop on Writing, Reading and Translating Poetry Across Languages’, with Tyler Fisher (UCF), Invited lecture. Translation Society, University of Central Florida, 2 March 2022.
'Translational Subjectivities, or the Italian Lyric Voice', Italian Studies: Theories and Practices, Society for Italian Studies SIS Conference, University College Cork, 25 June 2021.
'Sociologies of Diaspora: Translating the Peripheries of Contemporary Italian Poetry in the United States', Translation as Position-Taking in the Literary Field, University of Leeds, 24 April 2021.
Interdisciplinary Perspectives in World Literature. Panel Co-Organiser, together with Lida Amiri. American Association for Italian Studies Conference, April 2021.
'"La peste fu più creduta. Alessandro Manzoni as World Literature', American Association for Italian Studies Conference, April 2021.
‘Honouring the Languages of Illness: Literature, Translation and Emotion in the Face of Disease’, Translation and Emotions, key note, The Open University, 21 May 2021.
Translational Turning Points in Italian Literature and Culture. Panel Co-Organiser, together with Lucy Russell. Society for Italian Studies SIS Interim Conference, Trinity College Dublin, 29-20 April 2016.
Selected Podcasts and Media
Arnaldi, Marta and Valerio Grutt (poet). ‘Translating Darkness’/ ‘Tradurre il buio’, 4 May 2022. [in Italian]
Arnaldi, Marta and Alvise Sforza Tarabochia (Kent). ‘Translating Psychiatry’, 7 April 2022.
Arnaldi, Marta, Mona Baker (Oslo) and Eivind Engebretsen (Oslo). ‘Narrativity and the Crisis of Evidence’, 27 September 2022.
Arnaldi, Marta, Ross White (Liverpool), Jean-Marc Dewaele (Birkbeck), Sally Cook (Birkbeck) and Stephen Romer (poet). ‘Translating Distress’, 27 May 2021.
Arnaldi, Marta, Karen Leeder (Oxford) and Matthew Reynolds (Oxford). ‘The Disease of Translation’, 29 April 2021.
Arnaldi, Marta, Emma Bond (St Andrews), Claudia Durastanti (novelist) and Elizabeth Harris (translator). ‘Translating Disability’, 15 March 2021.
Arnaldi, Marta and Kirsten Ostherr (Rice). ‘Cinematic Translations: Visualising the Invisible Path of Contagion’, 21 August 2020.
Arnaldi, Marta and Karen Thornber (Harvard). ‘Global Healing: Towards a World Policy of Care’, 16 June 2020.
Arnaldi, Marta and Charles Forsdick (Liverpool). ‘Translating Cultures in an Age of Confinement’, 28 May 2020.
Arnaldi, Marta and Nicola Gardini (Oxford). ‘Translating Illness: The Case of COVID-19’, 14 May 2020.
Arnaldi, Marta. ‘Crisis of Translation, Translation of a Crisis: The Case of COVID-19’. National Capital Area Translation Association (NCATA), Washington DC, 28 October 2020.
Arnaldi, Marta. ‘COVID-19: The Illness We Are Asked To Translate’. St Anne’s College Rising Researchers, Oxford, 20 October 2020.
Arnaldi, Marta. ‘Cultural Representations of COVID-19 in Non-Anglophone Settings’ & ‘COVID-19: A Translational Imagination’, The Languages of COVID-19: Implications for Global Healthcare conference, 22 June 2021.
Arnaldi, Marta, ‘From Illness to Healing: Therapeutic Translation in Contemporary Italian Women’s Poetry’, The Pathological Body: European Literary and Cultural Perspectives’, IMLR, London, 3 October 2019. Conference recordings available here.