The Birth of the Associazione degli italianisti. Chronicle of a Public Debate (1995-1996)

Abstract

Between April 1995 and June 1996, Italian newspapers and cultural journals hosted a wide-ranging debate on the crisis of academic Italian studies, with contributions from Santagata, Quondam, Ferroni, Mengaldo, Petronio, Asor Rosa, Di Girolamo and Fedi, among others. From that debate the Associazione degli italianisti (AdI) was founded in Pisa on 11 May 1996. This article reconstructs the stages of the discussion by combining print sources with the previously unpublished archival papers of the AdI presidency, and argues that the foundation responded to a demand publicly articulated in the press, rather than being a spontaneous organizational decision. It finally assesses what remains of the debate thirty years on, and identifying its silences: women’s voices, the universities of the South, the student community, and the broader crisis of the Italian university, whose scale later data would confirm.