Kapcsolat

ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Italian Language and Literature offers the following programmes:

• Italian major within the Romance Studies/Neo-Latin Languages BA;
• Italian minor BA (since 2019, the minor has also welcomed beginners);
• Italian Language, Literature and Culture MA (since 2019, it has offered a Translation and Literary Translation specialisation);
• Teacher of the Italian Language module within the short-cycle teacher training programme (MA);
• Teacher of the Italian Language, integrated teacher training programme;
• Doctoral programme in Italian Literary and Cultural History (literary studies);
• Doctoral programme in Romance Studies (offered in cooperation with the other departments in the Institute of Romance Studies).

The Department of Italian Language and Literature is Hungary’s leading higher education institution in the field of Italian studies. The department’s Italian programmes have the largest number of students, faculty members (10) and professors (two, plus two professors emeriti). Aside from the lectors, all the teaching staff are accredited. According to the MTMT (Hungarian Science Bibliography Database), the department has the highest average number of publications and citations. The department offers a wide range of courses in Italian Studies for students of all levels. Thanks to the international recognition of its lead lecturers and the doctoral programme, the department is the absolute national leader in linguistic research. In terms of literary studies, the situation is more balanced among Hungarian institutions. The department’s strengths lie mainly in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Contemporary Italian Literature and the History of Italian Theatre.

At  international level, the department plays an important role in linguistic research: in international cooperation with the University of Padua, the department edited two key reference works in Italian linguistics, namely Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione (3 volumes, Bologna 1988–95) and Grammatica dell’italiano antico (2 volumes, Bologna 2010). Also in cooperation with the University of Padua, the department has launched a long-term research project on arguments in the Italian language, resulting in the publication of several dictionaries.

The department has also achieved considerable success at international level in literary, philological and cultural-historical research. To name a few: the critical edition of the Letters of Claudio Monteverdi (Florence, 1994), a study of the medieval religious literary tradition and the critical edition of the Long Italian Version of the Meditationes Vitae Christi (Venice, 2021) in cooperation with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the CNR-OVI institute in Florence. The department frequently organises international conferences also publishes literary, cultural-historical and linguistic articles in their online journal (Italogramma), and plans on starting its own book series in cooperation with Eötvös Kiadó.

The department has 20 foreign Erasmus partner universities. Students and lecturers frequently take part in exchange programmes. The department’s partnership with the University of Florence is particularly remarkable, offering students dual degrees at BA and MA level.

 Within Hungary, the department cooperates with Italian departments at other universities (its strong professional relationships with the departments at PPKE and SZTE are particularly noteworthy) and with the Hungarian Research Network (previously known as ELKH). Within ELTE, besides the Institute of Romance Studies, the department also cooperates with the Departments of Ancient Hungarian Literature, Medieval History and Art History, and also contributes to the MA programme in Theatre History.

In addition to academic institutions, the department cooperates with the Italian Cultural Institute of Budapest and the Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Recently, the department was the host institution of several individual research projects (Eszter Szegedi, Eszter Draskóczy) and collective projects (Dávid Falvay, József Nagy) supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund (NRDI) and The Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA).