BASEOTTO PAOLA

Paola Baseotto - Professor of English
Department of Theoretical and Applied Sciences - Insubria State University – Como-Varese (Italy)
paola.baseotto@uninsubria.it

EDUCATION

- PhD - English - University of Reading, UK - 2003
Supervisor: Elizabeth Heale. Examiners: Christopher Hardman, University of Reading and Richard McCabe, Merton College, Oxford

- Honours Degree in Modern Languages and Literatures
110/110 magna cum laude - Milan State University - major: English – 1993

RESEARCH INTERESTS
Paola Baseotto’s research interests include the language and cultural context of English theological, legal and medical treatises of the Renaissance period; historical linguistics and pragmatics, translation studies.

FUNDED RESEARCH
-PRIN 2022: head of the Insubria unit -PRIN project (research project of national relevance funded by the National Research Council) “Politics of Worship pre- and post-Reformation”
-2019-present: research on English translations of the Bible in Elizabethan and Stuart England and 1980s African American Vernacular English translations – funded by Insubria University
-November 2016 – November 2018 – Engaged as member of the team of researchers working on the European project HT 4983 “Training Action for Legal Practitioners: Linguistic Skills and Translation in EU Competition Law” (CFP 2015 “Training of National Judges on EU Competition Law and Judicial Co-operation between National Judges”)
-2011-2013 Engaged as member of the team of researchers working on the PRIN project (research project of national relevance funded by the National Research Council) “Norm and Usage in the History of Anglo-Italian Linguistic Relations”
-2006 – 2007 Engaged as member of an international team of researchers (from Cardozo School of Law, University of New York, University of Warwick, Verona State University, Turin University, Trieste University) working on an appraisal of the historical and comparative aspects of the concept of equity in English and German legal systems and literatures (PRIN project - research project of national relevance funded by the National Research Council)
-2003 Engaged as assistant researcher in a IULM-funded research on treatments of classical mythology in the English theatre
2002 Engaged as assistant researcher in a IULM-funded research on representations of childhood in Shakespeare’s plays
1999 – 2005 Research grant holder - Engaged in a research project on treatments of the “just war” theory in early modern literary, theological, and legal writings (funded by the National Research Council and IULM University)

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH SUPERVISION

-Dr Omar Hashem Khalaf – research grant holder at Insubria University - research project: “The Earl and the Printer: Earl Rivers, William Caxton and the Politics of Cultural Mediation in Fifteenth-Century England. A Study of the ‘Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers’” – June 2016 - July 2017
-Dr Lorenzo Mari – research grant holder at Insubria University - research project: “Trans-National Failures. Literature and the Management of Political Crisis in the Nigerian and Somali Diasporas in Europe and the United States (1990-2015)” – July 2017 - June 2018




PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS
- Saggio in difesa del sesso femminile, Limena, Padova: Libreriauniversitaria.it edizioni, 2022 (first Italian translation of An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, London: 1696), translation, notes and introduction by Paola Baseotto
- “Disdeining life, desiring leaue to die”: Spenser and the Psychology of Despair, Studies in English Literatures 10, Stuttgart (Germany): ibidem-Verlag, 2008
- Language to Language, Varese: Insubria University Press, 2008
- Fighting for God, Queen and Country: Spenser and the Morality of Violence, Milan: Arcipelago, 2004

CO-EDITED BOOKS
-Il tempo e i luoghi della poesia. Riflessioni sulla traduzione di testi in lingua inglese, ed. by Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Alessandria, Edizioni dell'Orso, 2018
-Voci del dissenso nel Rinascimento europeo, ed. by Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2018
- Reflections upon Spenser’s Discourses of Justice, a cura di Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2018

ARTICLES IN REFEREED JOURNALS AND CHAPTERS IN BOOKS
-“Bible adaptation as linguistic, cultural, and socio-political appropriation: the case of the Black Bible Chroniclesseries”, Rhesis: International Journal of Linguistics, Philology, and Literature, 14.2 (2023), pp. 44-60
“The ‘Sternhold and Hopkins’ Project: A Case Study of the Impact of Translation on Culture, Society, Mentalities, Book Production and Circulation”, Status Quaestionis, 17 (2019): 104-136
-“The Ethical and Political Relevance of Discourses of Resentment in Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Elizabeth I’s Writings”, Intersezioni, 1 (2018), pp. 5-20
-“La crisi anglo-irlandese e le critiche alle strategie di Elisabetta I in The Faerie Queene e A View of
the Present State of Ireland”, in Voci del dissenso nel Rinascimento europeo, ed. by Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2018, pp. 95-118
- Introduction in Voci del dissenso nel Rinascimento europeo, ed. by Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2018, pp. 7-19
-“‘La regina delle fate’”: carattere ermeneutico e critico della traduzione di Luca Manini”, Il tempo e i luoghi della poesia. Riflessioni sulla traduzione di testi in lingua inglese, ed. by Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Alessandria, Edizioni dell’Orso, 2018, pp. 45-61
- Introduction in Il tempo e i luoghi della poesia. Riflessioni sulla traduzione di testi in lingua inglese, ed. by Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Alessandria, Edizioni dell’Orso, 2018, pp. ix-xvi
-“Private and Public Violence in Elizabethan England”, Mantua Humanistic Studies, Vol. 1, ed. by E. Notti and E. Scarpanti, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2018, pp. 61-78
-Preface in Reflections upon Spenser’s Discourses of Justice, a cura di Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2018, pp. 5-6
-“The Tension between Secular and Christian Knighthood in Book I of The Faerie Queene”, in Reflections upon Spenser’s Discourses of Justice, a cura di Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2018, pp. 27-51
-“Righteous Violence and Morality in The Faerie Queene and A View of
the Present State of Ireland”, in Reflections upon Spenser’s Discourses of Justice, a cura di Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2018, pp. 53-70
-“The Spenserian View of the Hatefulness and Necessity of Lawful Violence”, in Reflections upon Spenser’s Discourses of Justice, a cura di Paola Baseotto e Omar Khalaf, Mantova, Universitas Studiorum, 2018, pp. 71-98
- “Ideological Uses of Medical Discourses in Early Modern English Plague Writings” in The Language of Medicine: Science, Practice and Academia, M. Gotti, S. M. Maci and M. Sala eds, Cerlis Series n. 5, Bergamo: CELSB, 2015, pp. 49-67.
- “Exploring the Humoral Self: Elizabethan and Early Stuart Churchmen and Galenic Medicine” in Perspectives on the Language and Culture of Science, T. Canziani, K. Grego and G. Iamartino eds, Monza: Polimetrica International Scientific Publishing, 2014, pp. 71-87.
- “Il potenziale terapeutico della parola: un grande poema rinascimentale inglese e il disturbo post-traumatico da stress”, L’Arco di Giano, 81:2014, pp. 31-43.
- “The Exploration of the Emotional Selves of Children in Puritan Autobiographical Writings” in Childhood and Emotion: Across Cultures 1450-1800, ed. T. M. Safley, London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 89-105.
- “Spenser’s ‘vertuous … discipline’ and Human Flourishing” in The Eudaimonic Turn: Well-Being in Literary Studies, J. O. Pawelski and D. J. Moores eds, Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson, 2013, pp. 155-170.
-“Theology and Interiority: Emotions as Evidence of the Working of Grace in Elizabethan and Stuart Conversion Narratives” in A History of Emotions, 1200-1800, ed. Jonas Liliequist, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012, pp. 65-77.
- “Mary Stuart’s Execution and Queen Elizabeth’s Divided Self” in Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture, A. Petrina and L. Tosi eds, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 66-82.
- “Equity in Action: The Trial and Execution of Mary Queen of Scots in Spenser’s Faerie Queene” in Practising Equity, Addressing Law: Equity in Law and Literature, ed. by Daniela Carpi, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008, 223-230.
- “To Pardon and to Punish: Strictum Ius and Equity in Spenser’s Faerie Queene”, Pólemos 1 (2008), 67-75.
- “Godly Sorrow, Damnable Despair and Faerie Queene I.ix”, Cahiers Elisabéthains 69 (Spring 2006), 1-11.
- “Fighting the ‘Warres of the Lord’: Incitement to War in Elizabethan Devotional Writings” in Religious Writings and War, Publications Montpellier III, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier, 2006, pp. 37-53
- “Spenser’s Stand against the Contemporary Theological and Social Condemnation of Suicides”, Textus, 2 (1998), 203-17
- “Il selvaggio come incarnazione del male nella Faerie Queene di Edmund Spenser”, ACME (Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Milano), IL, 3 (1996), 261-72

BOOK REVIEWS
- Peter Sherlock, Memory in Early Modern England, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008
- Scott L. Newstok, Quoting Death in Early Modern England, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
ZAA, LVIII (2010), pp.173-5.
- Anne Sexton’s Poetry; l’estrosa abbondanza, ed. by lo Russo, Satta Centanin, Zuccato, Milan: Crocetti, 1997
Testo a fronte, 19 (1998), 235-6.


INVITED PRESENTATIONS AND LECTURES
- 21 April 2023 – Keynote lecture – “Re-Signifying Myths in Early Modern English Literature, Language, and Culture”: IASEMS Graduate Conference at the British Institute of Florence
-17 November 2021 – Invited by the University College Dublin College of Arts and Humanities Thresholds of Knowledge Research Theme to present a paper on new translations of the Psalter by the Marian exiles (Workshop on Early Modern Translations – online event)
- May 2018 – Invited by IRCL (Institute for Research on the Renaissance, CNRS) Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3 (France) to present the paper “Psalms and Puritan Conversion Narratives” at the international conference “Les Psaumes: enjeux idéologiques et poétiques à l’époque moderne dans les mondes réformés et catholiques”
- June 2016 – Invited by IRCL (Institute for Research on the Renaissance, CNRS) Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3 (France) to present the paper “Compassion and Realpolitik in Elizabethan England” at the international conference “La compassion dans l’Europe moderne: discours et pratiques (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles)”
- October 2014 - Invited by IRCL (Institute for Research on the Renaissance, CNRS) Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3 (France) to give a lecture on “A Study of Religious Despair”
- February 2014 - Invited by Kean University (New Jersey, USA) to give a lecture on “The History of Emotions: Knowledge, Mastery and Fashioning of the Emotional Self’”
- June 2012 – Invited by the Centre Interfacultaire en Sciences Affectives, Université de Genève (Switzerland) and the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research, Affective Sciences, to present the paper “Shakespeare’s Anatomy of Passions” at the international Conference “L’expression des emotions chez Shakespeare et ses musiciens”
- May 2012 – Invited by Maison Française, Oxford University, to present the paper: “Spenser’s Dramatization of the Interplay of Body, Mind and Soul” at the international Conference “Thinking Matter: Representations of the Mind-Body Problem in Early Modern Europe”
- September 2010 – Invited by the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA to present the paper “The Exploration of the Emotional Selves of Children in Puritan Autobiographical Writings” at the international conference “Childhood and Emotion in Transcultural Perspectives”
- October 2009 - Invited by Princeton University (New Jersey, USA) to give a lecture on Queen Elizabeth I and Machiavelli: “Playing the Machiavellian Prince? Elizabeth I, Machiavelli and Realpolitik”
- October 2009 - Invited by Hunter College, City University of New York to give a lecture on: “Elizabeth I’s Contradictory use of Machiavelli’s ‘mirror of princes’”
- October 2009 - Invited by Loyola University, Chicago to give a lecture on “Religious Writings in Sixteenth-Century England and the Pathologies of Passion”



CONFERENCE PAPERS

- May 2024 – ‘Politics of Worship pre- and post-Reformation’ – Padua University – title of the paper “L’atto traduttivo come strumento di definizione e differenziazione identitaria: il caso delle versioni inglesi del Libro dei Salmi nei secoli XVI e XVII”
- June 2022 - International Conference ‘Working with Letters’ – Oslo, National Library of Norway – title of the paper “The Political Function of the Correspondence between Queen Elizabeth I and James VI of Scotland”
-June 2022 – International Conference ‘Contra Imperium: Forms of Dissent in England 1300-1700’ – Insubria University, Como, Italy – title of the paper “Elizabeth I and Machiavellian Statecraft”
- September 2021 – The European Society for the Study of English-ESSE 15th Conference – University of Lyon (France – online format) – title of the paper “The Political, Ideological and Cultural Impact of Retranslations of the Bible in Early Stuart England”
- September 2021 – EAHMH Biennial Conference – Leuven University KU (Belgium – online format) – title of the paper “Persuasive Rhetoric and the Orientation of Responses to Medical Practices: the Role of the Established Church in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England”
- October 2019 – The Translator Unveiled: Cartography of a Voice – Calabria State University - title of the paper: “The Distinctive Voices of the Translators of the King James Bible”
- June 2019 – Second International Conference on Historical Medical Discourse (CHIMED 2) - Helsinki University (Finland) - title of the paper: “Disseminating Medical Knowledge and Terminology in Literary Works”
- May 2019 – University of Genova (Italy)- “Of Bought Wit: Plagiarism, Imitation and Borrowing in Early Modern England” – 10th IASEMS International Conference – acted as respondent for the “Young Scholars Workshop”
- June 2018 – “Early Modern Identity: Self, Others, and Life Writing” – 9th IASEMS International Conference – University of Cagliari (Italy)– title of the paper: “Early Modern English Autobiographical Writings and Interiority”
- October 2017 – “Contra imperium: critica all’autorità nelle letterature europee del Rinascimento” – Insubria University - title of the paper: “La crisi anglo-irlandese e le critiche alle strategie di Elisabetta I”
- September 2017 – XXVIII AIA Conference – University of Pisa (Italy)- title of the paper: “Trauma and the Healing Power of Literature: A Case Study”
- July 2017 – Early Modern Studies Conference “Complaints and Grievances”, University of Reading (UK) - title of the paper: “Learning to Live with Epidemics in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England”
- June 2017 – CHIMED 1 – First International Conference on Historical Medical Discourse – Milan State University (Italy)– title of the paper: “The Popularization of Medical Knowledge in Early Modern England”
- August 2016 – ESSE (European Society for the Study of English) International Conference, National University of Ireland, Galway, title of the paper: “Memory and Salvation in Puritan Autobiographical Writings”
- July 2016 – “Voicing Dissent in the Long Reformation: The Eighth Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society””, Université Aix Marseille, Aix-en¬Provence (Francia), title of the paper: “The Dissenting Rhetoric of Disease and Healing in Early Modern England”
- May 2016 – IASEMS Conference “All the World’s a Page”, University of Catania (Italy), title of the paper: “The Centrality of the Written Page in English and American Puritan Households”
- May 2015 – 26th SEDERI International Conference: “Commerce, Communities and the Global Early Modern” – International University of Andalucía (Spain), title of the paper: “The Development of Subjectivity through the Construction of a Domestic Other in Early Modern England”
- June 2014 – CERLIS 2014: “The Language of Medicine: Science, Practice and Academia” – University of Bergamo (Italy), title of the paper: “Cultural Aspects of Medical Discourses of Plague in Early Modern England”
- July 2013 – “Making a Scene: Networks of Intimacy” – Institute of Psychoanalysis, London, title of the paper “The Psychological and Emotional Impact of Plague in Early Modern England”
- June 2013 – “Second Sight and Prophecy” – University of Aberdeen (UK), title of the paper “Prophecy, Vision and Human Flourishing in Spenser’s Faerie Queene”
- May 2013 – “Aesthetics and Spirituality: Places of Interiority” – Leuven University (Belgium), title of the paper “Externalizing Interiority: the Puritan Lesson”
- May 2013 – “The Languages of Politics” – University of Verona (Italy), title of the paper: “Spenser, Machiavelli and the Language of a New Statecraft”
- September 2012 – SSHM Conference “Emotions, Health, and Wellbeing”, Queen Mary Centre for the History of Emotions (University of London) – Title of the paper: “Plague Epidemics and Emotion in Early Modern England”
- June 2012 - “Literature, Science and Medicine in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods” – University of Lausanne, title of the paper: “Religion and Medicine: Plague Writings by Elizabethan and Early Stuart Churchmen”
- - October 2011 – “Resentment” - Workshop – University of Geneva (Switzerland) - Title of the paper “Righteous Wrath and Personal Resentment: The Education of the Spenserian Champion of Justice in The Faerie Queene
- September 2011 – “Body and Mind in the History of Medicine and Health” – University of Utrecht (NL)– Title of the paper: “The Popularization of Medical Views of the Interaction of Body and Mind by Elizabethan and Stuart Churchmen”
- July 2011 – “Poetry and Melancholia” – University of Stirling (UK) – Title of the paper: “Melancholia as the Paralysis of the Self in Edmund Spenser’s Poetry”
- June 2011 - “Shakespeare and Early Modern Emotions” – University of Hull (UK) – Title of the paper: “Spenser’s Use of the Discourse of Emotion to Voice Disapproval of Unmerciful Treatments of Suicides”
- May 2010 – ISCH Conference “Cultural Histories: Close Readings, Critical Syntheses” – Turku, Finland – title of the paper: “Rewriting the History of Plague in Early Modern England: The Vantage Point of a Microhistorical Analysis”
- September 2009 – “Language History and Ideology in the History of Anglo-Italian Relations” – Gargnano – title of the paper: “Elizabethan Policies and Machiavelli’s Political Philosophy”
- February 2009 – “Role and Rule: History and Power on Stage” – London, Globe Theatre – title of the paper: “Reason of State and Private Feelings: The Two Voices of Elizabeth’s Two Bodies in her Letters to James VI of Scotland”
- October 2008 – “Cultural History of Emotions in Premodernity” – Umeå University (Sweden) – title of the paper: “Protestant Theology and Interiority: Emotion as Evidence of the Working of Grace”
- February 2008 – European Social Science History Conference – University of Lisbon (Portugal) – title of the paper: “Exploring the Emotional Self: Religious Writings in Sixteenth-Century England and the Pathologies of Passion”
- May 2007 – “Practising Equity, Addressing Law: Equity in Law and Literature” – University of Verona (Italy) – title of the paper: “Equity in Action: The Trial and Execution of Mary Queen of Scots”
- November 2006 – “Equity: A Diachronic Assessment” – Università degli Studi di Verona (Italy) – title of the paper: ”To Pardon and to Punish: Strictum Ius and Equity in Spenser’s ‘Legend of Justice”
- - November 2004 – “Religious Writings and War” – Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier III (France) – title of the paper: “Fighting the ‘warres of the Lord’: Incitement to War in Elizabethan Devotional Writings”
- - August 2004 - “(Re)Creating Arthur “, an interdisciplinary international conference hosted by King Alfred’s College, Winchester, in collaboration with the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds – title of the paper: “Artegall/Art-egal: Arthur, Justice and The Faerie Queene”


UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT SERVICE

- From 2017 Member of the teaching board of the international doctoral programme in Law and Human Sciences, Insubria University
- From 2013 Coordinator of the activities of the language laboratories of Insubria University
- From 2013 University delegate for the Insubria-Cambridge English Language Assessment agreement
2006-2016 – Insubria University – Erasmus-Socrates projects coordinator
1997-2004 – IULM University - English Department Coordinator
2001-2002 – Representative of Research Assistants with the Governing Council


POSTGRADUATE COURSES

-May 2023 – Insubria International Summer School in Translation as Professional Practice: Director – in charge of course design and management
-2013-present – “Preparation courses for the Cambidge FIRST, Advanced and Proficiency Exams”: Director – in charge of course design and management
-2014 – Master “International Hospitality Management” – Director – in charge of course design and management
-2008 and 2010: Advanced Legal English for ILEC (International Legal English Certificate)
Director – in charge of course design and management
-2010 – E-Learning: Legal English for Translators
Director – in charge of course design and management



PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

- Member of RSA (Renaissance Society of America)
- Member of EAHMH, European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, since 2011
- Member of SAMEMES, Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies, 2010-2018
- Member of the Interdisciplinary Network for the Study of Cultural History since 2008
- Member of ESSE, European Society for the Study of English, since 1999
- Member of the International Spenser Society since 2000
- Member of AIA (Italian Society of English Studies) since 1999
- Member of ARGO (Centro di Ricerca Interuniversitario di Argomentazione, Pragmatica e Stilistica)
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2013-2017 Corresponding Editor of The Spenser Review


TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Insubria University (Università degli Studi dell’Insubria) – Como – Italy
2005-present - In charge of course design, implementation and assessment – English language and culture – degree course in Interlinguistic and Intercultural Mediation -
Research supervision
End-of-course dissertations

-2014 – Master “International Hospitality Management” – Director – in charge of course design and management
Lecturer – British culture and English for communication
-2008 and 2010: Advanced Legal English for ILEC (International Legal English Certificate)
Director – in charge of course design and management
-2010 – E-Learning: Legal English for Translators
Director – in charge of course design and management

IULM University (Libera Università IULM) – Milan - Italy
Academic writing
2011 – four lectures – academic writing for PhD candidates and researchers
English Literature – Teaching
2012-2016 lectures on Renaissance culture and history
2010-2011 – Thomas More and Utopia – three lectures
2007-2009 – History, politics and literature in Renaissance England – five lectures
2005-2006 – Elizabethan England – five lectures
In charge of course design, implementation, and assessment – fourth-year, graduating students:
2003/2004 - Individualism in the Renaissance
2002/2003 - Edmund Spenser, John Milton and the Ideal of Virtue
2001/2002 - King Lear - four seminars; Elizabethan poetry- ten lectures
2000/2001 – English literature (prose and poetry) 1550-1640
1999/2000 – English literature (prose and poetry) 1550-1640
1998/1999 – English literature (prose and poetry) 1550-1640
Research supervision
1999-2005 - End-of-course dissertations on the works of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare and Thomas Dekker - (BA and Master)

General English – Teaching
In charge of course design, implementation, and assessment
Second, third and final year courses
1997/1998 – developing writing skills and translation skills
1996/1997 – developing listening comprehension skills