Dr Castellini is currently working on two new projects that further advance his research interests in motherhood and translation respectively. The first investigates a growing preoccupation with a “maternal potential for violence” in contemporary Italian culture. Using an interdisciplinary methodology that borrows from cultural studies, feminist theory and sociology of emotions, it explores a multimedia cultural archive on postpartum disorders to expand current discussions of maternal ambivalence beyond the familiar politics of guilt, shame and medicalization.
Dr Castellini’s second project foregrounds how “thinking-through-translation” problematizes ideas of centre/periphery in the teaching and practicing of gender theories, dislocating the West as the privileged site of theoretical processing, and calling into question the global hegemony of English as the lingua franca of academia. Building on postcolonial feminist theory, socio-linguistics, philosophy of translation, critical pedagogies, as well as an evolving sensitivity to language diversity in transnational gender and sexuality studies, this second strand of research encourages the collective envisioning of a “translational pedagogy” to enhance accountability inside and outside the classroom.