Russian Cultural Studies e Kul'turologija in Italia: una proposta di ricognizione bibliografica (1990-2020)

Over the last thirty years, Italian Russistics has been enriched by numerous publications on cultural topics, thus better defining the blurred boundaries and vast areas of a transversal research strand that identifies its disciplinary models with American Cultural Studies and Russian-Soviet Kul'turologija. Whereas Lotman's boundless scientific production has, at least in part, been the subject of translation and analysis, as well as some important studies by Lichačëv and Averincev, various scientific works were dedicated to the study of specific aspects and expressions of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet culture – relating to literature, folklore, visual and performing arts, media, byt, national cultural symbols, mass culture and other topics – in various research areas: Cross-cultural studies, Comparative cultural studies, Cultural history, Cultural geography, Gender studies, Cultural heritage studies, Popular culture studies, Cultural semiotics, and many more. In Italian Russistics, the expression 'Russian culture' appears, presumably for the first time, in 1923 in the volume Saggi sulla cultura russa (Essays on Russian culture) by Ettore Lo Gatto and replicated by the author himself in the still unpublished typescript, Storia della cultura russa (History of Russian Culture) dating back to the very early 1980s. The Lo Gatto's project – a literary profile of Russia within a broadly cultural framework – was followed by a two-decade-long silence. Towards the end of the 1990s, Gian Piero Piretto would start a debate on Cultural studies methodological approaches and fields of investigation applied to the Russian world. This paper aims to outline an overview of the main orientations and research themes of Russian Cultural Studies in Italy.