Domenicangela Lina Unali


Domenicangela Lina Unali has been Professor of English Literature at the Faculty of Letters, University of Rome Tor Vergata since 1983. Previously, from 1969 to 1982, she taught at the University of Cagliari. She was Secretary and Treasurer of AISNA in the years 1971-1973.

Career

Born in Rome on November 18, 1936, her parents came from Logudor in North-Eastern Sardinia. Her ancestors, on her mother's side, had the family name of Morla, and in the town of Bortigali according to the parish records they were present since 1680. A novel by Lina Unali entitled Generale Andaluso is about General Thomas Morla whom her family considered an ancestor.
Both her father, Gen. Eugenio Unali, and her mother Maria Pinna daughter of Giuseppina Salaris Morla and of the painter Salvatorico Pinna from the Belle Arti Academy, founded in 1870, were born in Pozzomaggiore. Her Sardinian origins has been relevant in her life and studies. She is now listed among the authors of contemporary Sardinian literature. she is the author of an online Logudorese-Italian Glossary, published by Babylon, mainly based on her mother's language as she remembered it after her death.
Unali has combined scientific research with the writing of poetry and narratives. She published her first narrative, La Sardegna del Desiderio in. She received the Alghero Donna National Prize for works of narrative in 1995, the Parola di Donna Prize for works of poetry in 2002 and the same prize for fiction in 2003. At Cagliari, in 2013 she received a special mention in the Fernando Pilia Literary Award for criticism. The book The West in Asia and Asia in the West: Essays on Transnational Interactions is dedicated in tribute to the professional and academic achievements of Unali.
Unali was engaged in research on the relationship between Asia and West. She published the book Talk Story in Chinatown and Away based on the Conference of the Association of American Studies in Warsaw to which she contributed with a Panel,.
Later on, in the year 2000, the essay "'Complexity is not a Crime': Marianne Moore’s Cultural Poetics" by Eulalia Piñero C. Gil, from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, quoting Unali, defined her scholarly profile as both that of an Americanist and of a Sinologist.
A student of Agostino Lombardo at Sapienza University of Rome and an assistant for several years in the Institute then directed by Mario Praz, she continued her studies in the United States with a Fulbright scholarship
at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she attended classes on poetry held by Theodore Roethke and in the second semester, moved to the Department of English of Harvard University. Later, she obtained a Fulbright visiting professorship at Harvard University, under the sponsorship of Joel Porte.
In the years 1961-62, she shared her American experience with the economist Pierangelo Garegnani, whom she married in 1964.
Under the patronage of Jawaharlal Nehru University, she did research on intercultural relations between England and India in the years from 1981 to 1985. She obtained a Fellowship from the Taiwan Academy of Science that engaged her for one year in research and teaching, directing in particular her attention to the study of the Chinese culture and language. She taught several courses at the National Taiwan University among which History of European Thought and American Poetry. She taught at the Somali National University, in the years 1981, 1988 and 1989.
Lina Unali is the honorary president of the Center Asia and the West by her founded in 2008 for the study of the relationships between Europe and Asia.
While in Taipei she published an Anthology of Italian poetry entitled Modern Italian Poetry.
In the academic year 2006-2007 she has been Director of the Doctorate in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the Faculty of Letters of her University.
She is also an established poet, her most recent compositions were published in the Paterson Literary Review.
She obtained a certificate of merit at the concorso di poesia "S. Agata dei Goti" 2019 and 2020

Literary criticism