The sub-programme offers doctoral students a wide range of research topics to choose from: they can specialize in Italian literature in the narrower, or Italian culture in the wider sense, including the different periods and multi-layered phenomena of the same. They can also choose from a diversity of approaches, as they can pursue research within the sub-programme using the methods of literary history and literary theory, Italian-Hungarian comparative research, or cultural studies.
The Italian literature and culture sub-programme places particular emphasis on putting the education and research conducted in the doctoral school into an international context, and it therefore encourages and helps students engage in studying and conducting research abroad with the help of scholarships, and in a given case also participates in dual dissertation supervision (“co-tutela”) arrangements. The framework of the above is ensured by the Erasmus+ contract of the Department of Italian studies with 15 universities, providing opportunities for student and faculty mobility, with the programmes offered by each of the following institutions, also being open to students enrolled in the Italian literature and culture sub-programme: Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione di Milano, Università Cattolica di Milano, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Università degli Studi di Cassino, Università degli Studi di Catania, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Università degli Studi di Messina, Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Università degli Studi di Udine, Università degli Studi G. D’Annunzio – Chieti, Università per Stranieri di Perugia, Katolícka univerzita v Ružomberku.
Further enriching the international relations of our sub-programme is Italianistica Debreceniensis, the scholarly journal using blind peer review, published by the Department of Italian Studies, through the many prestigious members of the board of editors of the journal, representing the following universities and academies: Universiteit Antwerpen, Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Università di Catania, Universitatea din Craiova, Turun yliopisto, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The City University of New York, Accademia della Crusca, Latvijas Kultūras Akadēmija.
At the biennial international conference organized by the Department of Italian Studies, we provide opportunities also for students in the doctoral sub-programme to present the results of their research in an advanced stage, and what is even more important, their papers also appear in conference proceedings published in Italy, thereby allowing them to become a part of the international scholarship in Italian studies.