Since the early twentieth century, Italian culture has been dominated by polemics against conventional form and calls for an abolition of boundaries between the arts. Italy's most influential artistic movements favoured multiple, reversible, "open" structures, a trend that can be found throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century. Interdisciplinarity has been driven by a desire for transgression and emancipation from obsolete artistic conventions, but also by a belief in the deep-rooted affinity between literature, music and the visual arts. Critics like Bonaddio and Butler have argued that such border-crossings are fundamental to understanding creativity during this period. Yet, so far, no one has attempted to study the developments across the period to assess the complex social makeup of the groups that defied established boundaries, or to explore the implications of their theoretical ideas for the teaching and study of modern Italian culture. Research on interdisciplinarity in the arts in the 21st century is very fragmented and has not been adequately theorised. In addition to fostering dialogue about interdisciplinarity in the arts, the network will use questions that arise to explore issues relating to the development of the discipline of Languages and Area Studies: what are the implications of border-crossing in 20th and 21st century culture in Italy on the way Italian culture is researched and taught in the academy? How could interdisciplinarity enable Italian Studies to improve its public engagement profile? This project promotes the creation of instruments, such as a database, website, workshops and panel discussion, that will enable easier communication between academics and non-academics. Policy issues arising from our findings will be discussed with the SIS, and more broadly with Language subject bodies for schools and universities (UCML, LLAS, ALL and CILT) and will be introduced to the US Italian Studies associations (AAIS) as our research will have implications there too. The network will run three workshops in London (UCL), New York (NYU), and Rome (RomaTre), and a panel at the Society for Italian Studies conference in 2013. Each of the workshops is dedicated to a separate period: (1) Modernism, (2) Postmodernism and (3) the Internet age. The steering group (Brook, Mussgnug, Pieri) will create and maintain a website and a searchable database, the first of its kind, of academics, museum curators, members of conservatoires and the media with interests in Italian culture. The group will also disseminate results through journal articles and a website. The steering committee will be supported by an advisory panel of experts from within and outside academia. This project focuses on the following questions: 1) Causes: Where do the roots of modern and contemporary interdisciplinarity lie? Why has it taken place in Italy during this period and what contributed to these developments? What is the place of technology, artistic milieus, journals, cafés, printing, Internet etc. in the development of cross-fertilisation? 2) Change and development: Can one map developments across the whole period? Does the idea of working between artistic genres and disciplines change over time? 3) Philosophical and ideological underpinnings: How do metaphors of borders enable us to understand interdisciplinarity better? What does interdisciplinarity tell us about concepts of facilitating, policing, transgressing? How does the border crossing relate to fragmentation? How do ideas of emancipation and freedom fit in? 4) Policy Implications: how can interdisciplinarity inspire new patterns of research, teaching, and exhibition organisation in Italian Studies and more broadly in Languages? These questions will be addressed by a network that brings together academics, doctoral and post-doctoral researchers, museum curators, members of conservatoires, and cultural practitioners currently working in Italy.