Browsing by Subject "Italian studies"
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Item Calvino’s posthuman journey : a posthuman and ecocritical analysis of three works by Italo Calvino(2021-07-29) Gaglio, Samuel D.; Raffa, Guy P.; Bonifazio, Paola; Carter, Daniela; Iovino, SerenellaThis dissertation offers a posthuman and ecocritical analysis of three works – Marcovaldo, Palomar, and Le cosmicomiche by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It explores the potential of moving beyond anthropocentricism and into a hybrid space in which human and nonhuman life coexist and collaborate. The urban center is a significant place of this convergence. Underlying these novels is Calvino’s prescient concern for global industrialization, consumerism, and climate change. Posthumanism and ecocriticism overlap in their desire to combat these ongoing environmental crises onset by rapid human development in the 20th century. The omnipresence of animals in these stories also highlight Calvino’s resistance to see humans as an exceptional planetary species. By giving voice, thoughts, and agency to these animals, Calvino’s novels shift the hierarchy into a decentered space in which humans are not considered special or unique. Posthumanism reinforces this position.Item O partigiano, portami via! Men, sexuality, and the Italian Resistance(2016-05) Rabatin, Matthew Ryan; Bini, Daniela, 1945-; Bonifazio, Paola, 1976-; Raffa, Guy; Insana, Lina; Johnson, MichaelThis dissertation examines the representations of sexuality in male-authored narratives, both cinematic and literary, inspired by the Italian Resistance of the Second World War. My theoretical framework builds on the assertion that such narratives question predominant modes of representing the male partisan figure as a heterosexual man to include gay and queer sexualities. I foreground my work through a close reading of Carlo Coccioli’s Il Migliore e l’ultimo, a novel written during Coccioli’s imprisonment that narrates his love for a fellow partisan named Alberto. I proceed to novels and films produced during the 21st century. I engage each work with postmodern theories of writing and filmmaking, which I discuss alongside queer theorists whose studies affirm postmodernism as a site of openness and productivity for queer and eccentric subjects. I demonstrate how these works respond avant la lettre to calls for the revision of Resistance historiography made by official organizations of former partisans, such as Italy’s National Association of Partisans of Italy (A.N.P.I.). The works I examine are the aforementioned "Il Migliore e l’ultimo", Wu Ming’s "Asce di guerra", Bert D’Arragon’s "La libellula", and Ferzan Özpetek’s "Magnifica presenza".Item (Re)membering the past WWII-the years of lead in contemporary Italian literature, theater, and cinema(2015-12) Mabrey, Beatrice Giuseppina; Raffa, Guy P.; Bonifazio, Paola, 1976-; Bini Carter, Daniela; Charumbira, Ruramisai; Lombardi, GiancarloA cursory investigation of contemporary Italian literary, cinematic, and theatrical works produced since the 1990s reveals a marked interest in revisiting the dominant events of the twentieth century. Among the many episodes discussed, World War II, the postwar period, the 1968 protests, and the terrorist movements of the 1970s emerge as topics of particular interest for writers, playwrights, and cinematographers. Like the lieux de memoire described in Pierre Nora’s groundbreaking historiography, these “sites of memory” work through the “reciprocal overdetermination” of history and collective memory to act as bastions of national identity. This study examines a variety of works that draw upon Italy’s rich tradition of the historical novel and its most recent incarnation as the romanzo neostorico. Specifically, it shows how these works approach these sites of memory to unveil and explore the intricate web of memories and traumas underpinning the often-silencing narratives promoted by social and political institutions. Building on recent scholarship that advances the notion of a return to an engaged postmodernism, the author argues that these texts encourage their readers or spectators to engage with the formative sites of Italian national identity and to renegotiate their place within their own experiences. She claims that works such as Ascanio Celestini’s Radio Clandestina, Cristina Comencini’s Due Partite, and Francesca Melandri’s Più alto del mare engender a critical rereading of history by creating new myths. For the author, this rereading takes place predominantly through an encounter with memory. Consistent with Toni Morrison’s conception of “rememory,” these innovative works use individual and collective recollections of the events cited above (experienced or “inherited” by many of the authors and readers themselves) to reassemble a “dismembered” past and open a space for the development and expression of nascent and marginalized subjectivities. This, in turn, creates spaces for confronting pressing sociopolitical issues in contemporary Italy.Item The Italian musicarello : youth, gender, and modernization in postwar popular cinema(2017-05-03) Hotz, Stephanie Aneel; Bonifazio, Paola, 1976-; Raffa, Guy; Bini-Carter, Daniela; Beltran, Mary; Reich, JacquelineThe musicarello was a popular Italian film cycle consisting of more than eighty musical films from 1959 through the 1960s, a period that coincided with Italy’s postwar industrialization. During the postwar economic boom, these musical films emerged as a new form of popular cinema that was unique from other Italian postwar genres because of their intended youth audience, and because of their reference to British and North American popular entertainment. The films were primarily star vehicles, promoting and augmenting the careers of emerging young popular musicians such as Mina, Rita Pavone, Caterina Caselli, Gianni Morandi, Adriano Celentano, and Little Tony. This dissertation details how these young stars and their musical film performances represented youth and their consumer and entertainment choices during Italy’s era of modernization and consumerism, and how the films offered empowering representations of marginal, queered, and liminal subjectivities for young Italians. Analyzed within this framework, I argue that the musicarello can be perceived as camp because it represented the way in which youth and gender are performative and fluctuating subjectivities. While there has been an increased attention on popular cinema in Italian film scholarship, there have been few studies on the musicarello in both Italian and English scholarship at large. In this extensive study of the musical films, my methodology consists of close text formal analysis and an engagement with American and Italian film scholarship, cultural studies, and gender/queer theories. My formal analyses focus on film narratives, character development, musical numbers, and star status, alongside my examination of recurring themes, narratives devices, and tropes within the cycle. With a heavy emphasis on socio-historical contextualization and youth culture, my project adds to current scholarship on 1960s Italian youth culture and mass media, thereby filling a void not only in Italian film studies, but also in studies on Italian youth representation