Bücher der Reihe Saggistica

In that topsy-turvy logic of the Roverso Mondo (the Upside-Down World) mountains are made of cheese, rivers flow with wine, labor is abolished, and pleasure rules in a fantastical place of abundance, the gastronomic utopia known as il Paese di Cuccagna (the Land of Cockaigne). Forming the mythic core of a centuries-old dream of plenty, it came to be closely associated with America. When mass migration was possible, the dream brought millions of the destitute to this and other continents, where they believed they would never go hungry again. Perpetuated by street performers, illustrated in penny broadsides, and narrated in folktales-how far had this oral tradition taken a people! The "abbondanza" mantra, functioning as a prayer, protected generations of diaspora Italians from the fear of hunger. Their Cuccagnesque worldview persisted and a veritable food obsession helped them create domestic landscapes of plenty in groaning wine cellars, gardens, kitchens, deep freezers, and pantries, contributing to the festivalization of the quotidian, and to the many actual festive reenactments of abundance. Some rituals, such as the Sicilian celebration of St. Joseph, with its pageant of the Holy Family and open table, commemorate immigrant journeys and their search for hospitality, even as they aim to welcome the stranger and feed the poor. This volume reviews four decades of the author's research, writing, and programming within this Italian and diaspora food nexus, including her reflections on the cycle of hunger, the search for abundance, the practice and achievement of abundance. Currently inhabiting a Land of Enough, she also ponders how the COVID-19 pandemic helped shift this multigenerational trauma discourse of scarcity and abundance, contributed to her involvement in food justice initiatives, and broke the mantra's spell.

Gli studi letterari e culturali degli ultimi decenni hanno progressivamente abbracciato una concezione transnazionale dello spazio basata su paradigmi di diffusione e mobilità. Strettamente legata a tali nozioni è l'idea di 'circolazione', sulla quale si concentrano le indagini contenute nel presente volume, caratterizzate da una prospettiva emisferica che dalle Americhe si estende all'Europa e oltre. Le curatrici hanno ritenuto opportuno, per la natura eterogenea e sfaccettata del fenomeno, stabilire un dialogo tra i testi e le diverse tipologie migratorie in essi esaminate, credendo fermamente che nella tessitura delle molteplici riflessioni possano sorgere concetti e nodi problematici che offrano nuove visioni e correlazioni, stimolando ulteriori analisi su un terreno di ricerca fertile e in costante attualizzazione. I saggi di questa raccolta sono stati scritti nel periodo precedente la diffusione della pandemia Covid-19. I temi indagati allora ci interpellano oggi, se possibile, in maniera ancora più urgente. Quali saranno le condizioni future della circolazione di persone e di idee attraverso confini reali e simbolici, di varia natura e dimensione, e in che modo le mutate condizioni incideranno sui flussi migratori e sulle varie forme di mobilità che caratterizzano l'epoca contemporanea? Le questioni poste offrono in tale prospettiva elementi fondamentali per orientarsi e riflettere, pure nel profondo cambiamento che stiamo attraversando, sul futuro delle circolazioni che hanno come meta o come punto di origine il continente americano.

Come nel nostro volume inaugurale di sette anni fa - Europe, Italy, and the Mediterranean: L'Europa, l'Italia, e il Mediterraneo (2014), nato dal primo convegno organizzato dal Mediterranean Centre for Intercultural Studies (MCIS; Centro Mediterraneo di Studi Interculturali) - questa raccolta di saggi nasce dal settimo convegno del Centro, che si è svolto ad Erice, in Sicilia, nel Maggio 2019. La presente raccolta contribuisce alla missione fondamentale del MCIS ... con l'obiettivo specifico di creare un dialogo tra quegli studiosi il cui lavoro intellettuale è dedicato a temi legati a qualsiasi aspetto della cultura mediterranea, nel senso più ampio del termine. Il volume sottolinea anche il nostro desiderio - e oseremmo dire la necessità - di mettere a disposizione il meglio del lavoro che scaturisce dagli incontri annuali del Centro.

Literary Nonfiction. Film. Italian American Studies. For those who believe that the choices involved in subtitling or dubbing foreign films are merely physical in nature--fitting the written words within the borders of the photogram, synchronizing the sounds of translated dialogue with the lip movements of actors--TRANSLATING FOR (AND FROM) THE ITALIAN SCREEN offers dramatic proof to the contrary. What emerges from this volume is a sophisticated and profound understanding of the cultural stakes of such operations. As evidenced by these ingenious case studies of the transformations undergone by Anglophone films when shown on Italian screens (or vice-versa), the cultural implications can be terribly tone-deaf (e.g. Monty Python and the Holy Grail), deeply harmonious (e.g. The Nanny), or ideologically distorted (e.g. La ricotta). In compiling this rich and provocative collection of essays, Balma and Spani have rendered it impossible for readers to maintain a naive view of the role played by subtitling and dubbing in the all-important transmission of cross-cultural understanding.--Millicent Marcus

. . . A strong sense of commonality is that necessary ingredient for the population to cohere and this to progress: for the study of all things Italian/American to become part and parcel of the dominant culture, as it is for other United States hyphenated groups.All of this is dependent on an Italian/American commitment (impegno) to the appreciation of our culture. This entails an active participation in cultural activities of all sorts; it requires that Italian/American groups make a concerted effort to go beyond those one or two activities they have identified as their own, and make attempts to expand their agenda to include a new, more encompassing form of cultural integration. All of this, as we shall see, is dependent on a combination of cultural awareness and appreciation: namely a new sense of the Italian/American self that ultimately leads to an appropriation of one’s cultural legacy.—From the introduction

"It seems appropriate that Bordighera Press would choose to publish this study on Pavese on the heals of bringing back in print Rimanelli's controversial book Il mestiere del furbo after over fifty years. Eugenio Ragni's observations in his introductory remarks to the recent re-release of Il mestiere del furbo strike us as applicable to Rimanelli's book-length study on Pavese. Ragni refers to Il mestiere del furbo as an example of intellectual independence and whose analysis is still critically valid after so many years. The same holds true for Rimanelli's study of Pavese, as does a similar careful reading of the texts combined with a balanced philological and narratological approach. Moreover, a distinguishing feature of both Il mestiere del furbo and Cesare Pavese's Long Journey: A Critical-Analytical Study, particularly from other criticism in the 1950s and early 1960s, are Rimanelli's enlightened references to foreign works and authors. Finally, the publication of this book-length study of Pavese brings to light an important chapter of Rimanelli's own life journey. It highlights a strong sense of tradition, a loyalty to place and to one's roots, and the idea of America as a metaphor for one's literary substance, one's myth, and one's destiny."-Mark Pietralunga, from the "Introduction"

"Il compito è tanto ambizioso quanto chiaro: conferire all'Europa del Sud la capacità di esercitare un ruolo non subalterno dentro l'Unione. L'Italia dovrebbe capire che la partita della sua unità ormai la si gioca solo in questo sacchiere più ampio: la questione meridionale come questione mediterranea. Non si tratta di un'impresa da poco, dato che il cuore continentale d'Europa sembra ignorare la questione oppure sentire più forte il richiamo di altri punti cardinali."-Franco Cassano, Tre modi di vedere il Sud

In the last three decades, Italian/American culture has at last experienced a veritable renaissance and has begun to be studied from diasporic, transnational, trans-lingual, and global perspectives by a growing number of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. Working from an interdisciplinary standpoint, and taking as basis the latest developments in the field, the essays in this volume are meant as a contribution to the ongoing, collective effort at expanding and updating knowledge concerning Italian/American literature, cinema, and culture in their various articulations. They explore the effects that the texts' imaginary-often linked to the idea of space, mobility, and change-produces on our understanding of Italian/American culture. This knowledge can help construct a new narrative of Italian/American life, as well as provide a more complex understanding of American history and culture in a transnational context. As the international conference Re-Mapping Italian America. Places, Cultures, Identities (Roma Tre University, 2016) has made clear, it is high time to reformulate the notions of place, culture, and identity in order to arrive at a more dynamic definition of these concepts. This re-consideration allows for new paradigms, flexible enough to make sense of the most significant changes in the field of contemporary Italian/American studies and suggestive of additional future perspectives in Italian/American criticism.

Passati ormai dieci anni dal nostro primo incontro ad Erice e sei dalla nascita della Fondazione del Mediterranean Center for International Studies (MCIS), questa nuova raccolta di saggi presentati al convegno del 2017, continua il dialogo tra studiosi che operano in tre continenti diversi e che a maggio da cinque anni si confrontano su argomenti e su temi relativi a qualsiasi aspetto della cultura mediterranea.-dalla prefazione

Literary Nonfiction. Italian & Italian American Studies. History. Through contemporary culture and the philosophical lens of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Antonio Gramsci, Pasquale Verdicchio examines trends in nationalistic ideologies, immigrant culture, displacement, and Italian studies.

Literary Nonfiction. History. Translated from the Italian by Sian Gibby. This collection of letters, diaries, and memoirs offers readers personal accounts of the realities of the war. We are taken beyond the grandiosity of war propaganda into the daily lives of soldiers fighting in the trenches.

As in previous volumes, this collection of essays contributes to the fundamental mission of the Mediterranean Centre for InterculturalStudies—founded in 2012 and located in Erice—with the specific goal of creating a dialogue between those scholars whose intellectual work is dedicated to topics and themes related to any aspect of Mediterranean culture, in the broadest sense of theterm. This volume also underscores our desire—and dare we say, necessity—to make readily available the best of work that emanates from the Centre’s annual meetings.