Italian Life Research Articles

The Italian American table: food, family, and community in New York City

Best Food Book of 2014 by The Atlantic Looking at the historic Italian American community of East Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, Simone Cinotto recreates the bustling world of Italian life in New York City and demonstrates how food was at the center of the lives of immigrants and their children. From generational conflicts resolved around the family table to a vibrant food-based economy of ethnic producers, importers, and restaurateurs, food was essential to the creation of an Italian American identity. Italian American foods offered not only sustenance but also powerful narratives of community and difference, tradition and innovation as immigrants made their way through a city divided by class conflict, ethnic hostility, and racialized inequalities. Drawing on a vast array of resources including fascinating, rarely explored primary documents and fresh approaches in the study of consumer culture, Cinotto argues that Italian immigrants created a distinctive culture of food as a symbolic response to the needs of immigrant life, from the struggle for personal and group identity to the pursuit of social and economic power. Adding a transnational dimension to the study of Italian American foodways, Cinotto recasts Italian American food culture as an American invention resonant with traces of tradition.

Gustavo Modena's Othello: the first performance in an Italian theatre of a Shakespearean drama

Performances of Shakespeare's plays in the Italian peninsula were notoriously slow to develop. They only started after the European Romantic Movement had challenged the neo-classical dramatic models of French derivation that dominated Italian theatrical life until well into the nineteenth century. The first serious attempt to stage a Shakespearean play was undertaken in 1842 by Gustavo Modena, one of the most celebrated actors of his age, who attempted to play Othello in the Teatro Re in Milan. The performance was a disastrous failure. This article investigates the political, cultural and linguistic reasons which led to that failure, underlining Modena's precarious position in the Italy of the Risorgimento (the movement in favour of national unity) as a friend and close collaborator of the most revolutionary and democratic leader of the Risorgimento, Giuseppe Mazzini. The article ends by underlining Modena's success in training a new generation of Italians who, after the unification of Italy in 1861, would become internationally famous in Shakespearean roles. Particular emphasis is placed on the Othello of Tommaso Salvini.

The Politics of Travel: Eastern Europe in Paolo Rumiz’s È Oriente

This essay investigates the representation of Eastern Europe in Paolo Rumiz’s È Oriente (2003). It argues that the author’s depiction of the region not only relies — often quite heavily — on the general discourse suggesting an essential difference between Europe’s West and East, but also reflects, more specifically, concerns and apprehensions characteristic of Italian political and cultural life in the last decade of the twentieth century, caused in particular by separatist tendencies in the North and the ascent to power of the far-right. The essay contends that despite Rumiz’s knowledge of the region and his attempts to grasp and understand the predicaments and complexities of the places visited, the author’s depiction of Eastern Europe remains highly reductive and reiterates the cultural discourse which construes the region as the West’s imaginary Other and its repressed cultural alter ego.

Going Alone: The “Entrepreneurial-Growth Model” in the Life Science Industry in Italy

This article investigates different models of financing firms and firm expansion in the Italian life science sector. Building on a broad secondary data base (“Zephyr”), the authors present a descriptive analysis of 438 financial transactions in which Italian life science firms were involved between 1997 and 2006. The results of this analysis demonstrate that forms of risk capital, such as private equity and venture capital play only a marginal role in financing Italian life science firms. In contrast, an “entrepreneurial growth model” based on traditional models of financing firm expansion—such as, e.g. mergers and acquisitions—dominates in quantitative terms. In an additional in-depth analysis of the Zephyr-database, the authors further identify six “emerging business strategies” of Italian life science firms, namely: horizontal expansion, cross-border expansion, forward vertical integration, specialization, technological upgrading and diversification. These strategies are illustrated in more detail using seven representative cases of individual firms.

Duelling after the Duce: postwar conflicts of honour in Italy

Unlike other western European countries, Italy did not see the waning of the duel of honour after the First World War. On the contrary, there was an increase in the practice during the 1920s as the Fascists used mechanisms of honour to facilitate and legitimize their rise to power. However, Mussolini's regime found the individualism of the chivalric tradition inconsistent with its totalitarian notions of discipline and duty and worked in a variety of subtle ways to try to eliminate the ritual from Italian life. For the most part, the Second World War finished the process and, in the wake of defeat, destruction and partisan conflict, duelling virtually disappeared as a means of settling disputes of honour among elites. Nevertheless, one can point to a handful of formal duels, which adhered to traditional regulations, that occurred in the decade after the war. This article investigates these encounters in order to understand why these particular participants decided to opt for a ritual that was both out of fashion and had lost much of its legal immunity. It also argues that their actions actually demonstrate just how alienated the duel had become from Italy's social mainstream after the war.

Vite Italiane: Italian Lives in Western Australia

Vite Italiane: Italian Lives in Western Australia

Stadium as public sphere

Though spectator sport is often understood as escapist entertainment, stadiums regularly aggregate thousands of citizens in close physical space, thus making political expression achievable, if not unavoidable. Political expressions at sporting events are actively discouraged by sport commentators, politicians and other authorities. In contrast, this essay underscores how and why the sporting stadium should be considered a vital political space. Theories of the public sphere guide how we understand the construction of political views. Physical space is a key element that encourages or constricts dissent. Mass mediation amplifies certain forms of public discourse. With conceptions of the public sphere, space and media, the essay analyses the Italian football stadium that, within the context of Italian cultural and political life, has been a prominent stage for political expression. To conclude, I draw comparisons with the American sporting stadium and question the ‘a-political’ mentality that threatens to dominate the stands.

Opera as business? From impresari to the publishing industry

The impresario was a key figure of nineteenth-century Italian operatic life. Along with other economic, financial and organizational aspects of ottocento opera, the article examines the role of these shrewd businessmen, drawing particular attention to the role of the Habsburgs in the administration of theaters in Lombardy. Along with a general job description of the Italian opera impresario of the first half of the nineteenth century, the article explains how gambling provided a way of financing the lavish seasons of Italian opera houses. After 1861, the role of the impresario changed considerably and was subsequently taken over by the publishers. Generally speaking, the impresario's role changed from being an active creator to that of a mere participant in the opera industry. Soon after 1900 he disappeared completely from the stages of the Italian opera world.

The controversy of Renaissance art

Many studies have shown that images - their presence in the daily lives of the faithful, the means used to control them, and their adaptation to secular uses - were at the heart of the Reformation crisis in northern Europe. But the question as it affects the art of Italy has been raised only in highly specialized studies. In this book, Alexander Nagel provides the first truly synthetic study of the controversies over religious images that pervaded Italian life both before and parallel to the Reformation north of the Alps. Tracing the intertwined relationship of artistic innovation and archaism, as well as the new pressures placed on the artistic media in the midst of key developments in religious iconography, The Controversy of Renaissance Art offers an important and original history of humanist thought and artistic experimentation from one of our most acclaimed historians of art.

The Italians in America, from Transculturation to Identity Renegotiation

The experience of Italians in the United States should not be viewed in terms of rupture with Italian life but rather in a perspective of continuity even if the American environment influenced the immigrants’ lifestyle. The interaction between their communities and American society led to an Italian-American identity born out of a renegotiation of their original identities, the building of a national consciousness, and their Americanization. Hence they became white ethnics.

“The Penalties of a Well-Known Name”: Ouida, Celebrity, and a Sensational Friendship

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Henry James and Rudyard Kipling also go on record against interviews. See James 147–48; Lockwood, “Henry James's First Interview”; “A Day with Mr. Rudyard Kipling.” See, for example, “‘Ouida's’ Florentine Palace.” See Calverley, “‘Ouida's’ Knowledge of Italian Life”); Elwin, “Wallflower the Ninth: Ouida”; James, Edel and Wilson, “Ouida. Rev. Of Signa”; and Murray, “Ouida's Novels.” For a detailed discussion of Alice Meynell and her public image, see Schaffer, The Forgotten Female Aesthetes. See, for instance, Calverley, “‘Ouida's’ Knowledge of Italian Life.” See the editorials “A Strange Coincidence,” and “A Still Stranger Coincidence.” See Beerbohm, “Ouida,” and Street, “The Truth About Ouida.” See Gilbert (87); Schroeder (90); Schroeder and Hodges Holt (21); and Showalter (334_.

Italians posing between public and private. Theories and practices of Social Heritage

According to the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage (Unesco 2003), from the point of view on Social Heritage, the Family Photo, and by extension Family Albums, play a particular significant role. In particular, Family Albums are a specific referent point for conservation, transmission and development of a community Social Heritage. At the same time, Family Album can be considered “places” of the Italian memory and places of transmission between public and private, because the photography, since its debut, is a public space, as if to say: posing is already being in public. Amateurs photographs and professional photographs offer a chance to see a visual history of Italy and so a visual history of dominant ideologies, perceptual and cultural models of Italian life. In this sense, with Family Album we can analyzed the continuous interweaving between the idea of history and history of ideological, economic and political thinking, factors influencing consumers, tastes change and the impact of scientific progress. Specifically, Family photo is a new source for the study of Italian family’s history, that is “The True Homeland of the Italian” and so the institution on which the national identity is found (Ginsborg 2001).

Una "Cittŕ futura" in Calabria. Reportage

The review «Il Mulino», founded in Bologna in 1951 by a group of about ten young academics who met at the local University, aims to be an intellectual laboratory, not tied to any political party. The situation of the intellectuals, the condition of Italian schools and Universities are the first topics analysed and until the end of the ’50s are the group’s main interest. «Il Mulino» from cultural review becomes a militant one: the focus shifts towards political parties, tendencies and congresses; the aim is to favour a dialogue among those who are considered to be the positive forces in the Italian political life: Catholics, liberals and socialists. Only through the collaboration of these three forces Democracy can be developed. No dialogue, instead, with the Communists. Communism is considered outside the democratic spirit, it is an advocate of an absolute, centralized and bureaucratic State, where there is no space for Freedom. The advent of a centre-left coalition will be favourably greeted since it is seen as the most serious political attempt to subtract from communist influence the working class and the peasants, their biggest supporters, carrying out those reforms necessary to satisfy their needs and aimed to guarantee the Country’s democratic evolution.

Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature

Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature

The training and education of propagandists in the ‘repubblica dei partiti’: internal-circulation periodicals in the PCI and the DC (1946–58)

This article takes into consideration the practices and techniques of political communications of the leading Italian parties in the early years of the republican period. Often considered antiquated or retrograde with respect to those in use in the more advanced western democracies, the methods of propaganda and ‘in-the-field’ mobilization, however, proved well suited in terms of permitting the development of a deeper-rooted social presence for the better organized mass political parties, as well as helping to establish forms of political participation that were destined to characterize Italian life for decades to follow. This essay, in particular, presents the internal-circulation periodicals through which the national Press and Propaganda sections of the Italian Communist Party and the Christian Democratic Party supervised and organized the training and education of nonprofessional activists: from these sources it is possible to determine to what degree the role of the propagandist and the techniques of communications served as the terrain for a clear exchange between the two opposing fronts in the ‘civil cold war’ in Italy during the forties and fifties.

Music, Letters and National Identity: Reading the 1890s' Italian Music Press

Much ink was spilled on the subject of music infin-de-siècleItaly. With the rapid expansion of the bourgeoisie during the last decades of the nineteenth century, opera-going in Italy was at its apogee, and as opera attendance surged so too did the demand for gossip about singers, titbits about the lives of composers and reviews of the latest works. This was a moment at which the booming Italian opera and journalism industries converged, particularly in the large northern cities, to produce an explosion of periodicals devoted to opera, encompassing a range of critical methods. The 1890s, however, also saw the development in Italy of a new branch of criticism devoted to more ‘serious’ types of music, penned by writers explicitly hostile to opera's domination of Italian musical life, who looked to the north as their cultural spiritual home.

The Bologna Process and Internationalization – Consequences for Italian Academic Life

The main aim of this study was to explore if there is a connection between the Bologna Process and the internationalization themes and practices of Italian academic life from an academic's point of view. The study was based on a qualitative approach and the interview data were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. The following main themes emerged concerning the internationalization of Italian academic life: the internationalization of teaching and studies, student and staff mobility, and the internationalization of academic work and career. The Bologna Process seems to have both direct and indirect consequences for internationalization. The international student and teacher exchanges have become easier but at the same time the pressures of academics' work have increased in teaching and research.

Jardin d’Italie: Voyageurs français à la découverte de l’art de vivre (review)

Reviewed by: Jardin d’Italie: Voyageurs français à la découverte de l’art de vivre Pamela Shuggi (bio) Giovanni Dotoli. Jardin d’Italie: Voyageurs français à la découverte de l’art de vivre. Pref. Yves Bonnefoy. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008. Giovanni Dotoli’s Jardin d’Italie: Voyageurs français à la découverte de l’art de vivre is of interest to a wide variety of readers, including scholars ranging from medievalists to modernists, but may also appeal to anyone with an affinity for literary travel as well as travel literature. Yves Bonnefoy’s preface is succinct and successfully prepares the reader for Dotoli’s text. One of the greatest and most interesting aspects of Dotoli’s text is his balance between broad historical coverage and deep examination of specific works of travel literature such as works by Michel de Montaigne, François René de Chateaubriand, and Jean Cocteau. He effectively integrates the historical, artistic and cultural aspects of the magnetism that pulls French travelers to Italy in order to reveal its promise as a garden of origin, beauty and vivacity. His central metaphor of Italy as a mythical garden is well established through the aforementioned themes and documented in a way that integrates both primary and secondary sources. Dotoli skillfully and artfully weaves an abundance of information into ten flowing chapters, each of which comes to establish and describe an aspect of the title phrase “Jardin d’Italie.” The chapters can be readily approached through these themes. In the first chapter, “Désir d’Italie,” Dotoli lays the groundwork for his metaphor of Italy as a garden for European, and particularly French, travelers. It is a garden in the sense that it is a dream; a seductive, light-filled one. In the second chapter, “Jardin d’Italie,” Dotoli goes on to explain why the concept of such a dream is central to the conception of Italy as a garden. He highlights that Italy is considered the land of beauty, that the “Bel paese” owes its name to the eternal dream that is associated with it. In the third chapter, “Arcadie et nostalgie,” Dotoli goes on to connect the eternity of this dream back to Genesis. Dotoli wonders if Guinevere and Lancelot did not dream of Italy, if traveling to Italy was not an epic journey to the East. He asks whether French travelers would not have embarked on a journey to Italy in search of their origin. In the fourth chapter, “Jardin du soleil,” Dotoli explains how sun and light specifically came to affect how French travelers viewed the Italian landscape and consequently Italy itself, which leads very smoothly into his discussion of Italy as the heart of the North-South dichotomy in chapter five, “Art de vivre.” What follows in this chapter is a thorough description of the inherent mixture of “North” and “South” that constitutes Italian culture and French travelers’ attraction and positive reaction to it. In the sixth chapter, “Jardin du temps. Au fil des siècles,” Dotoli returns to the historical aspect of his argumentation as he recounts the history of French travel to Italy from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century and the resulting literature. He emphasizes that religious motivations made travel to Italy from France in the Middle Ages, including missions of evangelization as [End Page 1026] well as the Crusades, far more frequent then we might imagine. Dotoli notes that it was at that time that literature became “un acte de viaticum, de via, de voie et de route, par migrations et conquêtes” (115). Dotoli highlights that the sixteenth century brought profound changes, first as a result of the influences of humanism, and then later on with the advent of the travel journal. He illustrates how seventeenth-century travel literature moved toward interpretation and the eighteenth century brought about a deeper interest in the actuality of Italian life, in accordance with the Enlightenment. Dotoli gives an especially interesting account of how Italy began as a model for French travelers and of the importance it later acquired for French Romantics during the nineteenth century. Dotoli maintains that the myth of the garden continued into the twentieth century, in the hopes...

Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature

Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature

Days of Italian lives: Charting the contemporary soapscape on Italian public television

Days of Italian lives: Charting the contemporary soapscape on Italian public television