italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies

CFP: Italo-America. Transatlantic Connections and Italian (Cultural) Studies

The 2nd edition of the Peer-reviewed Open Acces Journal Lettere aperte
  aims to follow the Italo-American Imaginary in a multi-faceted way.
See for more details the attached CFP.

Please send abstracts in English, Italian, French or German (not more
than one page) by September 31, 2014 to [log in to unmask] and
  [log in to unmask] The final articles should not contain more
than 40.000 signs (space characters and footnotes included) and must
be submitted by December 21, 2014. In addition to academic essays,
contributions in audio- or video format, interviews, literary texts,
and reviews of other scholarship, may also be submitted.

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CFP: Italo-America. Transatlantic Connections and Italian (Cultural) Studies
(long version)

The discussion of Italian literature and culture within Italian
Studies has been for a long time restricted to the geographical
boundaries of Italy itself. The last decades have shown, however, an
opening towards a broader vision, especially in the context of
theoretical approaches such as Postcolonialism, Cultural Translation,
and TransArea Studies. Analogous to Francophone and Hispanophone
Studies, Italian Studies has begun to also focus on the so-called
?guest worker? and Migration literature, a genre which includes not
only the literature of authors who migrated to Italy, but also
?Italian? literature originating in countries like France, Germany,
and the United Kingdom. Strikingly, up until now, literature and media
originating in the Italo-American context have been studied much more
frequently in other fields of research, such as American and Canadian
Studies, than in Italian Studies. This edition of the open-access
journal lettere aperte will for that reason be dedicated to
Italo-American Culture from the conceptual perspective of Italian
Studies.
         The presence of Italy in North America is, for a range of
reasons, especially fascinating for an intercontinental conception of
Italian Studies. One such reason is the long history of emigration
from Italy since the 19th century, offering a massive quantitative
presence of Italians that predates the beginning of other ?mass
migrations? to the U.S. (e.g. from South America and South Asia).
Italian migration has thus influenced North American culture not only
in the sense of typical migrant sectors (e.g. gastronomy) and tourist
clichés, but has also shaped American popular culture in a new,
transcultural and transatlantic way. An emblematic example is The Rat
Pack, of which the legendary Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy
Davis Jr. were members. The group toured throughout the United States
and Europe between the 1960s and 80s. However The Rat Pack is an
example of only the most popular conformation of Italo-American
culture. Hollywood of the 1960s and onwards is inconceivable without
directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Sergio
Leone, figures who epitomize Italo-American culture with movie genres
like the Spaghetti Western (beginning with Leone?s Once upon a Time in
the West / C?era una volta il West, 1968) and gangster films such as
The Godfather I-III (1972/74/90). These genres and directors, with
Scorsese and Coppola receiving Academy Awards for their work, became
?national? representatives of North American popular culture.
         Lettere aperte?s 2nd edition aims to follow this
transatlantic thread in a multi-faceted way: We would like to analyze
the presence of Italo-American popular culture on the level of
prototypical genres and artists, while also taking into account that
Italian culture, at least that of the 20th and 21th century, cannot be
disconnected from American culture. Mass migration has generated
transatlantic networks and experiences, which have fundamentally
transformed the cultural landscape of the ?old continent?. One only
needs to think of the Postwar Italian film industry, which is clearly
under American influence. Many films of the era demonstrate the
intercontinental shape of Italian cinema in that directors filmed in
both the United States and Italy. Striking examples are Luchino
Visconti and Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci and Emanuele
Crialese. One could pose a similar argument regarding Italian
literature of the (post-) modern period in terms of both content and
esthetics, which is clearly influenced by American prose. Whether in
the evocation of the American Dream, accounts of concrete experiences
in America, translation and editing practices, or through mention of
esthetic interactions, the influence is unmistakable. Italo Calvino,
Eugenio Montale, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Pavese and Elio Vittorini, as
well as Alessandro Baricco and Melania Mazzucco, can be considered in
this respect as interesting case studies.
         Similarly fascinating is the personal engagement of several
musicians, poets, and directors with the theme of migration. Beyond
profitable genres such as crime fiction and thriller, many
Italo-American artists have dedicated themselves to innovative,
esthetically diverse artistic production. Films such as Martin
Scorsese?s documentary Italianamerican (1978) or Paul Tana?s
experimental films La Sarrasine (1992) and Souviens-toi de nous /
Ricordati di noi (2007) are based on the directors? own family and
migration histories. They intertwine Italo-American everyday
experiences with media memories (e.g. TV archives of italophone
broadcasts) along with literary and ?high? culture imaginary of Italy
(e.g. adaptations of epic poems), including alternating regional
dialects with Standard English, French or Italian. This technique can
be observed not only in America, but also among artists living in
Italy such as Melania Mazzucco. Her novel Vita (2003), which has been
translated into several languages including English, French and
German, centers on her own family history and innovatively deals with
Italian migration history in the form of a docufiction. Furthermore,
the Italo-American axis has a clear cultural and regional impact on
specific migration movements. For example, there is a strong presence
of authors from the region of Molise in certain provinces of Canada.
In Montréal and Toronto the poet and songwriter Tonino Caticchio as
well as the artists Antonio D?Alfonso and Marco Micone have a
prominent role in the Canadian intellectual scene (e.g. by editing
bilingual anthologies, collaborating on the journal ViceVersa as well
as on italophone radio broadcasts and publishers). They are also a
good example of the transatlantic impact of Italo-American literature:
authors such as Caticchio have written literature in standard French
and Italian as well as in the regional dialect of Molise (mainly
poetry), although the reception of the latter is often closely linked
and restricted to Italy. In other words, these diverse socio-cultural
connections and narratives can be read as results of processes of
transfer and transformation. They have shaped both the everyday and
the ?high? culture of the transatlantic as well as having revived
Italo-American imaginary. Thus they are essential to the foundation of
transatlantic American culture, a role which is especially defined in
the 1960s and 80s (in terms of Italo-American literature, The Rat
Pack, and the Spaghetti Western), and which also may be read as an
anticipation of the impact of Latin American culture and the processes
of creolization.

Please send abstracts in English, Italian, French or German (not more
than one page) by September 31, 2014 to [log in to unmask] and
[log in to unmask] The final articles should not contain more than
40.000 signs (space characters and footnotes included) and must be
submitted by December 21, 2014. In addition to academic essays,
contributions in audio- or video format, interviews, literary texts,
and reviews of other scholarship, may also be submitted.


Selected Bibliography
Altreitalie. Rivista internazionale di studi sulle migrazioni italiane
nel mondo.
http://www.altreitalie.it/Pubblicazioni/Rivista/Rivista.kl.
Bachmann-Medick, Doris. Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den
Kulturwissenschaften. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 52014.
Battistella, Graziano ed. Gli italoamericani negli anni ottanta. Un
profilo sociodemografico. Torino: Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli,1990.
Bürgel, Matthias. Die literarischen, künstlerischen und kulturellen
Quellen des Italowesterns. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011.
Corti, Paola/Sanfilippo, Matteo ed. Storia d?Italia. Annali 24.
Migrazioni. Torino: Einaudi, 2009.
Ette, Ottmar. TransArea. Eine literarische Globalisierungsgeschichte.
Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2012.
Gnisci, Armando. Creolizzare l?Europa. Letteratura e migrazione. Roma:
Meltemi, 2003.
Kleinhans, Martha/Schwaderer, Richard ed. Transkulturelle italophone
Literatur/Letteratura italofona transculturale. Würzburg: Königshausen
& Neumann, 2013.
Lombardi-Diop, Cristina/Romeo, Caterina ed. Postcolonial Italy.
Challenging National Homogeneity. Basingstoke et al.: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012.
Marchand, Jean-Jacques ed. La letteratura dell?emigrazione. Gli
scrittori di lingua italiana nel mondo. Torino: Fondazione Giovanni
Agnelli, 1991.
Perin, Roberto/Sturino, Franc ed. Arrangiarsi. The Italian Immigration
Experience in Canada. Toronto: Guernica, 2006.
Prifti, Elton. Italoamericano. Italiano e inglese in contatto negli
USA. Analisi diacronica variazionale e migrazionale. Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2014.
Pretelli, Matteo. L?emigrazione italiana negli Stati Uniti. Bologna:
Il Mulino, 2011.
Schlumbohm, Dietrich. Der Einfluss der amerikanischen Literatur auf
die moderne italienische Prosa (insbesondere auf die Werke Paveses und
Vittorinis). Ein Forschungsbericht. In: Romanistisches Jahrbuch 19,
1968. 133-162.
Schrader, Sabine/Winkler, Daniel ed. The Cinemas of Italian Migration:
European and Transatlantic Narratives. Newcastel-upon-Tyne: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
Tamburri, Anthony Julian. Re-reading Italian Americana: Specificities
and Generalities on Literature and Criticism. Madison/Teaneck:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013.
Tommasi, Lydio F./Gastaldo, Piero/Row, Thomas ed. The Columbus People.
Perspectives in Italian Immigration to the Americas and Australia. New
York: Center for Migration Studies, 1994.
Wagner, Birgit. Kulturelle Übersetzung. Erkundungen über ein
wanderndes Konzept. In: kakanien.ac.at. 2009.
http://www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/postcol/bwagner2.pdf.
Wood, Gordon S./Pacini, Marcello ed. La virtù e la libertà. Ideali e
civiltà italiana nella formazione degli Stati Uniti. Torino:
Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1995.


--
Univ.-Ass. Dr. Daniel Winkler
Institut für Romanistik
Universität Innsbruck
Innrain 52
6020 Innsbruck
Austria
http://www.uibk.ac.at/romanistik/personal/winkler/
Internetzeitschrift www.lettereaperte.net

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