Italy and the Mediterranean Words, Sounds, and Images of the Post-Cold War Era

by Bouchard, Norma; Ferme, Valerio

• ISBN13: 9781137343451
• ISBN10: 1137343451
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-09-05
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The Mediterranean has always loomed large in the history and culture of Italy, and since the 1980s this relationship has been represented in ever more varied forms as both national and regional identities have evolved within a globalized context. This interdisciplinary volume puts Italian artists (writers, musicians, and filmmakers) and intellectuals (philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists) in conversation with each other to explore Italy's Mediterranean identity while questioning the boundaries between Self and Other, and between native and foreign bodies. By moving beyond nation-centric models of cultural and ethnic homogeneity based on myths of progress and rationality, these wide-ranging contributions fashion new ways of belonging that transcend the cultural, economic, religious, and social categories that have characterized post–Cold War Italy and Europe.

Author Biography

Norma Bouchard is Associate Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut, USA. Among her publications are The Politics of Culture and the Ambiguities of Interpretation: Umberto Eco's Alternative (1998); Céline, Gadda, Beckett: Experimental Writers of the 1930s (2000); Risorgimento in Modern Italian Culture: Revisiting the 19th century Past in History, Narrative, and Cinema (2005); Reading and Writing the Mediterranean: Essays by Consolo (2006); and Italian Cultural Studies: Negotiating Regional, National and Global Identities, Annali d'Italianistica 24 (2006).
 
Valerio Ferme is Harold and Edythe Toso Chair of Italian Studies at Santa Clara University, USA. He has published numerous articles on twentieth-century authors, Boccaccio, and Italian cinema. He is the author of the book Tradurre è tradire (2002) and, in collaboration with Norma Bouchard, he has translated Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean (2012) by Italian sociologist Franco Cassano.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Return to the Mediterranean in Contemporary Western Thought: Old Contexts, New Approaches
2. Interlude: From Discourses On to Discourses From the Italian Mediterranean
3. Geo-philosophies of the Mediterranean: From Massimo Cacciari and Franco Cassano to Mario Alcaro and Beyond
4. Sounds of Southern Shores: Musical Traditions and Adaptations in the Italian Mediterranean
5. Screening the Souths through Southern Eyes: Revisiting Italy and the Mediterranean through the Lenses of Globalization
6. Writing the Mediterraneity of the Italian South: Vincenzo Consolo, Carmine Abate, and Erri De Luca
7. The Mediterranean of Migrant, Post-colonial, and Exile Writers
Post-face