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Italian Design (MoMA Design Series)
by Giampiero BosoniThis volume explores Italian design of the last half-century, featuring the classic lines of the Vespa, Bruno Munari's deconstruction of the common fork, the nostalgic appeal of Italo Marchioni's ice cream cone and the sleek Minimalism of Alberto Meda's 1987 "Light Light Chair," among many other masterpieces.
Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human (New Directions in National Cinemas)
by Elena PastEntangled in the hybrid fields of ecomedia studies and material ecocriticism, Elena Past examines five Italian films shot on location and ponders the complex relationships that the production crews developed with the filming locations and the nonhuman cast members. She uses these films—Red Desert (1964), The Winds Blows Round (2005), Gomorrah (2008), Le quattro volte (2010), and Return to the Aeolian Islands (2010)—as case studies to explore pressing enviornmental questions such as cinema's dependence on hydrocarbons, the toxic waste crisis in the region of Campania, and our reliance on the nonhuman world. Dynamic and unexpected actors emerge as the subjects of each chapter: playful goats, erupting volcanoes, airborne dust particles, fluid petroleum, and even the sound of silence. Based on interviews with crew members and close readings of the films themselves, Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human theorizes how filmmaking practice—from sound recording to location scouting to managing a production—helps uncover cinema's ecological footprint and its potential to open new perspectives on the nonhuman world.
Italian Ecocinema: Beyond the Human (New Directions in National Cinemas)
by Elena PastEcocriticism and film studies unite in this examination of five Italian films and the environmental questions they raise.Entangled in the hybrid fields of ecomedia studies and material ecocriticism, Elena Past examines five Italian films shot on location and ponders the complex relationships that the production crews developed with the filming locations and the nonhuman cast members. She uses these films—Red Desert (1964), The Winds Blows Round (2005), Gomorrah (2008), Le quattro volte (2010), and Return to the Aeolian Islands (2010)—as case studies to explore pressing environmental questions such as cinema’s dependence on hydrocarbons, the toxic waste crisis in the region of Campania, and our reliance on the nonhuman world. Dynamic and unexpected actors emerge as the subjects of each chapter: playful goats, erupting volcanoes, airborne dust particles, fluid petroleum, and even the sound of silence. Based on interviews with crew members and close readings of the films themselves, Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human theorizes how filmmaking practice—from sound recording to location scouting to managing a production—helps uncover cinema’s ecological footprint and its potential to open new perspectives on the nonhuman world.“[Past] uniquely and innovatively combines film studies and material ecocriticism with a focus on Italy. Such weaving of tales brings the films to life and reads them as ecological documents and Italian stories.” —Heather I. Sullivan, author of The Intercontextuality of Self and Nature in Ludwig Tieck’s Early Works“A timely and incisive study that interrogates a new, though growing, trend in film criticism and makes an important and rich contribution to Italian film studies, Italian cultural studies, and ecocriticism.” —Bernadette Luciano, author (with Susanna Scarparo) of Reframing Italy: New Trends in Italian Women’s Filmmaking“Part memoir, part close analysis of the films themselves, and illustrated with numerous excellent frame grabs, Past’s book casts a dreamlike spell as it contemplates the past, present, and future of the cinema and moves smoothly between environmental issues and aesthetic and practical concerns.” —Choice
Italian Ecocinema: Beyond the Human (New Directions in National Cinemas)
by Elena PastEcocriticism and film studies unite in this examination of five Italian films and the environmental questions they raise.Entangled in the hybrid fields of ecomedia studies and material ecocriticism, Elena Past examines five Italian films shot on location and ponders the complex relationships that the production crews developed with the filming locations and the nonhuman cast members. She uses these films—Red Desert (1964), The Winds Blows Round (2005), Gomorrah (2008), Le quattro volte (2010), and Return to the Aeolian Islands (2010)—as case studies to explore pressing environmental questions such as cinema’s dependence on hydrocarbons, the toxic waste crisis in the region of Campania, and our reliance on the nonhuman world. Dynamic and unexpected actors emerge as the subjects of each chapter: playful goats, erupting volcanoes, airborne dust particles, fluid petroleum, and even the sound of silence. Based on interviews with crew members and close readings of the films themselves, Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human theorizes how filmmaking practice—from sound recording to location scouting to managing a production—helps uncover cinema’s ecological footprint and its potential to open new perspectives on the nonhuman world.“[Past] uniquely and innovatively combines film studies and material ecocriticism with a focus on Italy. Such weaving of tales brings the films to life and reads them as ecological documents and Italian stories.” —Heather I. Sullivan, author of The Intercontextuality of Self and Nature in Ludwig Tieck’s Early Works“A timely and incisive study that interrogates a new, though growing, trend in film criticism and makes an important and rich contribution to Italian film studies, Italian cultural studies, and ecocriticism.” —Bernadette Luciano, author (with Susanna Scarparo) of Reframing Italy: New Trends in Italian Women’s Filmmaking“Part memoir, part close analysis of the films themselves, and illustrated with numerous excellent frame grabs, Past’s book casts a dreamlike spell as it contemplates the past, present, and future of the cinema and moves smoothly between environmental issues and aesthetic and practical concerns.” —Choice
Italian Elitism and the Reshaping of Democracy in the United States (Ideas beyond Borders)
by Giorgio VolpeThis book deals with the reception of Italian elitism in the United States, identifying its key protagonists, phases, and themes. It starts from the reconstruction of the scientific and political debates aroused in the United States by the works of Mosca, Pareto, and Michels, and moves on to define their theoretical influence in the American scientific and academic contexts. The analysis takes into consideration the period from the first contact between elitists and American academia in the early 1920s to the publication of The Power Elite by Mills, in 1956, which marks the emancipation of American elitism. After introducing the fundamental principles of elite theory, the first part of the study reconstructs the debate that it aroused beyond the Atlantic. The second part examines the original American reworking of the elitist lesson, concentrating on the works of the authors most strongly influenced by it: Joseph A. Schumpeter, Harold D. Lasswell, and Charles W. Mills. The book aims to shed light on the contribution of Italian elitism to the development of American political thought.
Italian Fascism and Spanish Falangism in Comparison: Constructing the Nation (Palgrave Studies in Political History)
by Giorgia PriorelliThis book compares the Italian Fascist and the Spanish Falangist political cultures from the early 1930s to the early 1940s, using the idea of the nation as the focus of the comparison. It argues that the discourse on the nation represented a common denominator between these two manifestations of the fascist phenomenon in Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain. Exploring the similarities and differences between these two political cultures, this study investigates how Fascist and Falangist ideologues defined and developed their own idea of the nation over time to legitimise their power within their respective countries. It examines to what extent their concept of the nation influenced Italian and Spanish domestic and foreign policies. The book offers a four-level framework for understanding the evolution of the fascist idea of the nation: the ideology of the nation, the imperial projects of Fascism and Falangism, race and the nation, and the place of these cultures in the new Nazi continental order. In doing so, it shows how these ideas of the nation had significant repercussions on fascist political practice.
Italian Fascism and the Female Body: Sport, Submissive Women and Strong Mothers (Sport in the Global Society)
by Gigliola GoriThis is the first text to examine women and sport in Italy during the period 1861-1945. To qualify and quantify the impact of fascism on Italian Women's sport, the author first of all examines the pre-fascist period in terms of female physical culture. The text then describes how during the fascist era, women moved strictly within a framework designed by medicine and eugenics, religious and traditional education. The country aspired to emancipation, as promised by the fascist revolution but emancipation was hard to advance under the fascist regime because of male hegemonic trends in the country. This book shows how the engagement of women in some sporting activity did promote and support some gender emancipation. The conclusion of the book demonstrates how, in the post-war period, women found it hard to advance further on, for a number of reasons.
Italian Fascism in Rhodes and the Dodecanese Islands, 1922–44 (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Italy)
by Aron Rodrigue Valerie McGuireThis book is the first English-language collection of scholarly essays to investigate the ambiguous and supporting role that colonialism in the Aegean Region played in Mussolini’s imperial ambitions, bringing to light a history rarely scrutinized until recently.The Dodecanese archipelago is often absent from histories of Italian fascist colonialism, as Italian territories in East Africa, Libya, and the Balkans have figured more centrally in discussions of how nationalism and later fascism relied on the empire to promote discourses of national renewal and regeneration. Over the past twenty years, a new wave of research has emerged, animated by the opening of previously closed state archives in various countries. This volume’s international contributors provide fresh perspectives on a topic frequently mythologized as a “golden period” of social and cultural intimacy among twentieth-century Greeks, Turks, and Jews. Themes include the fascist adaptation in the islands of Ottoman imperial governance, programs of infrastructure, development, and administration in the Dodecanese, Jewish history and memory in Rhodes, and the place of the islands in larger regional tensions of the interwar period. The volume will be of interest to scholars of Italian history, modern colonialism, fascism, Mediterranean studies, the end of the Ottoman Empire, and Sephardic Jewry.
Italian Fascism, 1914-1945: Themes and Interpretations
by Claudia BaldoliThis is the first book on Italian Fascism to analyse the rich historiography written in Italian for the benefit of the English-speaking students. Claudia Baldoli clarifies the most important research and debates from the origins of Fascism to the ways in which it is remembered today.
Italian Fascism, 1915–1945: Second Edition (The\making Of The Twentieth Century Ser.)
by Philip MorganIt is now 80 years since Mussolini's Fascism came to power in Italy, but the political heirs of the original Fascism are part of government in today's Italy. The resurgence of neo-fascist and neo-Nazi extremism all over Europe are a reminder of the continuing place of fascism in contemporary European society, despite its political and military defeat in 1945. This thoroughly revised, updated and expanded edition provides a critical and comprehensive overview of the origins of Fascism and the movement's taking and consolidation of power. Philip Morgan: #65533; explains how the experience of the First World War created Fascism #65533; describes how the unsettled post-war conditions in Italy enabled an initially small group of political adventurers around Mussolini to build a large movement and take power in 1922 #65533; focuses on the workings of the first ever 'totalitarian' system and its impacts on the lives and outlooks of ordinary Italians #65533; considers the meshing of internal 'fascistisation' and expansionism, which emerged most clearly after 1936 as Italy became more closely aligned with Nazi Germany #65533; examines the demise of Italian Fascism between 1943 and 1945 as Mussolini and his party became the puppets of Nazism #65533; provides an explanation and interpretation of Fascism, locating it in contemporary history and taking account of recent debates on the nature of the phenomenon. Clear and approachable, this essential text is ideal for anyone interested in Italy's turbulent political history in the first half of the twentieth century.
Italian Fashion since 1945: A Cultural History (Italian and Italian American Studies)
by Emanuela ScarpelliniIn the course of the twentieth century, Italy succeeded in establishing itself as one of the world's preeminent fashion capitals, despite the centuries-old predominance of Paris and London. This book traces the story of how this came to be, guiding readers through the major cultural and economic revolutions of twentieth-century Italy and how they shaped the consumption practices and material lives of everyday Italians. In order to understand the specific character of the “Italian model,” Emanuela Scarpellini considers not only aspects of craftsmanship, industrial production and the evolution of styles, but also the economic and cultural changes that have radically transformed Italy and the international scene within a few decades: the post-war economic miracle, the youth revolution, the consumerism of the 1980s, globalization, the environmentalism of the 2000s and the Italy of today. Written in a lively style, full of references to cinema, literature, art and the world of media, this work offers the first comprehensive overview of a phenomenon that has profoundly shaped recent Italian history.
Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism
by Millicent MarcusThe movement known as neorealism lasted seven years, generated only twenty-one films, failed at the box office, and fell short of its didactic and aesthetic aspirations. Yet it exerted such a profound influence on Italian cinema that all the best postwar directors had to come to terms with it, whether in seeming imitation (the early Olmi), in commercial exploitation (the middle Comencini) or in ostensible rejection (the recent Tavianis). Despite the reactionary pressures of the marketplace and the highly personalized visions of Fellini, Antonioni. And Visconti, Italian cinema has maintained its moral commitment to use the medium in socially responsible ways--if not to change the world, as the first neorealists hoped, then at least to move filmgoers to face the pressing economic, political, and human problems in their midst. From Rossellini's Open City (1945) to the Taviani brothers' Night of the Shooting Stars (1982). The author does close readings of seventeen films that tell the story of neorealism's evolving influence on Italian postwar cinematic expression.Other films discussed are De Sica's Bicycle Thief and Umberto D. De Santis's Bitter Rice, Comencini's Bread, Love, and Fantasy, Fellini's La strada, Visconti's Senso, Antonioni's Red Desert, Olmi's Il Posto, Germi's Seduced and Abandoned, Pasolini's Teorema, Petri's Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, Bertolucci's The Conformist, Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli, and Wertmuller's Love and Anarchy, Scola's We All Loved Each Other So Much provides the occasion for the author's own retrospective consideration of how Italian cinema has fulfilled, or disappointed, the promise of neorealism.
Italian Film in the Present Tense (Toronto Italian Studies)
by Millicent MarcusFor observers of the European film scene, Federico Fellini’s death in 1993 came to stand for the demise of Italian cinema as a whole. Exploring an eclectic sampling of works from the new millennium, Italian Film in the Present Tense confronts this narrative of decline with strong evidence to the contrary. Millicent Marcus highlights Italian cinema’s new sources of industrial strength, its re-placement of the Rome-centred studio system with regional film commissions, its contemporary breakthroughs on the aesthetic front, and its vital engagement with the changing economic and socio-political circumstances in twenty-first-century Italian life. Examining works that stand out for their formal brilliance and their moral urgency, the book presents a series of fourteen case studies, featuring analyses of such renowned films as Il Divo, Gomorrah, The Great Beauty, We Have a Pope, The Mafia Only Kills in the Summer, and Fire at Sea, along with lesser-known works deserving of serious critical scrutiny. In doing so, Italian Film in the Present Tense contests the widely held perception of a medium languishing in its "post-Fellini" moment, and instead acknowledges the ethical persistence and forward-looking currents of Italian cinema in the present tense.
Italian Foreign Policy 1870-1940: Volume VIII
by C.J. Lowe F. MarzariThis is Volume VIII of eleven in a collection of works on Foreign Policies of the Great Powers. Originally published in 1975, and looks at the polices of Italy from 1870 to 1940 including topics from independence to alliance, Mancini, Robilant, the Crispi period, the Prinetti-Barrere agreement, War during 1914 and 15, Mussolini, Italo-French relations, The Rome-berlin Axis, and the war in 1940.
Italian Forgers: The Art Market and the Weight of the Past in Modern Italy
by Carol HelstoskyItalian Forgers takes an unorthodox approach to the fascinating topic of art forgery, focusing not on art forgery per se, but on the major forgery scandals that shifted the Italian art market in response to constant, and often intense, demand for Italian objects. By focusing on power dynamics that both precipitated forgery scandals and forged Italian cultural identities, this book connects the debates and discussions about three well-known Italian forgers—Giovanni Bastianini, Icilio Joni, and Alceo Dossena—to anchor and investigate the mechanics of the Italian art market from unification through the fascist era.Carol Helstosky examines foreign accounts of transactions and Italian writings about the art market. The actions and words of Italian dealers illustrate how the Italian art and antiquities market was an undeniably modern industry, on par with tourism in terms of its contribution to the Italian economy and to understandings of Italian identity. These accounts also reveal how dealers, artists, go-betweens, guides, and restorers worked to not only meet the intense demand for Italian products but also to develop highly sophisticated business practices to maintain financial stability and respond to shifts in demand consciously (but not always conscientiously).Italian Forgers weaves a compelling narrative about the history of Italian identity, forgery, and the value of the past. As a result, Helstosky brings historical perspective to the study of art forgery and art fraud. She reveals how historical circumstances and structural imbalances of cultural power shaped the market for art and antiquities and amplified incidents of art deception and forgery scandals.
Italian Futurism and the First World War
by Selena DalySelena Daly's work is the first comprehensive study of Futurism during the First World War period. In this book, she examines the cultural, political, and military engagement of the Futurists with the war effort, both on the battlefields and on the home front. Beginning with the outbreak of war in 1914, Italian Futurism and the First World War provides vivid accounts of Futurist experiences through an analysis of previously unpublished material, including letters, diaries, and military documents as well as newspapers, magazines, and popular novels. Her focus on Futurist protagonists such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Emilio Settimelli, and lesser known figures such as Giuseppe Steiner and Ennio Valentinelli greatly extends our knowledge of the movement. Daly's timely and detailed analysis challenges long-held assumptions about Futurist activity during the war and offers new insights for both the non-specialist and specialist alike.
Italian Gardens
by Charles A. Platt“The first steps of one interested in the formal style of landscape architecture should be directed to Italy.” So wrote the great American designer Charles Platt in his introduction to his book, Italian Gardens, first published in 1894. Platt's words proved influential.Devoted solely to the topic of the Italian villa landscape, the handsomely illustrated volume quickly found an eager readership among American architects, landscape designers, and their clients. As the first publication in English on the topic, Italian Gardens appealed to a public increasingly intrigued by the question of what the new American garden might look like.Platt's book also turned a national spotlight on his own fledgling architectural career, transforming him into one of the most sought-after designers in the country. Perhaps no volume in the history of American landscape architecture has had so far-reaching an effect.The book offered far more than just specific design motifs to gardeners and architects. Elegant photographs painted a picture of a celebratory indoor/outdoor lifestyle. The text indirectly prescribed a specific relationship between the residential landscape and architecture. Platt saw the genius in the Italian concept of a garden as a series of rooms, or apartments, “where one,” he reported, “might walk about and find a place suitable to the hour of the day and feeling of the moment, and still be in that sacred portion of the globe dedicated to one's self.” American designers took Platt's observations and images to heart, and made extensive use of them.-Print ed.
Italian Goth Subculture: Kindred Creatures and Other Dark Enactments in Milan, 1982-1991 (Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music)
by Simone Tosoni Emanuela ZuccalàThis book is the first in-depth investigation of the Goth subculture in Italy, focusing in particular on the city of Milan. It grows out of a three year research project - the first in Italy of this scope on the topic - based on the life histories of two dozen participants. In light of this, Simone Tosoni and Emanuela Zuccalà propose an innovative approach to the study of spectacular subcultures: contrarily to the most common accounts of the spectacular subcultures of the 80s, this book describes the experience of subcultural belonging as plural and internally diversified. In particular, three different variations - or 'enactments' - of goth are described in-depth: the politically engaged one; the one typical of the scene of the alternative music clubs spread all over northern Italy; and the one, common in the little towns surrounding Milan (but not limited to it), where participants used to 'enact' the dark subculture alone or in small groups. Their book argues that while these three different variations of goth shared the same canon of subcultural resources (music, style, patterns of cultural consumptions), they differed under relevant points of view, like forms of socialization, stance toward political activism, identity construction processes, and even their relationship with urban space. Yet, contrarily to the stress on individual differences in 'subcultural' belonging typical of post-subcultural theorists, the Milanese variations of goth appear to have been socially shared, as socially shared were the different 'practices of enactment' of the subculture that characterized each of them.
Italian Heavy Cruisers: From Trento to Bolzano
by Maurizio Brescia Augusto de ToroA technical history of seven Italian heavy cruisers: Trento, Trieste, Bolzano, Zara, Fiume, Gorizia, Pola—a perfect companion volume to Italian Battleships.When the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 effectively banned the building of battleships, competition between the major navies concentrated on the next most powerful category, heavy cruisers limited to ten thousand tons displacement and eight-inch guns. Italy followed this trend, the first design for what became Trento and Trieste being ordered in 1924. These were the fastest of the first generation ‘Treaty’ cruisers but were very lightly armored, and the succeeding Zara class of four ships were slower but better protected. However, before the final ship of this class (Pola) had been completed, there was a return to the earlier fast, lightly protected concept with the Bolzano, although this ship also incorporated aspects of the Zara design. The political background, design history and technical features of these classes are covered in great depth in this volume. They were important ships, subject to incremental improvement so no two were identical, and model makers will appreciate the space devoted to the variations in appearance, using both description and illustration. As major units of the Italian battle fleet, they were more active than most during the war and their careers are fully detailed, including analyses of damage suffered. Tragically, they were all sunk, and the circumstance of each loss is explored. As befits a technical history, the book is thoroughly illustrated with ship and armament plans, detail drawings and color camouflage schemes, as well as an outstanding collection of photographs.
Italian Historical Rural Landscapes
by Mauro AgnolettiSustainable development and rural policies have pursued strategies where farming has been often regarded as a factor deteriorating the ecosystem. But the current economic, social and environmental problems of the Earth probably call for examples of a positive integration between human society and nature. This research work presents more than a hundred case studies where the historical relationships between man and nature have generated, not deterioration, but cultural, environmental, social and economic values. The results show that is not only the economic face of globalization that is negatively affecting the landscape, but also inappropriate environmental policies. The CBD-UNESCO program on biocultural diversity, the FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and several projects of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, as well as European rural policies acknowledge the importance of cultural values associated to landscape. This research intends to support these efforts.
Italian Hours
by Henry JamesIt is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything to it. Venice has been painted and described many thousands of times, and of all the cities of the world is the easiest to visit without going there. Open the first book and you will find a rhapsody about it; step into the first picture-dealer's and you will find three or four high-coloured "views" of it. There is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject. Every one has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of photographs. There is as little mystery about the Grand Canal as about our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as familiar as the postman's ring. It is not forbidden, however, to speak of familiar things, and I hold that for the true Venice-lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said about her certainly, but the old is better than any novelty. It would be a sad day indeed when there should be something new to say. I write these lines with the full consciousness of having no information whatever to offer. I do not pretend to enlighten the reader; I pretend only to give a fillip to his memory; and I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
Italian Humanism and Medieval Rhetoric (Variorum Collected Studies)
by Ronald G. WittThese essays are concerned with the nature of early renaissance political thought and the relationship between humanism and medieval rhetoric. One group traces the influence of medieval political thought on the rise of the modern conception of republicanism; others focus on the medieval art of letter writing and its place in the medieval cultural context; while still others analyse the often contradictory thought of the early humanist, Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406), who struggled to reconcile his classical learning with his medieval allegiances. In the collection as a whole humanism emerges as a literary movement drawing as heavily on patristic and medieval culture as on antiquity. Awareness of its various debts permits recognition of what humanism itself contributed to the development of western thought and ethics.
Italian Humanist Photography from Fascism to the Cold War
by Martina CarusoSpanning four decades of radical political and social change in Italy, this interdisciplinary study explores photography’s relationship with Italian painting, film, literature, anthropological research and international photography. Evocative and powerful, Italian social documentary photography from the 1930s to the 1960s is a rich source of cultural history, reflecting a time of dramatic change. This book shows, through a wide range of images (some published for the first time) that to fully understand the photography of this period we must take a more expansive view than scholars have applied to date, considering issues of propaganda, aesthetics, religion, national identity and international influences. By setting Italian photography against a backdrop of social documentary and giving it a distinctive place in the global history of photography, this exciting volume of original research is of interest to art historians and scholars of Italian and visual culture studies.
Italian Identity in the Kitchen, or Food and the Nation (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)
by Massimo MontanariMassimo Montanari draws readers into the far-flung story of how local and global influences came to flavor Italian identity. The fusion of ancient Roman cuisine—which consisted of bread, wine, and olives—with the barbarian diet—rooted in bread, milk, and meat—first formed the basics of modern eating across Europe. From there, Montanari highlights the importance of the Italian city in the development of gastronomic taste in the Middle Ages, the role of Arab traders in positioning the country as the supreme producers of pasta, and the nation's healthful contribution of vegetables to the fifteenth-century European diet. Italy became a receiving country with the discovery of the New World, absorbing corn, potatoes, and tomatoes into its national cuisine. As disaster dispersed Italians in the nineteenth century, new immigrant stereotypes portraying Italians as "macaroni eaters" spread. However, two world wars and globalization renewed the perception of Italy and its culture as unique in the world, and the production of food constitutes an important part of that uniqueness.
Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940
by Marcella BencivenniMaligned by modern media and often stereotyped, Italian Americans possess a vibrant, if largely forgotten, radical past. In Italian Immigrant Radical Culture, Marcella Bencivenni delves into the history of the sovversivi, a transnational generation of social rebels, and offers a fascinating portrait of their political struggle as well as their milieu, beliefs, and artistic creativity in the United States. As early as 1882, the sovversivi founded a socialist club in Brooklyn. Radical organizations then multiplied and spread across the country, from large urban cities to smaller industrial mining areas. By 1900, thirty official Italian sections of the Socialist Party along the East Coast and countless independent anarchist and revolutionary circles sprang up throughout the nation. Forming their own alternative press, institutions, and working class organizations, these groups created a vigorous movement and counterculture that constituted a significant part of the American Left until World War II. Italian Immigrant Radical Culture compellingly documents the wide spectrum of this oppositional culture and examines the many cultural and artistic forms it took, from newspapers to literature and poetry to theater and visual art. As the first cultural history of Italian American activism, it provides a richer understanding of the Italian immigrant experience while also deepening historical perceptions of radical politics and culture. See the official website of the book at:http://www.marcellabencivenni.com