Runner Up Winner of the Edinburgh Gadda Prize - Established Scholars, Cultural Studies Category Winner of the American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize (20th & 21st Centuries) Honorable Mention for the Howard R. Marraro Prize By linking Italy’s long history of emigration to all continents in the world, contemporary transnational migrations directed toward it, as well as the country’s colonial legacies, Fiore’s book poses Italy as a unique laboratory to rethink national belonging at large in our era of massive demographic mobility. Through an interdisciplinary cultural approach, the book finds traces of globalization in a past that may hold interesting lessons about inclusiveness for the present. Fiore rethinks Italy’s formation and development on a transnational map through cultural analysis of travel, living, and work spaces as depicted in literary, filmic, and musical texts. By demonstrating how immigration in Italy today is preoccupied by its past emigration and colonialism, the book stresses commonalities and dispels preoccupations.

Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction. All at One Point: The Un/likely Connections between Italy's Emigration, Immigration and (Post- )Colonialism -- Part I. Waters: Migrant Voyages and Ships from/to Italy -- Aperture I: An Osean of Pre-Occupation and Possibilities: The Show L'orda -- Chapter 1. Crossing the Atlantic to Meet the Nation: The Emigration Ship in Mignonette's Songs and Crialese's Nuovomondo -- Chapter 2. Overlapping Mediterranean Routes in Marra's Sailing Home, -- Ragusa's The Skin Between Us, and Tekle's Libera -- Part II. Houses: Multi-Ethnic Residential Spaces as Living Archives of Pre-Occupation and Invention -- Aperture II: A Multi-Cultural Project in a National Square: The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio -- Chapter 3. Displaced Italies and Immigrant "Delinquent" Spaces in Pariani's Argentinian Conventillos and Lakhous' Roman Palazzo -- Chapter 4. Writing the Pasta Factory and the Boarding House as Trans-National Homes: Public and Private Acts in Melliti's Pantanella and Mazzucco's Vita -- Part III. Workplaces: A Creative Re-Occupation of Labor Spaces against Exploitation -- Aperture III: Labor on the Move: Rodari's Construction Workers and Kuruvilla's Babysitter -- Chapter 5. Edification between Nation and Migration in Cavanna's Les Ritals and Adascalitei's "Il giorno di San Nicola"--Chapter 6: The Circular Routes of Colonial and Post-Colonial Homecare: Però's and Ciaravino's Alexandria and Ghermandi's "The Story of Woizero Bekelech and Signor Antonio" -- Conclusions. Italy as an Imagi-Nation Laboratory: The Citizenship Law between In and Outbound Flows

This book examines the meaning of home through the investigation of a series of public and private spaces recurrent in Italian postcolonial literature. The chapters, by respectively considering Termini train station in Rome, phone centres, the condominium, and the private spaces of the bathroom and the bedroom, investigate how migrant characters inhabit those places and turn them into familiar spaces of belonging. Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature suggests “home spaces” as a possible lens to examine these specific places and a series of practices enacted by their inhabitants in order to feel at home. Drawing on a wide array of sources, this book focuses on the role played by memory in creating transnational connections between present and past locations and on how these connections shape migrants’ sense of self and migrants’ identity.

It historicizes the contemporary discussion of urbanism, highlighting the local and global breadth of the city landscape. This interdisciplinary collection examines how the city develops in the interactions of space and imagination. The essays focus on issues such as street design in Vienna, the motion picture industry in Los Angeles, architecture in Marseilles and Algiers, and the kaleidoscopic paradox of post-apartheid Johannesburg. They explore the nature of spatial politics, examining the disparate worlds of eighteenth-century Baghdad, nineteenth-century Morelia. They also show the meaning of everyday spaces to urban life, illuminating issues such as crime in metropolitan London, youth culture in Dakar, "memory projects" in Tokyo, and Bombay cinema.

Transnational Italian Studies is specifically targeted at a student audience and is designed to be used as a key text when approaching the disciplinary field of Italian studies. It allows the study of Italian culture to be construed and practised not simply as the inquiry into a national tradition but as the study of the interaction of cultural practices both within Italy itself and in those parts of the world that have witnessed the extent of Italian mobility. The text argues that Italian culture needs to be considered in a transnational/transcultural perspective and that an understanding of linguistic and cultural translation underlies all approaches to the study of Italian culture in a global context. Contributions deploy a range of methodological approaches to understand and illustrate how language operates, how culture inhabits and constitutes public and private space, how notions of time operate within people’s lives, and the multiple ways in which people experience a sense of personhood. Chapters stretch from the medieval period to the present and demonstrate how transnational Italian culture can be critically addressed through the examination of carefully chosen examples. Contributors: Alessandra Diazzi, Andrea Rizzi, Barbara Spadaro, Charles Burdett, Clorinda Donato, David Bowe, Derek Duncan, Donna Gabaccia, Eugenia Paulicelli, Fabio Camilletti, Giuliana Muscio, Jennifer Burns, Loredana Polezzi, Marco Santello, Monica Jansen, Naomi Wells, Nathalie Hester, Serena Bassi, Stefania Tufi, Teresa Fiore and Tristan Kay.

“A rich array of perspectives on the creative work of the eccentric immigrant laborer who created one of the most mysterious landmarks of Los Angeles.” —Donna Gabaccia, Professor of History, University of Minnesota The Watts Towers, wondrous objects of art and architecture, were created over the course of three decades by a determined, single-minded artist, Sabato Rodia, an Italian immigrant laborer who wanted to do “something big.” Now a National Historic Landmark and internationally renowned destination, the Watts Towers in Los Angeles are both a personal artistic expression and a collective symbol of Nuestro Pueblo—Our Town/Our People. Featuring fresh and innovative examinations, Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts revisits the man and his towers. In 1919, Rodia purchased a triangular plot of land in a multiethnic, working-class, semi-rural district. He set to work on an unusual building project in his own yard. By night, Rodia dreamed and excogitated, and by day he built. He experimented with form, color, texture, cement mixtures, and construction techniques. He built, tore down, and rebuilt. As an artist completely possessed by his work, he was often derided as an incomprehensible crazy man. Providing a multifaceted, holistic understanding of Rodia, the towers, and the cultural/social/physical environment within which the towers and their maker can be understood, this book compiles essays from twenty authors, offering perspectives from the arts, the communities involved in the preservation and interpretation of the towers, and the academy. Most of the contributions originated at two interdisciplinary conferences held in Los Angeles and in Italy, and the collection as a whole is a well-rounded tribute to one man’s tenacious labor of love. A portion of royalties will go to support the work of the Watts Towers Arts Center.

This book presents a global perspective on the political agency of arts in place. International and leading scholars and artists themselves present critical theory and practice of contemporary art as a politicised force. This book extends thinking on contemporary arts practices in the urban and political context of protest and social resilience and offers the prism of a ‘critical artscape’ in which to view the urgent interaction of arts and the urban politic.