Italian Contributions

The year has been marked by the publication of a number of significant collections of critical essays. The result of the lively activity and exchanges among individual scholars and research groups at a national and international level, these collections exemplify the variety of interests and methodological approaches of American Studies specialists in Italy. Scholars continue to privilege the study of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the engagement with ethnic American literatures and the transatlantic intellectual networks between Italian and American writers remains pronounced. Scholars of American Studies are active also as editors of translations of both classic and recently rediscovered literary works that offer Italian readers a broader and more comprehensive sense of the richness of American literature.

a. Essay Collections

Ambassadors: American Studies in a Changing World (Rapallo: Azienda Grafica Busco; published as issue 14 of Quaderni di Palazzo Serra) offers the proceedings of the 17th International Conference of the Italian Association for North American Studies (AISNA), which took place in Rome in 2003. As editors Massimo Bacigalupo (who at the time was president of AISNA) and Gregory Dowling write in the foreword, the title of the conference “seemed to cover the happy occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of AISNA, while hinting at . . . the centenary of the publication of Henry James’s The Ambassadors.” This large and wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection of essays focuses on literature, history, and cultural studies, and I will cite the titles of several contributions to give a sense of the variety of topics and approaches.

The volume opens with historian Tiziano Bonazzi’s essay on the changing relationship between the European Union and the United States, “One Civilization, Divisible: Studying the United States from Within the West” (pp. 7–18), a sociopolitical and cultural analysis that connects with other contributions focusing on democracy in America, among them Raffaella Baritono, “Creating Democracy: Women Reformers and the Debate on Democracy (1900–1930)” (pp. 489–99); Ferdinando Fasce, “Esportare la democrazia? America’s Town Meeting of the Air alla scoperta del mondo nel secondo dopoguerra” (pp. 500–511); and Elisabetta Vezzosi, “Prima e dopo la riforma del welfare: Retorica e pratica della democrazia” (pp. 512–20). The 30th anniversary of AISNA also stimulated several reappraisals of the tradition of American Studies in Italy (Anna Maria Martellone, “Italian Historians and the History of the United States: A Difficult Journey,” pp. 38–51; Stefania Piccinato, “The Beginning of African American Studies in Italy,” pp. 52–61; Massimo Bacigalupo, “Pound/Izzo,” pp. 63–80; Renzo S. Crivelli, “Rolando Anzilotti e la nascita degli studi americani in Italia,” pp. 81–90; Gabriella Morisco, “Glauco Cambon’s Craft of Reading,” pp. 91–97; Fedora Giordano, “Elémire Zolla americanista,” pp. 98–110; and Francesco Pontuale, “In Their Own Terms: Italian Histories of American Literature,” pp. 111–19) as well as essays on professional and pedagogical issues connected with the increasing number of study-abroad programs (Giovanna Franci, “Roaming International Ambassadors: The Impact of Faculty and Student Exchange in a Globalized World,” pp. 376–82; and Franco Minganti, “On Teaching ‘Italian Cultural Studies’ for English-Speaking Student Communities,” pp. 383–91). The volume reveals the continuing interest in Ethnic American literatures (Marina De Chiara, “Fusco and Gómez-Peña: The Couple in the Cage,” pp. 189–94; Giorgio Mariani, “Reversing the Captivity Narrative: James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk,” pp. 214–19; Elèna Mortara, “The Last Transatlantic Ambassador of American Literature? Philip Roth (Un)masked as Ziff by Alan Lelchuk,” pp. 220–31; Salvatore Proietti, “The Middle Passage and the Remaking of the World: Du Bois and After,” pp. 232–39; Annalucia Accardo, “Grace Paley: ‘Passings’ Between African American and Jewish Cultural Paradigms,” pp. 480–87) alongside the study of canonical authors and genres (William Boelhower, “Fundamental Relations in Autobiographical Practice,” pp. 174–81; Felice De Cusatis, “Two Acts of the Same Play: Fiction and Reality in Susan Sontag’s In America: A Novel,” pp. 195–200; Sonia Di Loreto, “Pirates and Ambassadors: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in Europe,” pp. 201–06; Giuseppe Lombardo, “Herman Melville’s Transatlantic Negotiations: Israel Potter as an Expatriate Prototype,” pp...