The Italian Seminars, previously unpublished in English, comprises lectures W.R. Bion gave in Rome, in 1977. The volume consists of questions from the floor and Bion's fascinating and, at times, controversial answers. The lectures are divided in two: the first part was organized by the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and the second by the Via Pollaiolo Research Group. Bion's replies examine such diverse subjects as difficulties in the interaction between the therapist and the patient; music and psychoanalysis; non-verbal communication in the consulting room; and methodology in psychoanalysis.
This feminist anthology from Italy offers an enriching perspective on cinema studies. Focusing on women’s engagement with political theory and film-making, the book never loses sight of the female experience of cinema. It examines how women have chosen to represent themselves and how they have been represented, and how they deal with the cinematic apparatus, as subjects of production, objects of representation, and spectators. A variety of approaches are offered, ranging from psychoanalysis and semiology to history. With an exhaustive filmography, this anthology of chapters by eminent theorists demonstrates the central importance of recent developments in Italy for the whole spectrum of film and feminist studies.
'Rich. . . eclectic. . . a feast' Telegraph This landmark collection brings together forty writers that reflect over a hundred years of Italy's vibrant and diverse short story tradition, from the birth of the modern nation to the end of the twentieth century. Poets, journalists, visual artists, musicians, editors, critics, teachers, scientists, politicians, translators: the writers that inhabit these pages represent a dynamic cross section of Italian society, their powerful voices resonating through regional landscapes, private passions and dramatic political events. This wide-ranging selection curated by Jhumpa Lahiri includes well known authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante and Luigi Pirandello alongside many captivating new discoveries. More than a third of the stories featured in this volume have been translated into English for the first time, several of them by Lahiri herself.
After several years of silence and seclusion in Beetlecreek’s black quarter, a carnival worker named Bill Trapp befriends Johnny Johnson, a Pittsburgh teenager living with relatives in Beetlecreek. Bill is white. Johnny is black. Both are searching for acceptance, something that will give meaning to their lives. Bill tries to find it through good will in the community. Johnny finds it in the Nightriders, a local gang. David Diggs, the boy’s dispirited uncle, aspires to be an artist but has to settle for sign painting. David and Johnny’s new friendship with Bill kindles hope that their lives will get better. David’s marriage has failed; his wife’s shallow faith serves as her outlet from racial and financial oppression. David’s unhappy routine is broken by Edith Johnson’s return to Beetlecreek, but this relationship will be no better than his loveless marriage. Bill’s attempts to unify black and white children with a community picnic is a disaster. A rumor scapegoats him as a child molester, and Beetlecreek is titillated by the imagined crimes. This novel portraying race relations in a remote West Virginia town has been termed an existential classic. “It would be hard,” said The New Yorker, “to give Mr. Demby too much praise for the skill with which he has maneuvered the relationships in this book.” During the 1960s Arna Bontemps wrote, “Demby’s troubled townsfolk of the West Virginia mining region foreshadow present dilemmas. The pressing and resisting social forces in this season of our discontent and the fatal paralysis of those of us unable or unwilling to act are clearly anticipated with the dependable second sight of a true artist.” First published in 1950, Beetlecreek stands as a moving condemnation of provincialism and fundamentalism. Both a critique of racial hypocrisy and a new direction for the African American novel, it occupies fresh territory that is neither the ghetto realism of Richard Wright nor the ironic modernism of Ralph Ellison. Even after fifty years, more or less, William Demby said in 1998, “It still seems to me that Beetlecreek is about the absence of symmetry in human affairs, the imperfectability of justice the tragic inevitability of mankind’s inhumanity to mankind.”
The Italian nation-state has been defined by practices of mobility. Tourists have flowed in from the era of the Grand Tour to the present, and Italians flowed out in massive numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Italians made up the largest voluntary emigration in recorded world history. As a bridge from Africa to Europe, Italy has more recently been a destination of choice for immigrants whose tragic stories of shipwreck and confinement are often in the news. This first-of-its-kind edited volume offers a critical accounting of those histories and practices, shedding new light on modern Italy as a flashpoint for mobilities as they relate to nationalism, imperialism, globalization, and consumer, leisure, and labor practices. The book’s eight essays reveal how a country often appreciated for what seems immutable - its classical and Renaissance patrimony - has in fact been shaped by movement and transit.
The Unification of Italy in the nineteenth century was the unlikely result of a lengthy and complex process of Italian ‘revival’ (‘Risorgimento’). Few Italians supported Unification and the new rulers of Italy were unable to resolve their disputes with the Catholic Church, the local power-holders in the South and the peasantry. In this fascinating account, Martin Clark examines these problems and considers: · The economic, social and religious contexts of Unification, as well as the diplomatic and military aspects · The roles of Cavour and Garibaldi and also the wider European influences, particularly those of Britain and France · The recent historiographical shift away from uncritical celebration of the achievement of Italian unity. Did 'Italian Unification' mean anything more than traditional Piedmontese expansionism? Was it simply an aspect of European 'secularisation'? Did it involve 'state-building', or just repression? In exploring these questions and more, Martin Clark offers the ideal introductory account for anyone wishing to understand how modern Italy was born. This new edition has been revised in the light of recent research and now has a greater emphasis on the ‘losers’ of the conflict, the impact of Unification on the South, and the complexity of the political realities of the times. It has also been updated with useful additional material such as a Who’s Who and a plate section to go alongside its carefully chosen selection of original documents.
