Italian Studies
Philosophical Archaeology
Explores the potential for a novel philosophy of history to be uncovered by tracing the connections between Giorgio Agamben's work (theoretical practice) and contemporary art (artistic practice).
Myth and Authority
Argues that Giambattista Vico's early modern account of Roman mythology was a sophisticated attempt to present an epistemological and political critique of the aristocratic way of conceiving the world.
Orienting Italy
Explores Italian filmmakers' representations of China and the Chinese, both at home and abroad.
The Future of the World Is Open
Conversations with prominent Italian feminist thinkers Lea Melandri, Luisa Muraro, and Adriana Cavaero, as well as three essays - appearing in English for the first time - by author, journalist, and renown political figure Rossana Rossanda.
Philosophy, Mysticism, and the Political
Nine masterful essays on Dante’s Divine Comedy and his political theology by one of today’s leading Italian philosophers.
Rethinking Life
Fourteen Italian philosophers reflect on how the global experience of vulnerability and precariousness—of which the Covid-19 pandemic is but one example—compels us to rethink life and collective living.
Through the Periscope
Offers a wider approach to Italian American culture, one that stresses both its material, urban components and the creativity of its formal literary codes.
Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers
A unique portrayal of the theoretical positions of eleven Italian women thinkers who share the practice of philosophy and extend philosophical work and interests beyond the realm of the discipline strictly defined.
Luchino Visconti and the Alchemy of Adaptation
Examines the place of book-to-film adaptations by one of Italy's most famous postwar film directors.
Giallo!
Traces the giallo mystery/horror genre from its genesis in Italian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s to its contemporary place in the global cult-film canon.
Dante and the Legibility of the Universe: Facts and Narratives
Argues that the Divine Comedy dramatizes the risks and rewards of competing narratives, or different ways of reading.
The Autobiography of a Language
Explores the links between language, cultural identity, and creativity through the works of Emanuel Carnevali, one of the first Italian American authors to attain literary recognition.
Viva Voce
Firsthand perspectives on the past, present, and future of contemporary Italian philosophy.
Cleansing the Temple: Dante, Defender of the Church
Dante as protector and purifier of the Church.
From Italy to the North End
Documents the arc of the Italian American immigrant experience on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Heart and the Island
Makes the case for a distinctly Sicilian American literature.
The Transatlantic Gaze
Tracks the influence of Italian cinema on American film from the postwar period to the present.
Keeping House
Food and its preparation play an integral role in this novel of a young Italian woman struggling to find her own identity in a family of strong personalities and colorful figures.
"Favola fui": Petrarch Writes His Readers
Examines the interplay between reading and writing in the works of Petrarch and Dante.
Birth and Death of the Housewife
First English translation of Paola Masino’s Nascita e morte della massaia, her most controversial novel that provoked Fascist censorship for its critical portrayal of marriage and motherhood.
Fairy Tales
Overturns traditional views of the origins of fairy tales and documents their actual origins and transmission.
Dante and Paul's "Five Words with Understanding"
Argues there is a program of five-word utterances that imitate fallen language in Dante’s Commedia.
From Divine to Human: Dante's Circle vs. Boccaccio's Parodic Centers
In Boccacio's Decameron, Cervigni sees a parodic echo of the circles of Dante's Divine Comedy, and asks whether Bocaccio envisions the voyage of the brigata as similar to Dante the Pilgrim's journey toward the center, first the abysmal center of Lucifer, then towards the highest center, God.
Dante from Two Perspectives: The Sienese Connection
Addresses the implications of a document found in the Archivio di Stato di Siena which affirms a connection between Farinata degli Uberti, a Florentine conspicuously encountered by Dante the pilgrim in Inferno 10, and the Sienese Ghibellines with whom he and his fellow Florentine Ghibellines joined, in an alliance which produced the Sienese victory at the battle of Montaperti in 1260.
Dante the Book Glutton, or, Food for Thought from Italian Poets
Explores Dante’s love of books.
Dante and the Jewish Question
Addresses Jacoff’s own discomfort with Dante’s reiteration of the deicide charge against the Jews in Paradiso 7 and elsewhere.
Memory and Mastery
Interdisciplinary explorations into the work of one of the premier writer-survivors of the Holocaust.
Desire and Death, or Francesca and Guido Cavalcanti: Inferno 5 in Its Lyric Context
Explores the lyric context of Inferno 5.
Dante Between Philosophers and Theologians: Paradiso X - XIII
Raises the radical question of how Dante’s understanding of poetry shaped his theology, his ethics, and, more generally his sense of the organization of knowledge or encyclopedia.
Totems for Defence and Illustration of Taboo: Sites of Petrarchism in Renaissance Europe
Argues that critical comments appended to early printed editions of Petrarch’s Rime sparse inflected the reception and understanding of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry in Renaissance Europe.
Dante and Petrarch: The Earthly Paradise Revisited
Explores the nature and significance of Petrarch’s indebtedness to Dante in the Rime sparse.
Dante's Cosmos
Freccero argues that the Paradiso may be considered a medieval version of science fiction.
Giovanni Rutini
Explores how Rutini’s experimental work in sonata-allegra formal procedures played a significant role in the history of music.
Dante's Beatrice: Priest of an Androgynous God
Examines Dante’s character of Beatrice and contends that, more than simply leading Dante to God, Beatrice allows him to see a feminine side in God, humanity, and himself.
From Sicily to Elizabeth Street
For many immigrants, the move from Sicily to a New York tenement was accompanied by rapid, significant, and often surprisingly satisfactory changes in a wide variety of social relationships. Many of these changes can be traced to the influence of a changing housing environment.