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Italy and North America: Contact, Conflict, and Exchange, 1492-the present

Instructor: Rachel E. Love, PhD Email: rachel.e.love@nyu.edu Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow Office: 507 King Juan Carlos Center The College Core Curriculum Office hours: Tues. 9:30-11:30 am and by

appointment

Course Description

“Around 1930, when Fascism seemed to be ‘the hope for the world,’ some young Italians instead discovered through its literature America, a thoughtful and barbaric America, happy and belligerent, lascivious, fertile, heavy with the past of the whole world, and also young, innocent.”

— Cesare Pavese, Saggi letterari (1946)

This course examines cultural exchange between Italy and North America from the Renaissance to the present. In tackling cultural representations from epic poetry to film, we will piece together a transhistorical mosaic of artistic and material products of exchange and explore how Italians of different eras grappled with the North American continent, its inhabitants, and its many facets of influence. As students analyze canonical works of film and literature, they will develop new perspectives on Italian and American cultural histories. Throughout, we will question how cultural contact and exchange shape our own understanding of national identity.

We begin with an introduction to theories of how culture enacts the political concerns of the societies that produce it, and we will consider how people adapt models from other cultures to fit their own needs and context. Equipped with these analytical tools, we will examine moments of exchange from 1492 to the present and explore North America’s role as artistic inspiration, as cultural and political influence, and even as a source of existential anxiety. For example, how did European invention of a “new” continent impact Renaissance authors like Ariosto and Tasso and destabilize the center of their known world? How did American literature like Hemingway and Steinbeck offer 20th-century Italian writers new possibilities of literary expression and political resistance? How did Italian immigrants in the U.S. negotiate their hybrid identities? How did the Spaghetti Western transport Italians to an imagined American landscape? We will investigate how Fascism, war and recovery—as well as the physical presence of American soldiers on Italian soil—shifted the political and social stakes of this relationship. We will explore American cultural influence throughout the increasingly globalized 20th century, as Italians adapted American film styles, television programs, music, and food, and pop singers teased teenagers who tried to “fa’ l’americano” (“act American”). We

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will conclude with the exchange between Italy and the U.S. in the context of globalization, with discussions of food and tourism.

Course Objectives

You will gain a fuller understanding of Italian history and culture. You will learn how to analyze cultural texts and how they narrate their socio-historical moment, and in the process you will develop your capacity for critical listening, reading, thinking, and writing, as well as aesthetic and historical interpretation and evaluation. You will hone your skills conducting research and engaging with primary and secondary sources, as well as your ability to clearly express your analysis in oral and written projects. Finally, you will be able to apply your critical expertise through the completion of a final research paper.

Materials All required and supplementary reading materials will be provided digitally on NYU Classes. Each text can be found in the bibliography of this syllabus. You are welcome to purchase copies of the texts, should you desire. Full films are streaming through Kanopy (accessed through the Bobst Library catalog).

Teaching Strategies This course will have a mix of lecture and active learning exercises to better promote a lively class discussion, and as such it relies on you to help it succeed. I will provide historical context, theoretical structure, and guiding questions for each topic, so that you will feel better prepared to analyze our course materials. In addition to my introduction of themes and questions for the day, we will actively engage with primary and secondary sources through student-led presentations, frequent in-class and at-home writing exercises, and group work. These frequent activities discussing and critiquing sources will better prepare you to conduct your own research and analysis in the final project. Assessments are designed not to prove your memorization of information but to demonstrate your ability to engage with the material and articulate your own ideas about it.

Assessment Your grade for the course is composed of four elements: participation, in the form of active engagement during seminar sessions (for which attendance is an implicit requirement); discussion prompts and homework; a midterm reflection paper; and three analytical papers.

Component Due Weight Participation 10% Discussion prompts, homework, and activities 15% Midterm reflection paper (2-3 pages) Mar. 26 15% First paper (3 pages) Feb. 28 10%

Second paper (5 pages) April 4 20% Final research paper (8-10 pages) May 14 30%

! Beyond a measure of how much you speak in class, your participation grade will depend on criteria such as material preparedness, completed reading, collaborative work, and meaningful contributions to the class. Please come to class ready to engage.

o Please note: Attendance is mandatory and is part of your participation grade. More than one absence will begin to affect your participation grade. Four absences will result in failure of the course. If you will miss class to observe religious holidays, please notify me in advance.

o Please note: To better facilitate class discussion, laptops are not allowed without special permission from me. You must bring readings to class either printed or on an e-reader.

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! In addition to quizzes and periodic in-class assignments, you will complete two discussion prompts.

o Discussion prompts will facilitate our in-class conversations. You will have the opportunity to select two topics for which to prepare a one-paragraph (8 sentences), written discussion prompt. You are free to choose the focus, but it must engage with the materials assigned for that week and conclude with two discussion questions that you would like to pose to the class. They must be handed in in person on the day they are due; late assignments will not be accepted.

! Your midterm reflection paper will offer you a chance to articulate your understanding of the material so far by reviewing the main themes we have explored and examining how they have affected your own ideas and academic practice.

! You will write three main papers in this course. For the first two papers, a writing prompt will be given in advance, and you will have the opportunity to develop a short argument using specific examples from texts we have studied.

! For final research paper (8-10 pages), you will propose your own topic, conduct research, and workshop a draft with your classmates. The paper must develop a defined argument using supporting evidence. You will submit a paper proposal on April 25, which we will go over together, and we will workshop preliminary drafts in class.

Late policy: Late papers will be penalized 10% if handed in within the first 24 hours after the lecture at which they are due, and 5% for each subsequent 24 hour period after that (unless accompanied by valid documentation of illness or emergency). Plagiarism and all other forms of academic dishonesty will be treated with the greatest severity in this course. You must cite any idea, phrase, or passage that comes from an outside source. You should familiarize yourself with the New York University policy for Academic Integrity; see http://cas.nyu.edu/page/academicintegrity. NYU also has the following College and University resources:

a) The University Learning Center (ULC), which provides peer tutoring for many courses, workshops on study skills (e.g., time management or citation norms), and special programming for international students. See www.nyu.edu/ulc b) The Writing Center, which provides one-on-one consultations with Expository Writing Program faculty trained in writing pedagogy. See http://www.nyu.edu/cas/ewp/html/writing_center.html c) Bobst Library is your main resource for anything research related. The Library also offers consultations, a state-of-the-art media library, study spaces, and more. See http://www.nyu.edu/life/resources-and-services.html

Students with diverse learning styles and needs are welcome in this course. Academic accommodations are available for students with disabilities. The Moses Center website is www.nyu.edu/csd. Please contact the Moses Center for Students with Disabilities (212-998-4980 or mosescsd@nyu.edu) for further information. Students who are requesting academic accommodations are advised to reach out to the Moses Center as early as possible in the semester for assistance.

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Course Schedule Unit One: Shifting Worlds Week 1: Introduction 1/30 Week 2: The Invention of the Americas 2/6 The Discovery of America (print), Galle (ca. 1600)

Christopher Columbus, “Letter to Luis De Santangel” and “Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella” Writings (15 pp)

Amerigo Vespucci, “Mondus Novus” and “Letter of Amerigo Vespucci to a Magnificent Lord (First voyage),” Letters (32 pp)

Walter Mignolo, “Putting Americas on the Map: Cartography and the Colonization of Space,” The Darker Side of the Renaissance (22 pp)

Week 3: Poetry of Destabilized Centers 2/13 Ludovico Ariosto, selections from Cantos 6-8, Orlando furioso (18 pp)

Torquato Tasso, selections from Cantos 15-16, Gerusalemme liberata (29 pp) Jane Tylus, “Reasoning Away Colonialism’” (15 pp)

Unit Two: Italians Abroad Week 4: New Nations 2/20 Vittorio Alfieri, “L’America Libera,” (35 pp)

Giuseppe Mazzini, “Manifesto of Young Italy” and “America as a Leading Nation in the Cause of Liberty” (8 pp)

Stefania Buccini, “Italy and the New America,” The Americas in Italian Literature

and Culture, 1700-1825 (37 pp) Week 5: Immigration Part I: Fears of an Emigrant Nation 2/27 Giovanni Pascoli, “La grande proletaria si e' mossa” and critical introduction by

A. M. Baranello (16 pp) Mark Choate, selections, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (25 pp) Thomas A Guglielmo, “’No Color Barrier’: Italians, Race, and Power in the

United States,”Are Italians White?: How Race Is Made in America (15 pp) Marcella Bencivenni, “Italian American Radicalism: Old World Roots, New

World Developments,” Italian Immigrant Radical Culture (30 pp)

~First paper due in class~

Week 6: Immigration Part II: Experiences in the U.S. 3/5 Rose Breci oral history interview

Jacob Riis, “The Italian in New York,” How the Other Half Lives (7 pgs) Pietro Di Donato, “Tenement,” Christ in Concrete (31 pp)

John Fante, selections, Wait Until Spring, Bandini (23 pp)

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~Class visit to the Tenement Museum~

Unit Three: Fascism Week 7: Fascism, Gender, and the United States 3/12 Newsreels, "Benito Mussolini is greeted by 50,000 Italian Women" and “Fascist

women parade at the Piazza Veneaia in Rome, Italy" Gaetano Salvemini, “Do Italian Women Obey Mussolini?” (2 pp) Victoria de Grazia, “Nationalising Women: The Competition Between Fascist

and Commercial Cultural Models in Mussolini’s Italy” and “Going Out” (54 pp)

David Schmitz, Ch. 3, The United States and Fascist Italy (21pp) 3/19 ~No Class/Spring Break~ Week 8: American Literature as Resistance 3/26 Italo Calvino, “Hemingway and Us” (7 pp)

Cesare Pavese, “Yesterday and Today” (4 pp) Elio Vittorini, “American Literature: Its Origins and Present State” and “Notes on

American Writers” (8 pp) Lawrence G. Smith, Ch. 7 “The Peach of the World,” Cesare Pavese and America

(46 pp) Charles Leavitt, “Impegno nero: Italian intellectuals and the African-American

struggle” (27 pp)

~Midterm reflection due in class~ Unit Four: World War II and Occupation Week 9: World War II 4/2 Why We Fight, I, Prelude to War (film) (1942)

Cavallero, Jonathan James. “Redefining Italianità: The Difference Between

Mussolini, Italy, Germany, and Japan in Frank Capra’s‘ Why We Fight’” (12 pp)

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “The Wars of Fascism,” Fascist Modernities (31 pp) John Diggins, selections, Ch. 13-14, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America

(29 pp)

Week 10: Race and the American Occupation 4/9 Paisà (film), Rosellini

Norman Lewis, Naples ’44 (21 pp) Curzio Malaparte, Ch. 1, “The Plague,” The Skin (34pp) Walter Francis White, A Rising Wind (5 pp) ~Second paper due in class~

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Unit Five: “Americanization” of Italy Week 11: Whiskey, Soda, Rock and Economic Boom 4/16 1948 election posters Women in printed advertisements

Stephen Gundle, “The Americanization of Daily Life” and “Feminine Beauty,

National Identity and Political Conflict in Postwar Italy” (47 pp) John L. Harper, “Introduction and Overview,” America and the Reconstruction of

Italy, 1945-1948 (21 pp) Jessica Harris, “‘In America è vietato essere brutte’: Advertising American

Beauty in the Italian Women’s Magazine Annabella, 1945-1965” (20 pp)

Week 12: Imagining America: Travel Writing and Spaghetti Cinema 4/23 A Fistful of Dollars (film) (1964) Guido Piovene, selections, De America (12 pp)

Fernanda Pivano, “Women and Independence,” America Red and Black (11 pp) Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Civil War,” Heretical Empiricism (7 pp) Ara Merjian, “Everything is about to begin” (7 pp) Austin Fisher, Ch. 1 “Imagining America: US Influence and American Mythology in Post-War Italy,” Radical Frontiers (32 pp)

~Final paper proposal due in class~

Unit Six: Italian Culture on the World Stage Week 13: Musical Exchange 4/30 Vi parlo dell’America (album), Marini

“Tu vuò fa’ l’americano” (song), Carosone “Fight da Faida,” (song), Frankie Hi NRG Rachel E. Love, “Talking Italian blues: Roberto Leydi, Giovanna Marini and

American Influence in the Italian folk revival, 1954–66” (18 pp) Franco Minganti, “Jukebox Boys: Postwar Italian Music and the Culture of

Covering” (17 pp) Joseph Sciorra, “Hip Hop from Italy and the Diaspora” (14 pp)

Week 14: Pizza, Coffee, and Tourism 5/7 Robert Davis and Garry Marvin, Chapter 5, “Contested Ground,” Venice, the

Tourist Maze (25 pp) Carol Helstosky, Ch. 1, “History on a Plate” Pizza: A Global History (27 pp) Jonathan Morris, “The Espresso Menu,” Coffee (16pp) ~Final paper workshop in class~

~Final paper due May 14~

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Preliminary Bibliography Augias, Corrado. 2014. The Secrets of Italy: people, places, and hidden histories. New York: Rizzoli

International. Baranello, A. M. 2011. “Giovanni Pascoli's 'La grande proletaria si e' mossa': A Translation and

Critical Introduction.” California Italian Studies, 2(1). Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. 2001. Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 2001.

Bencivenni, Marcella. 2011. Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940. New York: New York University Press.

Cavallero, Jonathan James. “Redefining Italianità: The Difference Between Mussolini, Italy, Germany, and Japan in Frank Capra’s‘ Why We Fight.’” Italian Americana 22, no. 1 (2004): 5–16.

Chang, Natasha V. 2015. The Crisis-Woman: Body Politics and the Modern Woman in Fascist

Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Choate, Mark I. 2008. Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press. Columbus, Christopher. 1802. Writings of Christopher Columbus, Descriptive of the Discovery and

Occupation of the New World. New York: C.L. Webster & Co. Davis, Robert C. and Garry R. Marvin. 2004. Venice, the Tourist Maze: A Cultural Critique of the

World’s Most Touristed City. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

De Grazia, Victoria. 1992. How fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945. Berkeley: University of California Press.

De Grazia, Victoria, editor. 1996. The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical

Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Di Donato, Pietro. 1939. Christ in Concrete. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Dickie, John. 2007. Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food. London: Sceptre. Diggins, John P. 1972. Mussolini and Fascism: the View from America. Princeton: Princeton

University Press. Diner, Hasia R. 2009. Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of

Migration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Fante, John. 1989. Wait until Spring, Bandini. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press. Fiori, Umberto. “Rock Music and Politics in Italy.” Popular Music 4 (January 1984): 261-277. Fisher, Austin. 2011. Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence and Popular Italian

Cinema. London: I. B. Tauris & Company. Frasca, Simona. 2014. Italian Birds of Passage: the diaspora of Neapolitan musicians in New York. New

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York: Palgrave Macmillan. Fuchs, Barbara. 2001. Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities.

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Gabaccia, Donna R. 2000. Italy’s Many Diasporas. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Guglielmo, Thomas A. 2003. “’No Color Barrier’: Italians, Race, and Power in the United States”

in Are Italians White?: How Race Is Made in America, edited by Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno. New York: Routledge.

Gundle, Stephen. 1996. “The Americanization of Daily Life: Television and Consumerism in

Italy in the 1950s.” Italian History and Culture, 2: 11-39.

–––––. 1999. “Feminine Beauty, National Identity and Political Conflict in Postwar Italy, 1945- 1954.” Contemporary European History 8, no. 3: 359–78.

Harper, John L. 1986. America and the Reconstruction of Italy, 1945-1948. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Harris, Jessica L. 2017. “‘In America è vietato essere brutte’: Advertising American Beauty in

the Italian Women’s Magazine Annabella, 1945-1965.” Modern Italy : Journal of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy; Abingdon 22, no. 1: 35–53.

Helstosky, Carol. 2008. Pizza: A Global History. London: Reaktion. Holmes, Richard. 1998. “The Italian Job: Five Armies in Italy,” A Time to Kill: The

Soldier’s Experience of War in the West, eds. Paul Addison and Angus Calder. London: Pimlico.

Jeannet, Angela M. 1977. New World Journeys: Contemporary Italian Writers and the Experience of

America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Leavitt, Charles L. 2013. “Impegno nero: Italian intellectuals and the African-American

struggle.” California Italian Studies, 4 (2). Leopardi, Giacomo. 2003. Selected Poems, with excerpts from the poet’s journals, letters, and notes.

Edited by Anne Paolucci. Translated by Thomas G. Bergin and Anne Paolucci. Smyrna, DE: Griffon House.

Lewis, Norman. 2005. Naples ’44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy. New York: Carroll and

Graf Publishers. Malaparte, Curzio. 2013. The Skin. Translated by David Moore. New York: New York Review

Books. Mazzini, Giuseppe. 2009. A Cosmopolitanism of Nations: Giuseppe Mazzini's Writings on

Democracy, Nation Building, and International Relations. Edited by Stefano Recchia and Nadia Urbinati. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Mignolo, Walter. 2003. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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Minganti, Franco. 2000. “Jukebox Boys: Postwar Italian Music and the Culture of Covering.” In Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan. Edited by H. Fehrenbach and U. G. Poiger. New York: Berghahn Books.

Merjian, Ara. 2016. “Everything is About to Begin.” Art in America. Moe, Nelson. 1997. “Naples ’44/Tammurriata Nera.” Italy and America 1943-44: Italian, American

and Italian American Experiences of the Liberation of the Italian Mezzogiorno. Naples: La Città del Sole.

Morris, Jonathan. 2013. “The Espresso Menu.” In Coffee: a comprehensive guide to the bean, the

beverage, and the industry, edited by Robert W. Thurston, Jonathan Morris and Shawn Steiman, 262–278. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. 1988. Heretical Empiricism, ed. by Louise K. Barnett. Translated by Ben

Lawton and Louise K Barnett. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Patriarca, Silvana. 2010. Italian Vices: nation and character from the Risorgimento to the Republic.

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Platt, Alan A. and Robert Leonardi. “American Foreign Policy and the Postwar Italian Left.”

Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 93, No. 2 (Summer, 1978): 197-215. Portelli, Alessandro. 2005. “Between Rome, Harlem, and Harlan.” In White Scholars/African

American Texts, ed. Lisa Long. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Recchia, Stefano, and Nadia Urbinati, eds. 2009. A Cosmopolitanism of Nations: Giuseppe Mazzini's

Writings on Democracy, Nation Building, and International Relations. Princeton University Press.

Riis, Jacob. 1971. How the Other Half Lives. New York: Dover Publications. Roeck, Bernd. 2009. Florence 1900: The Quest for Arcadia. Translated by Stewart Spencer. New

Haven and London: Yale University Press. Said, Edward. 1994. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Schmitz, David F. 1988. The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922–1940. Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press. Sciorra, Joseph. 2002. “Hip Hop from Italy and the Diaspora: A Report from the 41st Parallel.”

Altreitalie 24 (January-June): 1-14. Smith, Lawrence G. 2008. Cesare Pavese and America: Life, Love, and Literature. Amherst:

University of Massachusetts Press. Taddei, Ezio. 1971. Hard as Stone. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press. Tylus, Jane. 1993. “Reasoning Away Colonialism: Tasso and the Production of the

‘Gerusalemme Liberata.’” South Central Review 10, no. 2: 100-114. Vespucci, Amerigo. 1992. Letters from a New World: Amerigo Vespucci’s Discovery of America. New

York: Marsilio.

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Vespucci, Amerigo. 2010. The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci and Other Documents Illustrative of His

Career. Edited by Clements R. Markham. Farnham, England: Ashgate. White, Walter Francis. 1945. A Rising Wind: A Report on the Negro Soldier in the European Theater of

War. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran.