Interpreting Urban Spaces in Italian Cultures

Made up of both material and symbolic elements, the urban space is always dynamic and transitional; it brings together or separates the past and the present, the public and the private, the center and the periphery. The present volume focuses on the interaction between the social processes and spatial forms that shape the identity of Italian cities.

Andrea Scapolo, is an Associate Professor of Italian at Kennesaw State University. His research focuses on drama-based pedagogy, the theater of Dario Fo and Franca Rame and the reception of Gramsci in post-war Italy. Angela Porcarelli, is a Associate Teaching Professor in Italian at Emory University. Her research focuses on Medieval and Renaissance literature, theories and literary expressions of comedy, Modern Italian literature and Italian cinema. April D. Weintritt, PhD in Italian Studies, is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of French and Italian and Director of the Italian Language Program at The Ohio State University. She specializes in intercultural learning in world language pedagogy and research focused on the lives and representations of culinary professionals in early modern Italian literature, theater, and society. Within the early modern sphere, her research explores the food trade and the identity of its workers within the context of growing urban spaces and in conjunction with historical archives and the visual arts of the period. Matthew Knox Averett is an Associate Professor of Art History at Creighton University. He took his PhD in Art History and Archaeology at the University of Missouri. He specializes in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture, with a focus on the urban development of Early-Modern Rome. Lucia Gemmani is a Lecturer at The University of Iowa. She completed her Ph.D. in Italian at Indiana University in July 2018. Her main research interest is the literature and culture of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque and in particular the interconnection between literature, music, and theater. Isabella Cecchini received a Ph.D. in Economic and Social History at Bocconi University, Milan. She is presently a researcher at the Institute of History of Mediterranean Europe (ISEM), at the National Research Council of Italy. Her research focuses on practices and institutions that structure early modern commerce, the role of international merchants in credit networks, their activity, and the role of citizenship in promoting commerce in early modern Venice. Abbey Hafer is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Emory University where she received her MA in Art History. She specializes in Italian Baroque art, focusing on architecture and architectural printmaking. Her interests include architects’ books, the early modern publishing industry, architectural education, and the intersections between ancient and early modern art and urban planning in Rome. Julianne VanWagenen completed her Ph.D. in Italian Studies at Harvard University in 2017. She has since held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Michigan and Harvard University as well as lectureships at the University of Southern California and at the Institute of World Literatures and Cultures at Tsinghua University. You can find her articles in Italica, Forum Italicum, Gradiva: The International Journal of Poetry, and the South Central Review. Diana Garvin is an Assistant Professor of Italian with a specialty in Mediter_x0002_ranean Studies at the University of Oregon. Her research examines the history of everyday life across Fascist Italy and Italian East Africa. In her book, Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women’s Food Work, she uses food as a lens to examine daily negotiations of power between women and the Fascist state. Garvin often writes articles on everyday life under Italian Fascism for journals like Critical Inquiry, Journal of Modern European History, Journal of Modern Italian History, Modern Italy, Annali d’italianistica, Design Issues, Food and Foodways, gender/sexuality/italy and Signs. Brian Tholl is an independent scholar. He received his Ph.D. in Italian from Rutgers University, where he focused on the confino di polizia in fascist Italy and the politics of exile. Danila Cannamela is an Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at Colby College. She is the author of The Quiet Avant-Garde: Crepuscular Poetry and the Twilight of Modern Humanism (2019). Her current project is an edited collection, Italian Trans Geographies, which retraces narratives of trans people within the Italian peninsula and along diasporic routes. Achille Castaldo (PhD Duke University 2019) is Assistant Professor of Italian in the Department of French and Italian at Emory University. His work investigates the relationships between violence, ideology, and political struggles in literature and cinema. His articles have recently appeared in Italian Studies, Italica, and Studies in French Cinema. Ellen Patat, Ph.D., is adjunct instructor at the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy), where she teaches English Language and Linguistics, at Università degli Studi dell’Insubria (Italy), Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, and SSML ＂P.M. Loria,＂ where she teaches ESP, Advanced English and Phonology. Her main areas of interest are: Comparative Literatures, especially modern and contemporary travel literature, EAP, ESP, and Language Teaching. She also works as a freelance translator. Samantha Gillen is a Lecturer at the University of Georgia where she teaches Italian language and culture. She received her Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2022. Her research is on twentieth-century culture and society, from Futurism to the postwar economic boom. Her dissertation, ＂Narrating the Industrial Space: Intellectuals and the Italian Economic boom,＂ explores literary representations of industrialization during the 1950s and 1960s through the texts of Calvino, Bianciardi, Volponi, and Ottieri. Samantha is a co-collaborator of the pedagogical collection PRIMA, which introduces Italian students to authentic, digital materials to diversify the classroom, and edits for the annual, online journal gender/sexuality/italy.