Italy and North America: Contact, Conflict, and Exchange

Catalog description

In tackling cultural representations from epic poetry to film, we 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 Italian film and literature, they develop new perspectives on Italian and American cultural histories and question how cultural contact and exchange shape our own understanding of national identity. We consider how Italy’s diaspora has affected its conception of itself and examine 500 years of North America as artistic inspiration, as cultural and political influence, and even as a source of existential anxiety. For example, how did European discovery 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? We consider literature of immigration and travel in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as Italians documented their journeys to North America (and New York City) in poetry and prose. We 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. Finally, we explore American cultural influence throughout the increasingly globalized 20th century, as US models permeated Italian politics, film, television, music, and food, and pop singers teased teenagers who tried to “fa’ l’americano.” Throughout, we take advantage of our location in New York City to explore aspects of cultural exchange within our urban environment, including an excursion to the Italian American Museum and Little Italy.