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ITALIAN MOBILITIES

co-edited by Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Stephanie Malia Hom

 

Routledge, 2016

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.

CONTENTS

 

Foreword, Mimi Sheller

 

Introduction, Ruth Ben-Ghiat & Stephanie Malia Hom

 

1. Beyond the Italies: Italy as a Mobile Subject?, Pamela Ballinger

 

2. Italian Mobilities and Circulating Diasporas in Neoliberal Times, Nicholas Harney

 

3. Contact, Contagion, Immunization. Gianni Amelio’s Lamerica (1994), Rhiannon Noel Welch

 

4. Becoming Ospite: Hospitality and Mobility at the Center of Temporary Permanence, Stephanie Malia Hom

 

5. Italian Mobilities and the Demos, Guido Tintori

 

6. Migrating to the Colonies and Building the Myth of ‘Italiani brava gente’: The Rise, Demise, and Legacy of Italian Settler Colonialism, Francesca Locatelli

 

7. Imagining Lampedusa, Áine O’Healy

 

8. Coasts, Blockades, and the Free Movement of People, David Forgacs

 

 

Mobilities Italy Colonialism Globalization Immigration

 

Italian Mobilities Book Launch

NYU, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, November 2015

 

Buy it now on Amazon or Routledge.

 

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