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Conference Presentations by Sabrina Vellucci
Eye-Centricity and the Visual Cultures of Italy and Its Diaspora, 2019
This is the preliminary program for the conference "Eye-centricity and the Visual Cultures of Ita... more This is the preliminary program for the conference "Eye-centricity and the Visual Cultures of Italy and its Diaspora" held April 26-27, 2019 at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in New York City.
This interdisciplinary conference proposes to explore the visual cultures Italians have created, consumed, and been the subject of from early modernity to the contemporary "post-text" era. Italians-including inhabitants of the nation-state, members of the diaspora, and former colonial subjects-have been conceptualized, rendered, and understood to a large degree by the visual. Landscapes (e.g., Roman ruins, the "old neighborhood"), individuals (e.g., the picturesque contadina, the criminalized immigrant), objects (e.g., fascist architecture in Asmara, pizza), and cultural concepts (e.g., bella fi gura, the evil eye) have been the stuff of visual arts, media, advertisement, tourism, and vernacular renderings concerning Italy's histories and identities within and beyond the country's geopolitical boundaries. These and other visual frames are didactic modes by which tropes of Italy and Italians are promoted and consumed, contested and reimagined. Photograph courtesy of Laura E. Ruberto.
Papers by Sabrina Vellucci
Let us renounce the effort to reconcile these two irreconcilable things-art and young girls. Geor... more Let us renounce the effort to reconcile these two irreconcilable things-art and young girls. George Moore, Literature at Nurse, or Circulating Morals Il "pianeta delle ragazzine" è un pianeta roccioso, aguzzo, con vasti deserti. Antonio Faeti, Ronja e le altre Nonostante le dichiarazioni d'intento degli autori, che spesso nelle prefazioni defi-nivano i loro romanzi destinati "ai fanciulli e alle fanciulle", negli anni successivi alla Guerra civile si afferma negli Stati Uniti una letteratura per adolescenti in cui le prerogative di gender diventano costitutive della definizione del genere letterario stesso. 1 Tale stretta relazione, eredità dell'Inghilterra vittoriana, era effetto della no-ta tendenza a dividere i sessi in "sfere separate". Di conseguenza, laddove si repu-tava opportuno introdurre i ragazzi alle cose del mondo, alle fanciulle si prescrive-va protezione da ogni ombra che potesse corromperne l'innocenza. In base a tale teoria,...
Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance
Review of: The History of American Literature on Film, Thomas Leitch (2019) New York and London: ... more Review of: The History of American Literature on Film, Thomas Leitch (2019) New York and London: Bloomsbury, 448 pp., ISBN 978-1-6289-2373-5, h/bk, £ 120.00
The work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo confuses conventional notions that place the verbal and th... more The work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo confuses conventional notions that place the verbal and the visual in two independent categories. Such hybridity invites a reading of Kahlo's life and work through different media, combining written text and image. In this article I examine two major interpretations of the artist's life: Frida. A Biography of Frida Kahlo (1983) by art critic Hayden Herrera and Frida (2002), a film directed by Julie Taymor, based on Herrera's canonical biography. Taking into account the specificities of each text and considering film adaptation as both a multilevel relationship and a dialogic process, I look at the ways in which these works elicit empathy in the reader/viewer. In particular, I dwell on the gaze articulated on the screen, as it triangulates with that of Kahlo's biographer and with the artist's own version(s) of herself. Diverging from the construction of Kahlo as the archetypal suffering woman artist, the film re-frames Herrera's biography through a series of devices that disrupt the narrative discourse and foreground the subjectivity inherent in the biopic. Such interruptions, stressing the constructed nature of the film's interpretation of Frida's story, deconstruct the processes of history and biography, and foreground the film's own narrative as an act of revision.
Humanities research, 2021
Henry James’s self-allusions in “Pandora” have been read as a rewriting of his former treatment o... more Henry James’s self-allusions in “Pandora” have been read as a rewriting of his former treatment of the “American Girl abroad” in the comic mode. The hints at “a Tauchnitz novel by an American author” (90) establish an ironical reversal of the failures of understanding which had led to tragedy in “Daisy Miller.” Yet the ironies in “Pandora” are multi-layered, often self-reflexive, and can be further interpreted in the light of James’s controversial adaptation of his famous novella for the stage. In this framework, well-known Jamesian topoi appear both as a (self-)parody and a metaliterary dialogue James engages with his readers and critics. The author’s personal implication in this “American” story is further testified by his Notebooks, in which James states his intention to write about his friends Henry and “Clover” Adams. Indeed, “Pandora”’s multi-layered intertextuality includes undeclared references to Adams’s anonymously published novel, Democracy, a semi-satirical account of U....
Focusing on representative narratives by Paul Bowles, the essay shows how the subject of travel i... more Focusing on representative narratives by Paul Bowles, the essay shows how the subject of travel is strictly related to the issue of language and communication between different cultures. An expatriate writer and indefatigable traveler, Bowles developed a radical critique of American culture, in spite of a vision that was not immune to the influence of orientalism. Such a critique was also shaped by his interest in the Maghrebi dialect and his use of untranslated Arab words.
Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, 2020
Review of: The History of American Literature on Film, Thomas Leitch (2019) New York and London: ... more Review of: The History of American Literature on Film, Thomas Leitch (2019) New York and London: Bloomsbury, 448 pp., ISBN 978-1-6289-2373-5, h/bk, £ 120.00
In their ongoing exploration of issues related to race and social justice, independent filmmakers... more In their ongoing exploration of issues related to race and social justice, independent filmmakers Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno have often focused on US cities and/or particular inner-city areas. The documentary Protecting New Orleans/Saving Venice (2006) stands out among their works for its emphasis on the geo-cultural links between America and Europe—for connecting the city of New Orleans and the rest of the Mississippi Delta to the world beyond the geographic and political borders of the US. This article examines the short film’s investigation into the causes and consequences of hurricane Katrina in light of Anil Narine’s notion of “eco-trauma cinema” (2014) and focuses on the transnational dimension of the environmental issues at stake. By connecting local struggles in two separate continents, Protecting New Orleans/Saving Venice promotes affective alliances that reach from the local to the global and envisages shifting conceptions of US national consciousness and belonging. With...
Eye-Centricity and the Visual Cultures of Italy and Its Diaspora, 2019
This is the preliminary program for the conference "Eye-centricity and the Visual Cultures of Ita... more This is the preliminary program for the conference "Eye-centricity and the Visual Cultures of Italy and its Diaspora" held April 26-27, 2019 at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in New York City.
This interdisciplinary conference proposes to explore the visual cultures Italians have created, consumed, and been the subject of from early modernity to the contemporary "post-text" era. Italians-including inhabitants of the nation-state, members of the diaspora, and former colonial subjects-have been conceptualized, rendered, and understood to a large degree by the visual. Landscapes (e.g., Roman ruins, the "old neighborhood"), individuals (e.g., the picturesque contadina, the criminalized immigrant), objects (e.g., fascist architecture in Asmara, pizza), and cultural concepts (e.g., bella fi gura, the evil eye) have been the stuff of visual arts, media, advertisement, tourism, and vernacular renderings concerning Italy's histories and identities within and beyond the country's geopolitical boundaries. These and other visual frames are didactic modes by which tropes of Italy and Italians are promoted and consumed, contested and reimagined. Photograph courtesy of Laura E. Ruberto.
Let us renounce the effort to reconcile these two irreconcilable things-art and young girls. Geor... more Let us renounce the effort to reconcile these two irreconcilable things-art and young girls. George Moore, Literature at Nurse, or Circulating Morals Il "pianeta delle ragazzine" è un pianeta roccioso, aguzzo, con vasti deserti. Antonio Faeti, Ronja e le altre Nonostante le dichiarazioni d'intento degli autori, che spesso nelle prefazioni defi-nivano i loro romanzi destinati "ai fanciulli e alle fanciulle", negli anni successivi alla Guerra civile si afferma negli Stati Uniti una letteratura per adolescenti in cui le prerogative di gender diventano costitutive della definizione del genere letterario stesso. 1 Tale stretta relazione, eredità dell'Inghilterra vittoriana, era effetto della no-ta tendenza a dividere i sessi in "sfere separate". Di conseguenza, laddove si repu-tava opportuno introdurre i ragazzi alle cose del mondo, alle fanciulle si prescrive-va protezione da ogni ombra che potesse corromperne l'innocenza. In base a tale teoria,...
Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance
Review of: The History of American Literature on Film, Thomas Leitch (2019) New York and London: ... more Review of: The History of American Literature on Film, Thomas Leitch (2019) New York and London: Bloomsbury, 448 pp., ISBN 978-1-6289-2373-5, h/bk, £ 120.00
The work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo confuses conventional notions that place the verbal and th... more The work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo confuses conventional notions that place the verbal and the visual in two independent categories. Such hybridity invites a reading of Kahlo's life and work through different media, combining written text and image. In this article I examine two major interpretations of the artist's life: Frida. A Biography of Frida Kahlo (1983) by art critic Hayden Herrera and Frida (2002), a film directed by Julie Taymor, based on Herrera's canonical biography. Taking into account the specificities of each text and considering film adaptation as both a multilevel relationship and a dialogic process, I look at the ways in which these works elicit empathy in the reader/viewer. In particular, I dwell on the gaze articulated on the screen, as it triangulates with that of Kahlo's biographer and with the artist's own version(s) of herself. Diverging from the construction of Kahlo as the archetypal suffering woman artist, the film re-frames Herrera's biography through a series of devices that disrupt the narrative discourse and foreground the subjectivity inherent in the biopic. Such interruptions, stressing the constructed nature of the film's interpretation of Frida's story, deconstruct the processes of history and biography, and foreground the film's own narrative as an act of revision.
Humanities research, 2021
Henry James’s self-allusions in “Pandora” have been read as a rewriting of his former treatment o... more Henry James’s self-allusions in “Pandora” have been read as a rewriting of his former treatment of the “American Girl abroad” in the comic mode. The hints at “a Tauchnitz novel by an American author” (90) establish an ironical reversal of the failures of understanding which had led to tragedy in “Daisy Miller.” Yet the ironies in “Pandora” are multi-layered, often self-reflexive, and can be further interpreted in the light of James’s controversial adaptation of his famous novella for the stage. In this framework, well-known Jamesian topoi appear both as a (self-)parody and a metaliterary dialogue James engages with his readers and critics. The author’s personal implication in this “American” story is further testified by his Notebooks, in which James states his intention to write about his friends Henry and “Clover” Adams. Indeed, “Pandora”’s multi-layered intertextuality includes undeclared references to Adams’s anonymously published novel, Democracy, a semi-satirical account of U....
Focusing on representative narratives by Paul Bowles, the essay shows how the subject of travel i... more Focusing on representative narratives by Paul Bowles, the essay shows how the subject of travel is strictly related to the issue of language and communication between different cultures. An expatriate writer and indefatigable traveler, Bowles developed a radical critique of American culture, in spite of a vision that was not immune to the influence of orientalism. Such a critique was also shaped by his interest in the Maghrebi dialect and his use of untranslated Arab words.
Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, 2020
Review of: The History of American Literature on Film, Thomas Leitch (2019) New York and London: ... more Review of: The History of American Literature on Film, Thomas Leitch (2019) New York and London: Bloomsbury, 448 pp., ISBN 978-1-6289-2373-5, h/bk, £ 120.00
In their ongoing exploration of issues related to race and social justice, independent filmmakers... more In their ongoing exploration of issues related to race and social justice, independent filmmakers Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno have often focused on US cities and/or particular inner-city areas. The documentary Protecting New Orleans/Saving Venice (2006) stands out among their works for its emphasis on the geo-cultural links between America and Europe—for connecting the city of New Orleans and the rest of the Mississippi Delta to the world beyond the geographic and political borders of the US. This article examines the short film’s investigation into the causes and consequences of hurricane Katrina in light of Anil Narine’s notion of “eco-trauma cinema” (2014) and focuses on the transnational dimension of the environmental issues at stake. By connecting local struggles in two separate continents, Protecting New Orleans/Saving Venice promotes affective alliances that reach from the local to the global and envisages shifting conceptions of US national consciousness and belonging. With...