Giulia Riccò | University of Michigan (original) (raw)
Articles by Giulia Riccò
Altreitalie: Rivista internazionale di studi sulle migrazioni italiane nel mondo, 2024
This essay argues that Gina Lombroso Ferrero locates the basis for Italy’s future imperial develo... more This essay argues that Gina Lombroso Ferrero locates the basis for Italy’s future imperial development in the economic force of Italian São Paulo. Her travelogue "Nell’America Meridionale (Brasile-Uruguay-Argentina): note e impressioni di Gina Lombroso Ferrero" (1908) depicts the numerous Italians who migrated to Brazil to work in the coffee fields not as exploited indentured laborers (colonos) but rather as settlers who, by triumphing over adversity, have brought glory to the motherland. In contrast to other Italian travelers to Brazil who quickly condemned the miserable conditions of Italian indentured laborers, Lombroso Ferrero locates in the labor of the colonos the making of an Italian empire. In doing so, she inadvertently reveals the overlap between the two meanings of the Italian word colonia, allowing us to reflect on these two ‘colonial’ processes not only as co-existing but essentially intertwined and mutually supportive.
Italian Culture. Vol. 4 (1), 2023
This essay brings to light how the Italian loss at Adwa of 1896 inspires Enrico Corradini to reim... more This essay brings to light how the Italian loss at Adwa of 1896 inspires
Enrico Corradini to reimagine the dream of an imperial Italy in his novel
La patria lontana (1910). By turning to a little-known episode in the history
of Italo-Brazilian relations that forms part of the backdrop for La patria
lontana, this essay reveals that Brazil functions as a stand-in for Ethiopia
in Corradini’s imaginary. In this highly Africanized, tropical, South
American country, where large numbers of Italians had confronted hostile
and resistant natives at the turn of the twentieth century, Corradini
discovered a space that offered an opportunity to restage the First
Italo-Ethiopian War as one in which Italians emerge victorious.
Forum Italicum Vol. 57 (2), 2023
Italian Studies in Southern Africa Vol.35 (1), 2022
Special Issue Diversity, Decolonisation, and Italian Studies
BLOG H-Net Italian Diaspora, 2021
Revista Moara, "Descentrar o cânone da memória literária: repensando a obra de Bernardo Kucinski", 2021
The novel K. Relato de uma busca, whose publication coincided with the Brazilian National Truth C... more The novel K. Relato de uma busca, whose publication coincided with the Brazilian National Truth Commission, has proven remarkably more effective in producing a public and institutional reckoning with the crimes of the military regime than any of the institutional mechanisms implemented by the government or any other testimonial novel previously written about the abuses of the military regime. Its appeal, in part, has to do with Kucinski's usage of various discourses-fiction, testimonial, epistolary-that successfully challenge the authoritative, and non-dialogic discourse of the military regime. This essay argues that in this novel, politics and fiction are inverted: instead of having a law that fictionalizes the memory of the violence perpetrated by the dictatorship, we have a work of fiction that, by memorializing the struggle of a father in search of his disappeared daughter, brings the crimes committed by the military back into the political discourse.
Radical History Review, 2020
In the dystopian 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis imagines what it would look like... more In the dystopian 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis imagines what it would look like if fascism came to the United States. It Can’t Happen Here is a richly productive text for anybody interested in teaching fascism, but the work requires pedagogical caution, as students tend to find it overwhelming, especially in the post-2016-election era. In this short essay, I consider how best to teach students to read a novel that, though originally intended as a satirical take on the political situation of the United States and the world in the interwar period, has now become unnervingly relevant and prescient.
Radical History Review, 2020
Forum Italicum , 2019
In this essay I argue that Francesco Guccini and Loriano Macchiavelli's Tango e gli altri. Romanz... more In this essay I argue that Francesco Guccini and Loriano Macchiavelli's Tango e gli altri. Romanzo di una raffica anzi tre (2008) calls into question a popular narrative that converts the Resistenza, a heterogeneous revolutionary and anti-fascist movement, into a symbol of nationalist propaganda. Because he is at once a carabiniere, a partigiano, and a meridionale, the novel's hero, Santovito, who is charged with reopening a case adjudicated by a partisan tribunal, poses an ontological challenge to the mythology of the Resistance. Nevertheless, it is precisely this hybridity that enables Santovito to understand that confronting the tarnished legacy of the Resistance preserves the integrity of the movement by restoring to collective memory the tangle of personal conflicts and interests that intersected with Italy's unprecedented civil strife.
Cultural Dynamics, 2019
We propose that contemporary militarization be understood as part of the continued legacy and con... more We propose that contemporary militarization be understood as part of the continued legacy and consequence of colonial practices and (neo-)imperial logics. We reveal how, in spaces characterized by the palimpsestic legacies and consequences of colonialism and militarization, the latter functions as an accumulative process that glosses over, silences, and normalizes past and present practices of violence and control. Accordingly, the process of demilitarization begins by deconstructing these multiple layers, especially in countries with very recent histories of coloniality. Lampedusa and Lebanon both serve as case studies of contemporary epistemologies of militarization within and beyond the fluid contours of today's Global South. They are deeply contested sites whose dense imperial, colonial, and militarized histories are embodied in generations of inhabitants, the consequences of which resonate in real-time. The future of these sites and their populaces are open-ended, and how individuals and collectives will remember and represent them remains, in many ways, contingent on current events.
Mester , 2017
In the 1888 Brazilian –not Portuguese– translation (as the cover proudly reads) in terza rima of ... more In the 1888 Brazilian –not Portuguese– translation (as the cover proudly reads) in terza rima of Purgatorio Canto VI by Brazilian José Xavier Pinheiro the choice of the translator of the word pàtria instead of the word paese (or in Portuguese país) caught my attention. In this paper I argue that the use of the word pàtria was done in an attempt to translate, both inside and outside the text, the national consciousness present in Dante, a national consciousness that was much needed in nineteenth century Brazilian society. Purgatorio Canto VI is where we witness the moving embrace between Virgilio and Sordello, an embrace prompted by their discovery that Mantua is their common hometown. Such a tender moment unleashes Dante’s rage toward Italy and its citizens, condemning the many wars and the frivolous political games of their municipalities, particularly of Florence. While in the Italian text Sordello inquires about Dante and Virgilio’s “paese” (v.70), in the Portuguese text Pinheiro deliberately uses the word “pàtria” (v.70). First, I discuss the creation of Dante as a political icon by nineteenth century Italian patriots and activists, Mazzini among others, and the ways in which these ideas traveled to Brazil through Garibaldi (among others). Second, I look at how Pinheiro uses this potentiality in his translation of the Purgatorio VI, to reflect on the impact that the translation might have had on the construction of the literary canon of a new nation and whether such ideas can be actually translated. Third, I show how both the Risorgimento’s reinterpretation of Dante and Pinheiro’s translation challenge the arguments advanced by Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities. Finally, I conclude by reflecting on translation as a tool for political change.
Book Chapters by Giulia Riccò
LITERATURA E (I)MIGRAÇÃO NO BRASIL / LITERATURE AND (IM)MIGRATION IN BRAZIL edited by Waïl Hassan and Rogério Lima, 2020
This essay investigates the way in which Paulo Menotti del Picchia, author of the famous poem “Ju... more This essay investigates the way in which Paulo Menotti del Picchia, author of the famous poem “Juca Mulato” and an important intellectual and political figure in Brazil during the 20th century, reimagines the role of Italians in Brazil. Through an analysis of “Juca
Mulato,” from the chronicles signed by him in Correio Paulistano and the autobiography A Longa viagem, this essay discusses how Menotti del Picchia claims his Italian identity and the experiences associated with it, giving Italians a privileged space in the foundation
of the modern Brazilian nation. For Menotti del Picchia, Italians were superior to other ethnic groups that also arrived in Brazil at the end of the 19th century because, paradoxically, they could be more easily assimilated. In this sense, Menotti del Picchia tries to reconcile his double identity: the Italian, more linked to family affections, especially to the father figure; and the Brazilian, which had dominated his public and political figure. The essay shows how Italianness and Brazilianness are deeply related in the political and literary imagery of Menotti del Picchia: it is his affections for the family and the markedly Italian experiences associated with this that gave him the ability to become one of the most direct defenders of an authentic and nationalist Brazil.
Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis, edited by Lamonte Aidoo and Daniel F. Silva,, 2016
“Pai contra mãe”, one of the few stories in Machado’s repertoire that has slavery as its central ... more “Pai contra mãe”, one of the few stories in Machado’s repertoire that has slavery as its central focus, offers a rich case study not only for analyzing the ways in which this technique of writing violence works but also for reflecting on the ways in which the readers collaborate with the narrator. The essay “Framing Violence: Narrator and Reader in “Pai contra mãe” by Machado de Assis” seeks to demonstrate that Machado’s contemporaneity lays precisely in the dialogues his short stories spark between the narrator and the modern reader when representing a violence that still resides and shapes Brazilian society. The essay begins with a close reading of the opening preamble, where Machado offers the readers an entrée into the frame of the story. Second, it moves onto the body of the plot and analyzes the ways in which the narrator sustains this frame through irony and careful verbal choice. Third, it analyzes the role of the reader in Machado’s narrative by looking at points of comparison between the short story and the photograph. After reading a short story like “Pai contra mãe”, the readers feel lost, confused, because they are not able to find a clear and definite answer or opinion. In a sense, by writing violence, the author implicitly performs a violent act: the readers cannot and should not remain passive, they should somehow be wounded in order to gain the experience required to complete the framing of the violence, to give meaning to the short story and mold it to function in their present day.
Book Reviews by Giulia Riccò
in Italian American Review Vol. 12 (2), 2022
MLN: Italian Issue Vol. 138 (1), 2023
Encyclopedia Entries by Giulia Riccò
Special Issues by Giulia Riccò
Forum Italicum Vol. 57 (2), 2023
Radical History Review, 2020
Contributors to this special issue of Radical History Review study histories of fascism and antif... more Contributors to this special issue of Radical History Review study histories of fascism and antifascism after 1945 to show how fascist ideology continues to circulate and be opposed transnationally despite its supposed death at the end of World War II. The essays cover the use of fascism in the 1970s construction of the Latinx Left, the connection of antifascism and anti-imperialism in 1960s Italian Communist internationalism, post-dictatorship Argentina and the transhistorical alliance between Las Madres and travestí activism, cultures of antifascism in contemporary Japan, and global fascism as portrayed through the British radical right's attempted alliance with Qathafi's Libya. The issue also includes a discussion about teaching fascism through fiction in the age of Trump, a reflection on the practices of archiving and displaying antifascist objects to various publics, and reviews of recent works on antifascism, punk music, and the Rock Against Racism movement.
Cultural Dynamics: Insurgent Scholarship on Culture, Politics, and Power, 2019
Special Issue of Cultural Dynamics: Insurgent Scholarship on Culture, Politics, and Power Novembe... more Special Issue of Cultural Dynamics: Insurgent Scholarship on Culture, Politics, and Power
November 2019, Volume 31, Issue 4
Access all content: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/cdya/current
Altreitalie: Rivista internazionale di studi sulle migrazioni italiane nel mondo, 2024
This essay argues that Gina Lombroso Ferrero locates the basis for Italy’s future imperial develo... more This essay argues that Gina Lombroso Ferrero locates the basis for Italy’s future imperial development in the economic force of Italian São Paulo. Her travelogue "Nell’America Meridionale (Brasile-Uruguay-Argentina): note e impressioni di Gina Lombroso Ferrero" (1908) depicts the numerous Italians who migrated to Brazil to work in the coffee fields not as exploited indentured laborers (colonos) but rather as settlers who, by triumphing over adversity, have brought glory to the motherland. In contrast to other Italian travelers to Brazil who quickly condemned the miserable conditions of Italian indentured laborers, Lombroso Ferrero locates in the labor of the colonos the making of an Italian empire. In doing so, she inadvertently reveals the overlap between the two meanings of the Italian word colonia, allowing us to reflect on these two ‘colonial’ processes not only as co-existing but essentially intertwined and mutually supportive.
Italian Culture. Vol. 4 (1), 2023
This essay brings to light how the Italian loss at Adwa of 1896 inspires Enrico Corradini to reim... more This essay brings to light how the Italian loss at Adwa of 1896 inspires
Enrico Corradini to reimagine the dream of an imperial Italy in his novel
La patria lontana (1910). By turning to a little-known episode in the history
of Italo-Brazilian relations that forms part of the backdrop for La patria
lontana, this essay reveals that Brazil functions as a stand-in for Ethiopia
in Corradini’s imaginary. In this highly Africanized, tropical, South
American country, where large numbers of Italians had confronted hostile
and resistant natives at the turn of the twentieth century, Corradini
discovered a space that offered an opportunity to restage the First
Italo-Ethiopian War as one in which Italians emerge victorious.
Forum Italicum Vol. 57 (2), 2023
Italian Studies in Southern Africa Vol.35 (1), 2022
Special Issue Diversity, Decolonisation, and Italian Studies
BLOG H-Net Italian Diaspora, 2021
Revista Moara, "Descentrar o cânone da memória literária: repensando a obra de Bernardo Kucinski", 2021
The novel K. Relato de uma busca, whose publication coincided with the Brazilian National Truth C... more The novel K. Relato de uma busca, whose publication coincided with the Brazilian National Truth Commission, has proven remarkably more effective in producing a public and institutional reckoning with the crimes of the military regime than any of the institutional mechanisms implemented by the government or any other testimonial novel previously written about the abuses of the military regime. Its appeal, in part, has to do with Kucinski's usage of various discourses-fiction, testimonial, epistolary-that successfully challenge the authoritative, and non-dialogic discourse of the military regime. This essay argues that in this novel, politics and fiction are inverted: instead of having a law that fictionalizes the memory of the violence perpetrated by the dictatorship, we have a work of fiction that, by memorializing the struggle of a father in search of his disappeared daughter, brings the crimes committed by the military back into the political discourse.
Radical History Review, 2020
In the dystopian 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis imagines what it would look like... more In the dystopian 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis imagines what it would look like if fascism came to the United States. It Can’t Happen Here is a richly productive text for anybody interested in teaching fascism, but the work requires pedagogical caution, as students tend to find it overwhelming, especially in the post-2016-election era. In this short essay, I consider how best to teach students to read a novel that, though originally intended as a satirical take on the political situation of the United States and the world in the interwar period, has now become unnervingly relevant and prescient.
Radical History Review, 2020
Forum Italicum , 2019
In this essay I argue that Francesco Guccini and Loriano Macchiavelli's Tango e gli altri. Romanz... more In this essay I argue that Francesco Guccini and Loriano Macchiavelli's Tango e gli altri. Romanzo di una raffica anzi tre (2008) calls into question a popular narrative that converts the Resistenza, a heterogeneous revolutionary and anti-fascist movement, into a symbol of nationalist propaganda. Because he is at once a carabiniere, a partigiano, and a meridionale, the novel's hero, Santovito, who is charged with reopening a case adjudicated by a partisan tribunal, poses an ontological challenge to the mythology of the Resistance. Nevertheless, it is precisely this hybridity that enables Santovito to understand that confronting the tarnished legacy of the Resistance preserves the integrity of the movement by restoring to collective memory the tangle of personal conflicts and interests that intersected with Italy's unprecedented civil strife.
Cultural Dynamics, 2019
We propose that contemporary militarization be understood as part of the continued legacy and con... more We propose that contemporary militarization be understood as part of the continued legacy and consequence of colonial practices and (neo-)imperial logics. We reveal how, in spaces characterized by the palimpsestic legacies and consequences of colonialism and militarization, the latter functions as an accumulative process that glosses over, silences, and normalizes past and present practices of violence and control. Accordingly, the process of demilitarization begins by deconstructing these multiple layers, especially in countries with very recent histories of coloniality. Lampedusa and Lebanon both serve as case studies of contemporary epistemologies of militarization within and beyond the fluid contours of today's Global South. They are deeply contested sites whose dense imperial, colonial, and militarized histories are embodied in generations of inhabitants, the consequences of which resonate in real-time. The future of these sites and their populaces are open-ended, and how individuals and collectives will remember and represent them remains, in many ways, contingent on current events.
Mester , 2017
In the 1888 Brazilian –not Portuguese– translation (as the cover proudly reads) in terza rima of ... more In the 1888 Brazilian –not Portuguese– translation (as the cover proudly reads) in terza rima of Purgatorio Canto VI by Brazilian José Xavier Pinheiro the choice of the translator of the word pàtria instead of the word paese (or in Portuguese país) caught my attention. In this paper I argue that the use of the word pàtria was done in an attempt to translate, both inside and outside the text, the national consciousness present in Dante, a national consciousness that was much needed in nineteenth century Brazilian society. Purgatorio Canto VI is where we witness the moving embrace between Virgilio and Sordello, an embrace prompted by their discovery that Mantua is their common hometown. Such a tender moment unleashes Dante’s rage toward Italy and its citizens, condemning the many wars and the frivolous political games of their municipalities, particularly of Florence. While in the Italian text Sordello inquires about Dante and Virgilio’s “paese” (v.70), in the Portuguese text Pinheiro deliberately uses the word “pàtria” (v.70). First, I discuss the creation of Dante as a political icon by nineteenth century Italian patriots and activists, Mazzini among others, and the ways in which these ideas traveled to Brazil through Garibaldi (among others). Second, I look at how Pinheiro uses this potentiality in his translation of the Purgatorio VI, to reflect on the impact that the translation might have had on the construction of the literary canon of a new nation and whether such ideas can be actually translated. Third, I show how both the Risorgimento’s reinterpretation of Dante and Pinheiro’s translation challenge the arguments advanced by Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Communities. Finally, I conclude by reflecting on translation as a tool for political change.
LITERATURA E (I)MIGRAÇÃO NO BRASIL / LITERATURE AND (IM)MIGRATION IN BRAZIL edited by Waïl Hassan and Rogério Lima, 2020
This essay investigates the way in which Paulo Menotti del Picchia, author of the famous poem “Ju... more This essay investigates the way in which Paulo Menotti del Picchia, author of the famous poem “Juca Mulato” and an important intellectual and political figure in Brazil during the 20th century, reimagines the role of Italians in Brazil. Through an analysis of “Juca
Mulato,” from the chronicles signed by him in Correio Paulistano and the autobiography A Longa viagem, this essay discusses how Menotti del Picchia claims his Italian identity and the experiences associated with it, giving Italians a privileged space in the foundation
of the modern Brazilian nation. For Menotti del Picchia, Italians were superior to other ethnic groups that also arrived in Brazil at the end of the 19th century because, paradoxically, they could be more easily assimilated. In this sense, Menotti del Picchia tries to reconcile his double identity: the Italian, more linked to family affections, especially to the father figure; and the Brazilian, which had dominated his public and political figure. The essay shows how Italianness and Brazilianness are deeply related in the political and literary imagery of Menotti del Picchia: it is his affections for the family and the markedly Italian experiences associated with this that gave him the ability to become one of the most direct defenders of an authentic and nationalist Brazil.
Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis, edited by Lamonte Aidoo and Daniel F. Silva,, 2016
“Pai contra mãe”, one of the few stories in Machado’s repertoire that has slavery as its central ... more “Pai contra mãe”, one of the few stories in Machado’s repertoire that has slavery as its central focus, offers a rich case study not only for analyzing the ways in which this technique of writing violence works but also for reflecting on the ways in which the readers collaborate with the narrator. The essay “Framing Violence: Narrator and Reader in “Pai contra mãe” by Machado de Assis” seeks to demonstrate that Machado’s contemporaneity lays precisely in the dialogues his short stories spark between the narrator and the modern reader when representing a violence that still resides and shapes Brazilian society. The essay begins with a close reading of the opening preamble, where Machado offers the readers an entrée into the frame of the story. Second, it moves onto the body of the plot and analyzes the ways in which the narrator sustains this frame through irony and careful verbal choice. Third, it analyzes the role of the reader in Machado’s narrative by looking at points of comparison between the short story and the photograph. After reading a short story like “Pai contra mãe”, the readers feel lost, confused, because they are not able to find a clear and definite answer or opinion. In a sense, by writing violence, the author implicitly performs a violent act: the readers cannot and should not remain passive, they should somehow be wounded in order to gain the experience required to complete the framing of the violence, to give meaning to the short story and mold it to function in their present day.
Forum Italicum Vol. 57 (2), 2023
Radical History Review, 2020
Contributors to this special issue of Radical History Review study histories of fascism and antif... more Contributors to this special issue of Radical History Review study histories of fascism and antifascism after 1945 to show how fascist ideology continues to circulate and be opposed transnationally despite its supposed death at the end of World War II. The essays cover the use of fascism in the 1970s construction of the Latinx Left, the connection of antifascism and anti-imperialism in 1960s Italian Communist internationalism, post-dictatorship Argentina and the transhistorical alliance between Las Madres and travestí activism, cultures of antifascism in contemporary Japan, and global fascism as portrayed through the British radical right's attempted alliance with Qathafi's Libya. The issue also includes a discussion about teaching fascism through fiction in the age of Trump, a reflection on the practices of archiving and displaying antifascist objects to various publics, and reviews of recent works on antifascism, punk music, and the Rock Against Racism movement.
Cultural Dynamics: Insurgent Scholarship on Culture, Politics, and Power, 2019
Special Issue of Cultural Dynamics: Insurgent Scholarship on Culture, Politics, and Power Novembe... more Special Issue of Cultural Dynamics: Insurgent Scholarship on Culture, Politics, and Power
November 2019, Volume 31, Issue 4
Access all content: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/cdya/current
In July 2019, Check Up Mezzogiorno , a report of Confindustria devoted to the annual quantific... more In July 2019, Check Up Mezzogiorno , a report of Confindustria devoted to the annual quantification of the economic disparity between Northern and Southern Italy, emphasized the slowness of Southern economy. The questione meridionale , understood in Gramscian terms, continues to be theorized and aestheticized today. This panel seeks to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue about how the concept of the "South" has taken shape in literature, works of art, films, songs, and the broader public sphere, from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Preference will be given to essays that explore this theme in relation to Global South Studies, migration studies, and South-South exchanges. Interested panelists should send their abstract in English or Italian (max 250 words), a brief biography (max 100 words) and requests for AV to the panel organizers (cristina.carnemolla@duke.edu e gricco@umich.edu) by December 1st.
Most of the socio-political uprisings, movements and protests that have occurred in countries dee... more Most of the socio-political uprisings, movements and protests that have occurred in countries deemed part of the “global south” since 2010 have been analyzed as discrete, localized events. Over the course of this interdisciplinary graduate colloquium, however, we will explore the possibility of performing a transnational reading of these events. Are there patterns and trends in the agendas, organizing strategies, demands and types of violence deployed across geographic borders? Have the political and military legacies left by former (or current) imperial and occupying powers set off reactions that offer new readings on the postcolony?
This colloquium also considers the social, political and economic realities impacting populations that have been rendered “other” in the “global north,” such as racial minorities, immigrants and refugees. While these may be viewed discretely, as well, the connection between the Black Lives Matter movement and Palestinian activists is one of many examples of the political synergies between the two geographies.
We encourage graduate students from all disciplines to apply, including: Art and Visual Cultures, Economics, International Relations, Law, Languages or Cultural Studies, Literature, Political Science, History, and Public Policy.
To maximize opportunities for scholastic exchange, all papers will be pre-circulated and discussed in detail at the colloquium. Interested participants may have the opportunity to submit their papers for publication; more details will be made available in April. All languages are welcome:we will provide interpreters. We also offer the possibility to participate via Skype.
Topics might include, but are not limited to:
Visible and invisible practices of militarization
Affect
Media and popular culture
The language of resistance / the language of militarization
Urban planning and policing
Torture
The state of emergency
Refugees and statelessness
The internet and mobile phone as mediums of connection and organization
Please send your 300-word abstract to gsepistemologies@gmail.com no later than January 31, 2018. For updates, please visit https://sites.duke.edu/globalsouth/call-for-papers/.