Introduction: Critical issues in Transnational Italian Studies

Not straight from Italy: Seeking anti-national killjoys in Italian Studies

“…To put precisely that kind of pressure on Italian Studies, Giulia Riccò and I (Bassi and Riccò, 2021) have proposed that we rethink it as no longer concerned with tracing the cultural history of the nation, but with the study of the large-scale discursive practices that are key to understanding how Italy came to cohere as a national designation. As an example, we suggested that three discursive formations of this kind that Italian Studies may further unpack via a transnational approach are "late State formation and its lingering language of belatedness, scattered hegemonies and supposedly pathological disunity; tourism and its language of longing, desire and capture; mass emigration and its language of colonialism, loss and gain, resettling and self-fashioning" (Bassi and Riccò, 2021). Italian Studies may become queerer once scholars collectively replace the Nation-State model with a focus on the transnational historical, social, and cultural processes that have created the multiple ideas of "Italy" and "Italian" circulating in the world.…”

Introducing Transnational Italian Studies to a graduate program

“…Materials included films, documentaries, short stories, novels, songs, and photographs by artists and authors belonging to a very diverse range of historical moments and locations. 6 The syllabus opened with a theoretical section (Jay, 2010;Bassi and Riccò, 2021) to then introduce emigration history through the themes of departure (Crialese's (2006) film Nuovomondo / The Golden Door), voyage (De Amicis ' (1994 [1886]) novella "Dagli Appennini alle Ande"), and arrival (Pariani's short stories about Argentina); colonialism (Flaiano's (2020(Flaiano's ( [1947) novel Tempo di uccidere) and post-coloniality (Ghermandi's (2007) story "La storia di Woizero Bekelech e Signor Antonio"); and immigration through deserts (Segre et al's (2008) documentary Come un uomo sulla terra) and seas Iori's (2005-2007) video essay Sudeuropa). The course was also invested in introducing students to less-frequented topics such as tourism as part of national identity formation (Malia Hom's (2015) essays) and to rap as a contemporary form of expression to challenge national identity (Issaa's (2017) memoir Vivo per questo).…”

“…Besides exhibits, talks, and workshops, these projects have produced a book series at the University of Liverpool Press (Transnational Modern Languages), which includes specific volumes devoted to Italy (Burdett and Polezzi, 2020; Burdett et al, 2020). In the USA, the H-TransItalian Studies blog and the related working group have further developed the approach by providing resources and a forum for exchanges (Bassi and Riccò, 2021).…”