New Journal ed. by Claudio Fogu + Lucia Re; features article on Depero

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California Italian Studies

Volume 1
2009-2010
Issues 1-2

Claudio Fogu and Lucia Re, Editors
Regina Longo, Managing Editor

UCSB Italian Studies Professor Co-Edits New Online Scholarly Journal

March 15, 2010

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– California Italian Studies, a new peer-reviewed, open-access scholarly journal, has been published exclusively online by University of California’s e-Scholarship and the California Digital Library. The journal, which debuted on March 1, was co-edited by Claudio Fogu, associate professor of Italian Studies at UC Santa Barbara, and Lucia Re, professor of Italian and women’s studies at UCLA.

The 2009-10 inaugural volume contains two issues, and features more than 50 research articles, critical essays, translations, works-in-progress, and interviews, many of which appear in both English and Italian. In addition to text and images, the California Italian Studies journal also includes video clips and music. It can be found at http://escholarship.org/uc/ismrg_cisj. The journal will be published annually, with each volume addressing a different theme related to Italian studies, and with different co-editors choosing the content.

The first issue in Volume 1 provides a critical topography of the relationship between Italy and the Mediterranean across time –– from the Middle Ages to present day –– and across disciplinary traditions. It includes discussions of Italy’s multiple cultural interactions with Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Croatia; articles on Italian cinema; video interviews; and previews of works in progress.

The second issue contains critical essays on topics ranging from the Watts Towers in Los Angeles to futurist Italian artist Fortunato Depero’s years in New York City to domestic violence in early modern Italy. The second issue also contains the first English translation of novelist and poet Arrigo Boito’s complete collection of short stories, and some previously unknown documents regarding journalist and short story writer Italo Calvino’s father and the Italian police.

An interdisciplinary effort, the journal was launched by a group of UC scholars from each of the 10 campuses. Together, these scholars represent many of the world’s leading authorities on Italian culture, history, geography, and politics.

“The thematic model is a great way to intersect different perspectives around time and space,” said Fogu, who is also director of the Italian program at UCSB. “The choice of making access to the journal free and open to all is particularly important to us, for it highlights one of the important traditions in Italian studies –– the permeability between academic research and society at large.”

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Volume 1, Issue 1, 2010

Italy in the Mediterranean

Contents:

Introduction

Italy in the Mediterranean Today: A New Critical Topography
Fogu, Claudio, Re, Lucia

A Critical Map of Italy in the Mediterranean – Defining the terms

L’Italia, è ancora un paese mediterraneo?
Maraini, Toni

Predrag Matvejevi?’s Mediterranean Breviary: Nostalgia for an “Ex-World” or Breviary for a New Community?
Botta, Anna

Il pane del Mediterraneo: profano e sacro
Matvejevic, Pedrag

Pensiero verticale: negazione della mediterraneità e radicamento terrestere in Vincenzo Cuoco
Dainotto, Roberto

Another Map, another History, another Modernity
Chambers, Iain Michael

La porta stretta. L’Italia e “l’altra riva” tra colonialismo e politiche migratorie
Dal Lago, Alessandro

Il pensiero meridiano oggi: Intervista e dialoghi con Franco Cassano
Cassano, Francesco, Fogu, Claudio

Il “Sud” come frontiera geosimbolica
Saffioti, Francesca

Braudel’s Mediterranean and Italy
Marino, John A.

The Embarrassment of Libya. History, Memory, and Politics in Contemporary Italy
Labanca, Nicola

Italy in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean

The Italian Renaissance in the Mediterranean, or, Between East and West. A Review Article
O’Connell, Monique

Mapping Metageographies: The Cartographic Invention of Italy and the Mediterranean
della Dora, Veronica

Penelopi in viaggio ‘fuori rotta’ nel Decameron e altrove. ‘Metamorfosi’ e scambi nel Mediterraneo medievale
Morosini, Roberta

From Egypt to Umbria: Jewish Women and Property in the Medieval Mediterranean
Frank, Karen A

Legal Status of Jewish Converts to Christianity in Southern Italy and Provence
Zeldes, Nadia

Battaglie navali, scorrerie corsare e politica dello spettacolo: Le Naumachie medicee del 1589
Alberti, Maria

Mediterranean Pathways: Exotic Flora, Fauna and Food in Renaissance Ferrara
Ghirardo, Diane

Bodies of Water: The Mediterranean in Italian Baroque Theater
Snyder, Jon

Italy in the Modern and Contemporary Mediterranean

From Mare Nostrum to Mare Aliorum: Mediterranean Theory and Mediterraneism in Contemporary Italian Thought
Fogu, Claudio

Routes to Modernity: Orientalism and Mediterraneanism in Italian Culture, 1810-1910
De Donno, Fabrizio

I nostri Saracini: Writing the History of the Arabs of Sicily
Mallette, Karla

Verdi’s Aida across the Mediterranean (and beyond)
Guarracino, Serena

D’Annunzio, la latinità del Mediterraneo e il mito della riconquista
Caburlotto, Filippo

The Tunisia Paradox: Italian Aims, French Imperial Rule, and Migration in the Mediterranean Basin
Choate, Mark I

Italians and the Invention of Race: The Poetics and Politics of Difference in the Struggle over Libya, 1890-1913
Re, Lucia

‘Il faut méditerraniser la peinture’: Giorgio de Chirico’s Metaphysical Painting, Nietzsche, and the Obscurity of Light
Merjian, Ara H.

The Light and the Line: Florestano Di Fausto and the Politics of ‘Mediterraneità’
Anderson, Sean

Italian Women Writers and the Fascist ‘Politica Islamica’ in Colonial Libya
Hopkins, Rebecca

Latter-day Levantinism, or ‘Polypolis’ in the Libretti of Bernard de Zogheb
Halim, Hala

Migrant Identities from the Mediterranean: A Southern Italian vista
Curti, Lidia

Il non detto, l’indicibile e l’esplosione: lettura incrociata di due scrittrici mediterranee
Zaouchi-Razgallah, Rawdha

Tonnare in Italy: Science, History and Culture of Sardinian Tuna Fishing
Emery, Katherine B

Waste Growth Challenges Local Democracy. The Politics of Waste between Europe and the Mediterranean: a Focus on Italy
Mengozzi, Alessandro

Italian Cinema About and Across the Mediterranean

The Corrupting Sea, Technology and Devalued Life in Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns
Campbell, Timothy

A Cinematic Grand Tour of Sicily: Irony, Memory and Metamorphic Desire from Goethe to Tornatore
Marrone, Gaetana

“ISTAMBUL KM. 4,253″: attraverso il Mediterraneo di Pier Paolo Pasolini
Annovi, Gian Maria

Lamento, ordine e subalternità in Salvatore Giuliano
Facchini, Monica

The Return of the Battle of Algiers in Mediterranean Shadows: Race, Resistance and Victimization
O’Riley, Michael

Mediterranean Passages: Abjection and Belonging in Contemporary Italian Cinema
O’Healy, Aine

From the Other Side of the Mediterranean: Hospitality in Italian Migration Cinema
Lerner, Giovanna Faleschini

Strade, Muri, Terra, Città, Mare. Sud Italia e mediterraneità postmoderna nel cinema inizio secolo
Ciccotti, Eusebio

Imagining the Mediterranean 1 – Texts and Translations

Italian Baroque Music in Malta: A Madrigal from the Music Archives at the Cathedral Museum in Mdina
Sansone, Matteo

La collina delle vette gemelle. El-Alamein al-Alamain El’-Alamain al-Almin El-‘Alamên Tel-El-Alamein…: Un reportage
Barile, Laura

Watery Graves
Dal Lago, Alessandro

Imagining the Mediterranean 2 – Survey Articles and Work in Progress

From the Mediterranean to the World: A Note on the Italian “Book of Islands” (isolario)
Cachey, Theodore

The Mediterranean Comes to Ellis Island: The Southern Question in the New World
Moe, Nelson

The Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between Libya and Italy: From an Awkward Past to a Promising Equal Partnership
Kashiem, Mustafa Abdalla A.

Mediterranean Transformations: The Frontier Apulia and its Filmmakers after 1989
Laviosa, Flavia

Dall’ Italian Manner alla modernità liquida. Relazioni artistiche fra alcuni paesi arabo-mediterranei e l’Italia
Corgnati, Martina

Volume 1, Issue 2, 2010

Open Theme Issue

Editors’ Note

Food for Thought
Fogu, Claudio, Re, Lucia

Critical Essays and Articles

“As Men Do with Their Wives”: Domestic Violence in Fourteenth-Century Lucca
Wieben, Corinne

La crisi dell’Autore nel Rinascimento
Vecce, Carlo

Italian Renaissance Food-Fashioning or The Triumph of Greens
Giannetti, Laura

Transnational Multimedia: Fortunato Depero’s Impressions of New York City (1928-1930)
Chiesa, Laura

Gothic Negotiations of History and Power in Landolfi’s Racconto d’autunno
Jewell, Keala

Without Precedent: The Watts Towers
Harrison, Thomas

Rituals of Charity and Abundance: Sicilian St. Joseph’s Tables and Feeding the Poor in Los Angeles
Del Giudice, Luisa

Translations

Arrigo Boito’s Short Stories
Perella, Nicolas J.

Texts and Previews

L’ombra del padre. Il caso Calvino
Adami, Stefano

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Sherpa Accepting Chief Medical Officership

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Now that it has been announced in China. I am proud to say I will be accepting the Chief Medical Officership for Baidu's new Whole Genome Sequencing service called XY or Die.

This is an exciting time for this field and I have to tell you, despite my displeasure with some shady DTCG marketing practices, I feel Baidu's strategy of feeding ads based on genome information could prove to "empower" patients helping them purchase just the right set of herbs and melamine laced baby formula to ensure the best outcomes for the patient and their potential offspring's IQ.

Yes, it is true. I have often been critical of these obscene flagrant violations of United States Law, but in the Far East, there are no laws here.

So, when they come at you with a few million, why not take the money and run?

Sorry, I meant, how dare those repressive capitalist pigs stifle innovation and patient empowerment?

Further, their movement to resemble medical technology and with a wink wink and nod nod insinuate that they are doing medicine, without the doctors. Really, who does need those over paid, money grubbing arrogant assholes anyways? They often end up just looking to churn you for money.....

The Sherpa Says: April Fools, Get a grip!

Credibility of the Wikio science blogs rankingsGene Expression

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Greg Laden posted the Wikio science blogs rankings for this month. Here they are:

1Wired Science – Wired Blog
2Watts Up With That?
3Climate Progress
4RealClimate
5Bad Astronomy
6Climate Audit
7Next Generation Science
8Respectful Insolence
9Dispatches from the Culture Wars
10The Frontal Cortex
11Deltoid
12FuturePundit
13Gene Expression
14Uncertain Principles
15BPS Research Digest
16Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)
17A Blog Around The Clock
18Greg Laden’s Blog
19TierneyLab – New York Times blog
20Stoat

First, where’s Pharyngula? Like him or hate him P. Z. Myers has to be high on this list. Where’s Cosmic Variance? Not Exactly Rocket Science? Perhaps some of these weblogs opted out of the rankings, I don’t know. But whatever is going on, something doesn’t pass the smell test here. For what it’s worth, my own weblog is ranked highly, but at the old URL, so I assume I’ll slowly start journeying south on the rankings as people start switching links.

Thermal – Heatsink

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Hello,

I would like to learn how to design a heat sink with heatpipe and fins to draw heat away from a very hot electronic ship.

Is there any free simulation software to do design and model the heat transfer cooling process

Thank you very much

Why Dukies underachieve as prosGene Expression

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Interesting article in Slate. This shocked me:

Out of all the big schools, NBA teams likely fall harder for Dukies because of their NCAA tournament success. In Stumbling on Wins, economists David J. Berri and Martin B. Schmidt find that players who appear in the Final Four the year they’re drafted get a boost of 12 draft positions. Berri and Schmidt believe that this boost is unwarranted. One of the “statistically significant factors … that lead to less productivity in the NBA,” they write, is “playing for an NCAA champion the year drafted.”

I’ll have to look at the model itself, but this is somewhat surprising if plausible. It makes intuitive sense, but NBA teams don’t normally take the draft lightly and do prep work. On the other hand, as the years go by I’ve become more skeptical about the ability of institutions to squeeze all efficiencies out of any given process (I suspect there’s a principal-agent problem; those who are making the final call are less likely to get fired if they select a “can’t miss” who they think is overrated if that prospect flops than if they get someone who they believe is underrated, and it turns out their assessment was in error).

Personally, I think the similarities between Duke and Indiana during the Bobby Knight years are telling, and Knight was a mentor of Mike Krzyzewski. Both schools seem to produce fewer stars on the professional level in relation to the success of their teams; but I think the group vs. individual dynamic is key. There are differences between the pro and collegiate level, and Duke and Knight’s Indiana teams were able to leverage group level efficiency and precision in collective action to make up for shortfalls in relative individual talent. When a team manages to win many games individual players are perceived to be better than they are. Take individuals out of that context and their more modest talent endowments become obvious. A college team which routinely makes it far in the NCAA tournament can regularly field what might be “role players” at best in the NBA.

NCBI ROFL: Uh, no. Aunt Flo means no ho, bro! | Discoblog

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3003650719_0881b46c0aThe receptivity of women to courtship solicitation across the menstrual cycle: a field experiment.

“Research has demonstrated that women’s behaviors toward men or sexual interest are different across the menstrual cycle. However, this effect was only found on verbal interest and the receptivity of women to a courtship solicitation had never been tested before. In a field experiment, 455 (200 with normal cycles and 255 pill-users) 18-25-year-old women were approached by 20-year-old male-confederates who solicited them for their phone number. A survey was administered to the women solicited 1 min later in order to obtain information about the number of days since the onset of their last menses. It was found that women in their fertile phase, but not pill-users, agreed more favorably to the request than women in their luteal phase or in their menstrual phase.”

hot_lady_menstual_cycle

Thanks to John for today’s ROFL!

Photo: flickr/Beau B

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Bust size and hitchhiking: a field study.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Does this outfit make me look like I want to get laid?
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Women’s bust size and men’s courtship solicitation.