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Introduction to the Special Section “Cinema, Migration, and the US.”, Iperstoria, No 17 (2021): Cinema, Migration, and the US

Differently from positive visions of multiculturality as the richness of American diversity, in this article I tackle multiculturalism as one of the elements of the category of the freak, where cultural, ethnic and racial difference coincided with disability and both concocted to fence off diversity in American society. I understand the freak as a critical multicultural field because of its recruitment processes, as evidenced by the case of the Italian Tocci brothers, but also as a place of confinement and exoticization of American citizens who, as a consequence of their disability, came to inhabit a transnational category used to police concepts of ‘normal’ American masculinity and femininity. In this reading, multiculturality is understood hence as a fabrication that veils processes of enfreakment., JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy), No 4 (2021): Disentangling the American Patchwork Heritage

Review of John Fante’s Ask the Dust A Joining of Voices and Views, edited by Stephen Cooper and Clorinda Donato, Iperstoria, No 15 (2020): Populism and Its Languages

Intervista a Chiara Spallino sul Meridiano Mondadori dedicato a Toni Morrison, Iperstoria, No 3 (2014): Orizzonti di Occupy: il linguaggio di OWS e di altre forme odierne di protesta popolare

Introduction by Elisa Bordin, Stefano Bosco and Roberto Cagliero, Iperstoria, No 14 (2019): The USA as Penitentiary

Master's thesis Innovative governance and public management ME523 - University of Agder 2019 Developing schoolsexualityeducation policies is a complex matterdue to the controversial and politicized nature of sexuality. This thesisaims at understanding the development of institutional change in the presence of complex policy systems that involvemultiple actors in the policy process. To achieve this aim, itanalyses the actionsof an advocacy coalition that works to change sexuality education policies in Norway.The study adopts the Advocacy CoalitionFramework (ACF)for understanding the interconnections among the macro-level of the political and historicalcontext, the micro-level of the actor’s motivationsand the meso-level ofcoalition’s goals and strategies. Moreover, it supports the ACF with the Historical Institutionalism (HI) approach toexplain the struggle between the actors’ effortsto achieve policy change and the persistence of cultural and political institutions.Through the conduction of interviews and the analysis of relevant policy documents, this study identified aclose interaction and co-dependence among differentelements of the political system. In implementing its strategy, the coalition encountered facilitating and hindering factors that determined the achievement of aslow incremental change. The advocacy coalition started and continuouslyinfluenced the change process through a strategy of knowledge production and sharingthat contributed inchangingattitudes and perception of policy participantson sexuality education.The active agency of the coalition’s actors in creating arenas and channels of sharing and coordination facilitated the learning process. Nonetheless, fixed institutions and conflictsof interests hindered the achievement of a major policy change.Therefore, this thesis identifiesthe policy process as a complex interaction among different factors and elements that generate reciprocal influence and jointly determine the process’ outcomes. Hence, the study concluded that the institutional setting is essential in determining rules and constraints for the actors.However,the active agency of policy participantscan strategically exploit the historicaland institutional setting for achieving the actors’ goals.Keywords: Sexuality education, Norway, advocacy coalitions, institutional change, policy-learning, historical institutionalism

Recensione di La frontiera americana. Una interpretazione costituzionale di Andrea Buratti, Iperstoria, No 9 (2017): Native American Studies ieri e oggi: una prospettiva comparata

After 50 years from the battles for civil equality in the United States, this essay analyzes the film Beats of the Southern Wild (2012) and its African American characters’ refusal to participate into the civic life of their country. As a consequence of a hurricane that reminds of Katrina, the isolated community of Bathtub is forced to enter into contact with civic institutions with deleterious effect on both Hushpuppy, the 6-year-old protagonist, and her father. While the passage to civilized life has deadly consequences on the man’s precarious health conditions, Hushpuppy is forcedly transformed into an example of mainstream femininity. In this way, Beasts of the Southern Wild casts doubt on the importance of civic belonging as a rewarding act in one’s life. At the beginning of the new millennium, in years that are defined as post-civil rights as well as post-racial, the film shows the oppressive force of civil life and the state, which transforms rights into abuse of personal choices and lifestyle., Iperstoria, No 8 (2016): Around Selma – Selma e dintorni: La questione African American nella lingua, letteratura, e cultura degli Stati Uniti

Review of Vincenzo Bavaro e Donatella Izzo (a cura di), Oltre il libro: nuove forme di narratività sugli/dagli USA (Àcoma n°9, 2015), Iperstoria, No 7 (2016): Old and New West

Review of Tiya Miles, Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, Iperstoria, No 7 (2016): Old and New West

In this essay, I consider Italian-American writer John Fante’s ‘Asian’ writings, namely The Little Brown Brothers (1930s) and “The Dreamer” (1947), and the role these works had in defining Fante’s success alternatively as an American and an Italian American writer. The focus on ethnic consciousness, which has prevailed in ethnic studies for a long time, has, in Fante’s case, limited the analysis of his works, excluding them from broader and transethnic literary movements, contexts, and practices. Even though an ‘ethnic’ approach has been seminal to tackle Fante’s works, the focus on his italianità has also obscured other topics present in his literary work, reducing Fante’s complexity and potentiality as a writer with consequences on his place in the American literary landscape. This is what I try to prove by analyzing his ‘Asian’ writings, which show an interest outside his heritage of descent which was, however, unable to develop in the American publishing market of the time., Iperstoria, No 6 (2015): La 'realtà' trasnazionale della razza. Dinamiche di razzializzazione in prospettiva comparata

As the 30th anniversary 2006 edition recalls, Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family was a big popular success: in 1976, the year it was published, “the book sold over one million copies” and in 1977 the miniseries created out of it “was watched by an astonishing 130 million people.” David Chioni Moore reports that the book “was translated into twenty-four languages, and sat atop the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list for more than five months beginning in late November 1976” (6). Roots’s popularity continues in more recent times: in December 2011, BET’s 35th anniversary airing of the miniseries Roots was watched by 4.1 million viewers, testifying to the longevity of Roots’ popular appeal. Haley’s family saga starts in 18th - century village of Juffure, in the Gambia, Africa, where his ancestor Kunta Kinte was kidnapped and shipped, together with other African slaves, to the United States. His Virginian master Wallace imposes on him the name Toby, which Kunta resists fiercely to maintain his African and Muslim identity. After four escape attempts and having his foot cut off he accepts his American fate and name and eventually marries Belle, the slave cook, thus going against his original disdain for African American slaves. From this union Kizzy is born, who is sold to master Tom Lea. The latter repeatedly rapes the girl, who consequentially gives birth to Chicken George, the family patriarch who leads the Kintes out of slavery. From this moment on the family line proceeds fast till Simon Alexander Haley, Alex Haley’s father, and ends with Haley’s telling of his researches in Africa, Britain, and the US to trace his family history., Iperstoria, No 4 (2014): Ancestors