Italian Pop Culture PDF Download

Author: Fabio Corsini
Publisher: Viella Libreria Editrice
ISBN: 8833130703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
What does the expression pop culture mean today? And how does it contribute to understanding a Country and a cultural group? This collection of essays, diverse in content, approach and perspective, tries to answer these questions. It aims at describing and figuring out the texture of Italian pop culture – as a meaningful juxtaposition between high and low, mass and elite, artistic and consumerist – in relation to the Italian mediascape and cultural context. Through the mosaic of narratives produced by television, music, comics and novels, to name a few, and the mixture of genres and types of cultural products analyzed in every essay, the reader is allowed to further the knowledge of Italian pop culture and to get a glimpse of Italians and ‘Italian-ness’.

Author: Enrico Minardi
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527547132
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
What is Italian pop culture? This volume provides an answer to this question, offering an insight into some of the most recent and interesting developments in the field of pop culture. The reader will find essays on a variety of topics including literature, theater, music, social media, comics, politics, and even Christmas. Each contribution here places stress on the popular. The main reference points guiding the chapters are, in fact, the pioneering works by Antonio Gramsci and Umberto Eco. The result is, therefore, a portrait of a country where mass participation in cultural events always accompanies some form of reflection on the national identity and other related issues. Historians and sociologists, as well as musicologists and philosophers (in addition to pop culture aficionados), will find the text an engaging and indispensable read.

Author: Giannino Malossi
Publisher: Monacelli Press
ISBN: 9781580930390
Category : Exhibitions
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Volare develops an analysis of the contemporary popular media-driven image of Italy. The high visibility of Italian fashion and industrial design, "Italian" settings for advertising, shelves of Italian foods in every supermarket, and select gentrified cuisines all demonstrate the way in which Italy has become a global pop icon. This book, written and designed to capture the energy of its subject, explores the phenomenon of Italy as icon, which extends through the transformations of popular culture now sweeping the world. The global culture, unified by the market and by transnational media corporations, has produced a series of stereotypes and semantic references that might be termed the "Italian dream, " which occupies a space on the continuum of spectacular images the world sees as the American dream, French allure, and classic English style. In turn, the Italian icon, freed of territorial boundaries linking it to the land it ostensibly depicts, influences not only the external view of Italians but Italians' own views of themselves. Italy has created a dream, which is dreamed by others, and it is necessary to realize the existence of this dream for it to become reality.

Author: Andrew Whittaker
Publisher: Thorogood Publishing
ISBN: 1854186280
Category : Culture
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Speak the Culture: Italy offers a rich and engaging insight into the events, people and movements that have shaped Italy and the Italians. A guidebook can show you where to go, a phrase-book what to say, but only Speak the Culture: Italy will lead you to the nation's soul. The Italian character is complex, contradictory, alluring and infinitely variable: heirs to the greatest empire of the ancient world but almost ungovernable; cradle of western civilization as well as the Mafia; maestros of modern design, mired in old-fashioned bureaucracy; epicentre of the Catholic Church and exemplars of la dolce vita. Where do you start? Giotto? Caravaggio? Murky Etruscan tombs or the mighty Roman Pantheon? Speak the Culture: Italy sifts through a sprawling 3,000 year saga and makes sense of it, dissecting architecture, music, food, art, literature, cinema, family and much more. Culture is covered in its broadest sense, extending into every aspect of Italian life--food and drink, religion, politics, sport, manners, character and so on. While the Italian peninsula has its ancient history, it's been a unified nation for less than 150 years. Lo Stivale, or the famous Boot, is young: the nuances of strong, surviving regional identities are important and revealed. Taken as a whole, Speak the Culture: Italy gives you an insight into what it means to be Italian, but it's also a book to dip into, to learn, for instance, about Giuseppe Verdi, Sophia Loren or Umberto Eco. Easily read and beautifully illustrated, this, the fourth in the Speak the Cultureseries, offers an intimate understanding of Italian life and culture for new residents, second home-owners, holidaymakers, business travelers, students and lovers of Italy everywhere.

Author: Gino Moliterno
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781003421771
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Over 900 entries offer rich, readable coverage of the diverse forms of post-1945 Italian culture, including history, society, art, film, food, sport, literature and music. Annotated further reading suggestions are given for English and Italian works.

Author: Michele Monserrati
Publisher: Transnational Italian Cultures
ISBN: 1789621070
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This book pursues the specific case of Italian travel narratives in the Far East, through a focus on the experience of Japan in works by writers who visited the Land of the Rising Sun beginning in the Meiji period (1868-1912) and during the concomitant opening of Japan's relations with the West. Drawing from the fields of Postcolonial and Transnational Studies, analysis of these texts explores one central question: what does it mean to imagine Japanese culture as contributing to Italian culture? Each author shares in common an attempt to disrupt ideas about dichotomies and unbalanced power relationships between East and West. Proposing the notion of 'relational Orientalism, ' this book suggests that Italian travelogues to Japan, in many cases, pursued the goal of building imaginary transnational communities, predicated on commonalities and integration, by claiming what they perceived as 'Oriental' as their own. In contrast with a long history of Western representations of Japan as inferior and irrational, Searching for Japan identifies a positive overarching attitude toward the Far East country in modern Italian culture. Expanding the horizon of Italian transnational networks, normally situated within the Southern European region, this book reinstates the existence of an alternative Euro-Asian axis, operating across Italian history.

Author: Charles L. Killinger
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313062803
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Americans have a voracious appetite for Italy. It remains a primary destination for travel, art history, cuisine, and more. Like no other source, Culture and Customs of Italy engagingly explains the scope of Italy and Italians today to students and general readers in one volume. As well, this book provides the needed context to understand the enormous contributions of Italian Americans in shaping the cultural heritage and current popular culture of the United States. It clearly summarizes the land, people, and history and relates the highlights of a culture that has excelled in so many areas, such as food, sports, literature, the arts, architecture and design, and cinema. The powerful roles of religion and thought, family and gender, holidays, leisure, and media in Italian life are treated in-depth in individual chapters as well. Crucial regional aspects and historical framing of all topics add to the authoritativeness. A chronology, glossary, photos, and maps round out the coverage.

Author: Giovanna P. Del Negro
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780773527393
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
An in-depth study detailing how members of a small Italian community use both traditional practices and expressive forms taken from popular culture to grapple with the social changes brought about by modernity.

Author: Edvige Giunta
Publisher: Modern Language Association of America
ISBN: 9781603290661
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Italian American studies has long been in conversation with American culture at large and is increasingly present in American universities and colleges. Yet once-celebrated works, such as Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete, have slipped from the public consciousness, and many scholars fear that representations of Italian Americans in popular culture, as in The Godfather films and the television series The Sopranos, have obscured genuine historical inquiry and understanding. This volume aims to foster a deeper and more complex appreciation for the importance of Italian American texts in the study of American culture.The editors open the volume by outlining the history of Italians in the United States and exploring the potential of literature and the arts to enable the recovery of a forgotten, even repressed, historical past. Over thirty scholars and teachers then present innovative ways of teaching Italian American texts and integrating them with other texts in courses ranging from American literature and history to multiethnic and women's studies. Contributors discuss Italian American fiction, poetry, memoir, oral history, and theater and performance. A section on film and television provides an overview of popular as well as lesser-known works and interrogates the stereotyped portrayals of Italian Americans. Other contributors offer historical and interdisciplinary approaches to Italian American texts that revolve around themes of race and gender politics, work and social class, and historical intersections. The volume concludes with a review of anthologies that can be used in teaching Italian American studies.

Author: Franco Fabbri
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136585532
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Made in Italy serves as a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Italian popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of Italian music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Italy and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance to Italian popular music. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music, followed by essays organized into thematic sections: Themes; Singer-Songwriters; and Stories.