Transnational Italies: A Dialogue
The Notre Dame Center for Italian Studies and Rome Global Gateway are pleased to invite you to a conversation on transnational intersections in post-Fascist and postcolonial Italy. Jessica L. Harris (St. John's University, American Academy in Rome) will discuss the experience of African American women entertainers in Italy after World War II and Luca Peretti (University of Warwick) will examine representations of colonialism in Italian media of the 1960s.
This event is co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Center for Italian Studies, the Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway, the American Academy in Rome and the British School at Rome.
This is a hybrid event. Register here to participate.
Speakers:
Jessica L. Harris (St John's University - American Academy in Rome)
"African American Women, Italy, and the Media: An Historical and Contemporary Perspective"
Jessica L. Harris is the recipient of the 2024 Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies at the American Academy in Rome and Assistant Professor in the Department of History at St. John’s University. She is a scholar of Modern Italy, African American History, Black Europe, and 20th century U.S. and the World, with a particular interest in gender and race, their intersection with material culture, and the subsequent effect on group identities. Her current project explores the place of female Blackness in post-Fascist Italy through the examination of the lives and positionality of five African American female entertainers who worked in Italy in the second half of the twentieth century. Jessica’s publications include Italian Women’s Experiences with American Consumer Culture, 1945-1975: The Italian Mrs. Consumer (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and articles in Annali d'Italianistica (forthcoming), Modern Italy, and Imago. Studi di cinema e media.
Luca Peretti (University of Warwick)
"'They have lost their colonies and are now all anticolonialists': Anticolonialism and media in Italy in the 1960s"
Luca Peretti is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick. He wrote the book Un dio nero un diavolo bianco. Storia di un film non fatto tra Algeria, Eni, Solinas e Sartre (Marsilio, 2023) and co-edited volumes on terrorism and cinema (Postmedia books, 2014), Pier Pasolini Pasolini (Bloomsbury Academics, 2018), and on Italian cinema and Algeria (AAMOD, 2022). His work has appeared in, among others, Senses of Cinema, The Italianist: Film Issue, Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, Historical Materialism, Comunicazioni Sociali, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. He is one of the editor-in-chiefs of Cinema e Storia. He wrote and co-produced the film Mister Wonderland (dir. Valerio Ciriaci, 2019) and collaborates with newspapers and magazines.
Register here to participate