Lexington Books
Pages: 254
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-7936-1154-3 • Hardback • February 2021 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
978-1-7936-1156-7 • Paperback • August 2022 • $41.99 • (£35.00)
978-1-7936-1155-0 • eBook • February 2021 • $39.50 • (£30.00)
Ryan Calabretta-Sajder is assistant professor of Italian at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Alan J. Gravano is assistant professor and writing center director at Rocky Mountain University.
Introduction
Ryan Calabretta-Sajder & Alan Gravano
Part I: What is Italian-American Cinema?- What is Italian about Sofia Coppola? Tracing Ethnicity in Third-Generation Feminist Cinema
Colleen Ryan- Edible Ethnicity: Italian-American Representations, Cinematic Style, and Ethnic Commodification in Stanley Tucci’s and Campbell Scott’s Big Night
Jonathan Cavallero- Questioning the Italian-American Palooka: From Definition of Race to Disabilities in Avildsen’s Rocky, Coogler’s Creed, and Caple Jr’s Creed II
Alan Gravano
Part II: Blurring the Lines between Italian and American on Screen- The Italian Pursuit of Hollywood
Mary Ann McDonald Carolan- Comedies of Identity: Italian Cinema and Television Narrating Italian Americans
Giuseppe Sorrentino
Part III: Re-Viewing Italian Americana on Screen: Reception and Reflections- Who’s Laughing at Whom? Masculinity, Humor, and Italian American Lives on Mainstream Television: Friends
Ryan Calabretta-Sajder- Tony Soprano Meets Furio Giunta: Italian Americans and the ‘Real’ Italians in The Sopranos
Francesco Chianese
Part IV: Italian Newspapers, Italian Cinema, and 2.0 Media- Serializing Italian American Futurities
Sarah Salter- Cinema Paradiso: Toronto’s Italian Language Cinemas and Distribution Networks
Jessica Leonora Whitehead and Paul S. Moore- Conversing about National Attributes Online: The Case of Italy and the U.S.
Giacomo Sproccati
Index
About the Contributors
Both building upon and moving beyond established critical paradigms, Italian Americans on Screen promotes crucial new lines of media inquiry. It legitimizes the contributions of non-Italian American filmmakers; touches upon long-ignored television programs, century-old newspapers and new media programs; and delves into recent exchanges between Italian and American media cultures. This collection is a fundamental (re)starting point for future research.— Giorgio Bertellini, University of Michigan
Departing from Robert Casillo’s strict-constructionist definition of an Italian-American cinema and media studies (an Italian-American director on an Italian-American subject), Ryan Calabretta-Sajder, Alan Gravano, and their many contributors have boldly expanded across “blurred boundaries,” generic, interdisciplinary, intersectional, and historical. Their innovative methods and wealth of fresh content will make this volume itself the marker of a new moment in Italian-American Studies.— John Paul Russo, University of Miami
Italian Americans on Screen: Challenging the Past, Re-Theorizing the Future is a thoughtful collection of dense essays that offers readers a look at some of the many approaches to the increasingly visible field of Italian American studies. It is a scholarly book for an academic audience that sets out to update and, in some cases, challenge existing parameters of the field, and in this way, I fully agree with the editors in their positioning of the volume as a clear successor to works by such foundational scholars as Anthony Tamburri, Fred Gardaphé, and Robert Casillo.
— Italian American Review