The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to co-sponsor with the Nanovic Institute for European Studies a lecture by Professor Guido Bonsaver (University of Oxford) titled:
Italian Culture Between Belle Époque and Jazz Age
During the decades between Italian unification in 1861 and the implosion of Mussolini’s Fascist regime in July 1943, the traditional influence of French culture on Italy’s educated elite began to gradually shift. This change can be attributed to the emergence of the USA as a new model of modernity in Italy, one that had the propensity to engage with all social classes. This phenomenon developed in tandem with Italy’s large-scale social and economic modernization, as well as with the unprecedented explosion of mass culture which took place in the decades between the end of the 19th century and the Fascist years. While scholarship to date has focused on the pervasive influence of American culture in the aftermath of the Second World War, Professor Bonsaver's research outlines the story of its arrival in a number of different fields – the press, highbrow and popular literature, cinema, music - at a time when the French model was still dominant and Italians were beginning to embrace modernity and mass culture.
This critical argument is at the heart of Professor Bonsaver's recently published monograph: America in Italian Culture: The Rise of a New Model of Modernity, 1861-1943 (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Guido Bonsaver is Professor of Italian Cultural History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Pembroke College. He is the author and editor of more than a dozen academic books, including his most recent book America in Italian Culture: The Rise of a New Model of Modernity, 1861-1943 (Oxford University Press, 2023). In 2012 Professor Bonsaver was appointed as an Ufficiale dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica by the Italian government in recognition of his contribution to Italian culture. He has collaborated with a variety of media outlets such as the BBC and RAI, on both radio and tv channels, in addition to various specialist and generalist journals. His research work centres on Italy's post-Unification cultural history, with a particular interest in literature and cinema.
Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.