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  • Theresa Flanigan, "The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Florence" (Brepols, 2024)

    Theresa Flanigan, "The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Florence" (Brepols, 2024)
    2024/12/21
    Famous today for the shops lining its sloped street, the Ponte Vecchio is the last premodern bridge spanning the Arno River at Florence and one of the few remaining examples of the once more prevalent urbanized bridge type. Drawing from early Florentine chronicles and previously unpublished archival documents, The Ponte Vecchio: Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Florence (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Theresa Flanigan traces the history of the Ponte Vecchio, focusing on the current bridge’s construction after the flood of 1333. Much of the Ponte Vecchio’s original fourteenth-century appearance is now obscured beneath later accretions, often mistakenly interpreted as original to its medieval character. To the contrary, as argued in this book and illustrated by new reconstruction drawings, the mid-trecento Ponte Vecchio’s vaulted substructure was technically advanced, its urban superstructure was designed in accordance with contemporary Florentine urban planning strategies, and its "beautiful and honorable" appearance was maintained by government regulations. The documents also reveal new information about the commission and rental of its famous shops. Relying on these sources, this study offers a more complete history of the Ponte Vecchio, adding significantly to what is currently known about the bridge’s patronage and construction, as well as the aims of civic architecture and urban planning in late medieval Florence. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies
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    50 分
  • Emanuela Trevisan Semi, "Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers" (Centro Primo Levi, 2018)

    Emanuela Trevisan Semi, "Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers" (Centro Primo Levi, 2018)
    2024/12/14
    Emanuela Trevisan Semi’s Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers (Centro Primo Levi, 2018) is an insightful biographical study of a key figure among Ethiopian Jews of the early 20th Century. Taamrat Emmanuel was profoundly fascinated by European Jewish culture, by Western thought, and by Italy’s language and customs. …His free spirit, his independence and critical thinking, his suspicion of power, his sarcasm, and his irony flowered and were nurtured during his years in Italy as a young man. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies
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    1 時間 38 分
  • Henri Colt, "Becoming Modigliani" (Rake Press, 2024)

    Henri Colt, "Becoming Modigliani" (Rake Press, 2024)
    2024/12/09
    Becoming Modigliani (Rake Press, 2024) is a comprehensive biography that delves into the troubled life of the Jewish-Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.; Written by Dr. Henri Colt, an internationally recognized lung specialist, the book examines the artist's legend and Modigliani's creative journey from a medical perspective, from his birth in Livorno, Italy, to his tragic death in a paupers' hospital in Paris at the age of thirty-five, presumably from tuberculous meningitis. Becoming Modigliani sheds light on the young man's chronic illnesses, addictions, and relationships with friends and lovers as he navigated the vibrant yet challenging world of early twentieth-century Bohemian Paris. Beginning with "Modi's" birth in 1884, the narrative is divided into five parts, seamlessly blending biographical elements with medical insights and a critical analysis of Modigliani's work among some of the greatest artists of the time. It also provides thoughtful descriptions of a changing society governed by the impact of infectious diseases, war, and a flourishing of other creative geniuses such as Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Guillaume Apollinaire. With thirty-seven virtually standalone chapters, a preface and epilogue, three appendices, and a rich array of illustrations and references, this biography promises a profound and compassionate exploration of Modigliani's embattled world. In Becoming Modigliani, Dr. Colt's aim is to foster empathy and greater understanding by unraveling the intricate layers of Modigliani's existence. The result is a captivating and deeply researched tale that will resonate with a diverse audience of serious readers, art and medical history enthusiasts, sociologists, and anyone interested in the human spirit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies
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    57 分
  • F. K. Clementi, "South of My Dreams: Finding My American Home, A Memoir" (U South Carolina Press, 2024)

    F. K. Clementi, "South of My Dreams: Finding My American Home, A Memoir" (U South Carolina Press, 2024)
    2024/12/09
    South of My Dreams: Finding My American Home, A Memoir (U South Carolina Press, 2024) by F. K. Clementi follows the adventures and misadventures of Fania, a quixotic heroine, who dreamed all her life of making it big in New York City. Growing up in 1970s Italy, she felt constrained by a stale environment, a corrupt society, and a national culture hostile to women's independence. In pursuit of her childhood fantasy, and heavily influenced by Hollywood films, she leaves everything behind to begin her new life in New York, where she thinks her American Dream awaits. Instead, her American nightmare begins. South of My Dreams, published in 2024 by the University of South Carolina Press, is a story of irreparable trauma graced by intense love, faithful friendships, and inspiring mentors. Simultaneously merciless and humorous, Clementi's memoir is an inspiring account of a woman's disillusionment and personal rebirth in the polyglot neighborhoods of New York City, enriched by her portraits of life, love and work. South of My Dreams will resonate with all who fight hard for what they want and refuse to put aside their childhood dreams. Hosted by Robert W. Snyder, Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus of journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University. Email: rwsnyder@rutgers.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies
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    56 分
  • Denys Turner, "Dante the Theologian" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

    Denys Turner, "Dante the Theologian" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
    2024/11/27
    An understanding of Dante the theologian as distinct from Dante the poet has been neglected in an appreciation of Dante's work as a whole. That is the starting-point of Dante the Theologian (Cambridge UP, 2022). In giving theology fresh centrality, the author argues that theologians themselves should find, when they turn to Dante Alighieri, a compelling resource: whether they do so as historians of fourteenth-century Christian thought, or as interpreters of the religious issues of our own times. Expertly guiding his readers through the structure and content of the Commedia, Denys Turner reveals – in pacy and muscular prose – how Dante's aim for his masterpiece is to effect what it signifies. It is this quasi-sacramental character that renders it above all a theological treatise: whose meaning is intelligible only through poetry. Turner's Dante 'knows that both poetry and theology are necessary to the essential task and that each without the other is deficient.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies
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    1 時間 23 分
  • Nina Valbousquet, "Lukewarm Souls: The Vatican facing the Shoah" (La Découverte, 2024)

    Nina Valbousquet, "Lukewarm Souls: The Vatican facing the Shoah" (La Découverte, 2024)
    2024/11/26
    The exceptional opening of the archives of the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958) in 2020 did not end the controversies surrounding the silence of the pope in the face of Nazi atrocities. But, beyond the controversies, what do these new sources reveal? What do they contribute to our understanding of the Shoah, the Second World War and religious power? Do they allow us to grasp more finely the deep ambivalences of the Vatican, between charity and prejudice, in the face of anti-Jewish persecution? Based on three years of examining these considerable funds in Rome, Lukewarm Souls: The Vatican facing the Shoah (La Découverte, 2024) probes the motivations and dilemmas of the people involved in this story, their voices but also their silences. Going beyond a classic approach focused on the pope and diplomacy, this work sheds light on the political, humanitarian, religious and cultural issues of the Holy See's choices. The book raises this question in the long duration of relations between the Church and the Jews in order to evaluate the weight of a centuries-old culture of hostility in the Vatican's responses to anti-Semitic persecutions, before and during the war, but also after the Shoah. Has this unprecedented level of violence against a minority shaken the old bedrock of Christian anti-Judaism? Finally, by making the voices of those on the ground and the persecuted heard, in particular those of mixed Judeo-Christian families, this book questions more broadly the resilience of religion in the face of genocide and the capacity of our civil societies to respond to mass violence. This book was originally published in French as Les âmes tièdes: Le Vatican face à la Shoah (La Découverte, 2024) Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies
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    1 時間 4 分
  • Roberta Pergher, "Mussolini's Nation-Empire: Sovereignty and Settlement in Italy's Borderlands, 1922–1943" (Cambridge UP, 2017)

    Roberta Pergher, "Mussolini's Nation-Empire: Sovereignty and Settlement in Italy's Borderlands, 1922–1943" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
    2024/11/22
    With Mussolini's Nation-Empire: Sovereignty and Settlement in Italy's Borderlands, 1922–1943 (Cambridge UP, 2017), Roberta Pergher transforms our understanding of Fascist rule. Examining Fascist Italy's efforts to control the antipodes of its realm - the regions annexed in northern Italy after the First World War, and Italy's North African colonies - she shows how the regime struggled to imagine and implement Italian sovereignty over alien territories and peoples. Contrary to the claims of existing scholarship, Fascist settlement policy in these regions was not designed to solve an overpopulation problem, but to bolster Italian claims to rule in an era that prized self-determination and no longer saw imperial claims as self-evident. Professor Pergher explores the character and impact of Fascist settlement policy and the degree to which ordinary Italians participated in and challenged the regime's efforts to Italianize contested territory. Employing models and concepts from the historiography of empire, she shows how Fascist Italy rethought the boundaries between national and imperial rule. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies
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    1 時間 14 分
  • Dennis Romano, "Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City" (Oxford UP, 2023)

    Dennis Romano, "Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City" (Oxford UP, 2023)
    2024/11/20
    No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, "another world." During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of monarchs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became famous for its freewheeling lifestyle characterized by courtesans, casinos, and Carnival. When the city fell on hard times following the collapse of the Republic in 1797, a darker vision of Venice as a place of decay, disease, and death took hold. Today tourists from around the globe flock to the world heritage site as rising sea levels threaten its very foundations. Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City (Oxford UP, 2023) reveals the adaptations to its geographic setting that have been a constant feature of living on water from Venice's origins to the present. It examines the lives of the women and men, noble and common, rich and poor, Christian, Jew, and Muslim, who built not only the city but also its vast empire that stretched from Northern Italy to the eastern Mediterranean. It details the urban transformations that Venice underwent in response to environmental vulnerability, industrialization, and mass tourism. Alongside the city's commercial prominence has been its dramatically changing political role, including its power as a city-state, regional stronghold, and overseas empire, as well as its impact on the development of fascism. Throughout, Dennis Romano highlights the city's cultural achievements in architecture, painting, and music, particularly opera. This richly illustrated volume offers a stunning portrait of this most singular of cities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies
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    1 時間 9 分