Beyond the Piazza

The volume is a collection of essays focussing on the cultural construction, perception and representation of public and private spaces in 20th and 21st century Italian culture. Through the study of a variety of spaces, this book provides an exploration of the notions of private self and public sphere and considers their interaction. It focuses on areas where the spheres of public and private merge, meet or clash, and assesses the role played by spatial practices and representations in the complex coexistence, mutual definition and constant negotiation of public and private. It offers a variety of approaches, ranging from literature to history, art history, film and cultural studies. It brings to the fore issues relating to the production of space, such as perceptions and definitions of the self and privacy, the politics of the private and public, gender representations, the construction of collective and cultural memory, and the relationship between the individual and the urban environmnent.

Simona Storchi is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Leicester. She has published on Italian Modernism and the Avant-garde, the relationship between Fascism and culture, 20th century Italian literature, art criticism, periodicals, and the relationship between classicism and modernity. She co-curated the exhibition Against Mussolini. Art and the Fall of a Dictator (London, 2010).

Contents: Harald Hendrix: Italian Writers' Houses and the Shift from Private to Public - Loredana Polezzi: Layers of Intimacy. Openness and Segregation in Narrative Representations of the Colonial House - Simona Storchi: «La casa all'italiana». Domus and the Ideology of the Domestic Interior in 1930s Italy - Emily Braun: From the Drawing Room to the Piazza. Anna Kuliscioff, Margherita Sarfatti and the Salon Tradition in Italy - Danielle Hipkins: The Brothel in Italian Cinema, 1959-1960. Creating a Space for Female Spectators - Patrizia Sambuco: Construction and Self-Construction in Elena Ferrante's Gendered Space - Charlotte Ross: Queering Spaces in Turin - Laura Rorato: Private and Public Spaces. The Anatomy of three Italian Cities: Caserta, Bologna, Milan - Lesley Caldwell: The Ultimate Public Space. Filming on the Campidoglio - Stephen Gundle: The Via Veneto by Night. Space and «Unreal Estate» in the Rome of the Dolce Vita - John Foot: Sites of Memory? The Superga Disaster and the Myth of Il Grande Torino - Monica Jansen/Inge Lanslots: Piazza Alimonda's Open Wound: The Memory Site of Genoa 2001.