Mediating the Risorgimento / Risorgimento Mediato

The international symposium Mediating the Risorgimento / Risorgimento mediato was held at Brown University on April 14 and 15, 2011, to mark the occasion of the 150th-anniversary of united Italy. The topic of the symposium was the role of old and new media (so defined within the framework of their time) in the production and dissemination of an “imagined Italian community” and the articulation of a national discourse, against the backdrop of 19th-century Europe.

Scholars from Italy, the UK and the US were invited to address the question of how different media (illustrated news, opera and theatre, painting and photography, panoramas and film) contributed to shaping the social and political relationships and strategies that resulted in Italian unification, gave voice and expression to national narratives and iconographies, provided a bridge between elite and popular culture, and influenced post-unitarian debates. A selection of the papers presented at the symposium are collected in the Journal of Modern Italian Studies, volume 18, issue 2 (2013), edited by John Davis (University of Connecticut at Storrs) and Massimo Riva (Brown University) and published by Taylor & Francis.

The symposium consisted of four sessions: “Risorgimento in Print,” chaired by John Davis; “Visual Cultures of the Risorgimento,” chaired by Emily Braun (CUNY); “Performing the Risorgimento,” chaired by Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Brown); and “Cinema and pre-cinema of the Risorgimento,” chaired by Massimo Riva. A round-table discussion, “Mediating the Risorgimento: Past and Present,” chaired by David Kertzer (Brown) concluded the event.

Conference Abstracts

  • Anna Ottani Cavina (Fondazione Federico Zeri, Università di Bologna): "Il paesaggio dei Macchiaioli. Un percorso verso il Moderno." View Abstract
  • Gian Luca Fruci (Dipartimento di Storia, Università di Pisa): “The Two Faces of Daniele Manin. French Republican Celebrity and Italian Monarchic Icon (1848-1880)” View Abstract
  • Axel Korner (University College London): "Masked faces. Verdi, Uncle Tom and the Unification of Italy" View Abstract
  • Giovanni Lasi (Università di Bologna): “La presa di Roma e Il piccolo garibaldino: Risorgimento e identità nazionale nel cinema italiano delle origini” View Abstract
  • Roberta J. M. Olson (Curator of Drawings, The New-York Historical Society): “Art for a New Audience in the Risorgimento: Past and Present Create Future Perfect?” View Abstract
  • Alessio Petrizzo (Università di Padova): "Mascolinità, violenza, sacrificio. Francesco Ferrucci e la costruzione dell'eroe nel Risorgimento". View Abstract
  • Mary Ann Smart (University of California at Berkeley): "Of Censorship, Plagiarism, and Backshadowing; or how political were Verdi’s operas?" View Abstract
  • Marcella Sutcliffe (University of Newcastle): “Marketing Garibaldi panoramas and other visual spectacles to the British audiences: contrasting fortunes of seasoned and less seasoned impresarios” View Abstract