Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures, December 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris, 1901. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

Thesis--Greifswald. / "Verzeichnis der angeführten Literatur": p. v-vii.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Art History, Aug. 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-275). Also available on the Interrnet.

Revision of the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-248) and index.

Not available / text

While the themes of garbage and refuse pervade many of the most important works of Italian cinema from the era of Neorealism to the present, thus far no scholarly attempts have been made to examine the commonalities germane to their portrayal and their relationship to larger questions of Italian cultural trends. The present study explores how filmmakers' depiction of the residual is synecdochic of an artistic vision that endeavors to capture reality at its most unprepared and, subsequently, comes to represent the increasing complexity of the mimetic undertaking in an Italian society thrust rapidly into the late stages of capitalism. / Romance Languages and Literatures

<p>This thesis explores the phenomenon of canonical revision by migrant and postcolonial writers in Spain and Italy. By recycling, rewriting or revising canonical works or film movements of the host countries in which they work, these writers call attention to Spain's and Italy's concerted attempts to perform a European identity. In doing so, they simultaneously challenge the literary categories into which they have been inserted, such as "migrant" or "Hispano-African" literatures. Rather, these writers illustrate that these categories, too, work in tandem with other forms of exclusion to buttress, rather than challenge, Spain and Italy's nationalist attempts to overcome their-"South-ness" and perform European-ness.</p><p>The thesis consists of four chapters, each focusing on a different migrant writer. The first chapter examines how Amara Lakhous, an Algerian-Italian writer, models his novels after the film genre of the commedia all'italiana in order to make national and ethnic identity categories look like theater and spectacle. The second chapter analyzes how Najat el-Hachmi, a Catalan writer of Moroccan birth, rewrites a classic of Catalan literature (Mercé Rodoreda's The Time of the Doves) to challenge the oppositions between "immigrant" and "native," while also articulating a transnational, feminist critique of patriarchy. The third chapter studies how Francisco Zamora Loboch, an Equatorial Guinean exile in Spain, re-interprets Don Quijote as an iconically anti-racist text. The fourth chapter studies how Jadelin Mabiala Gangbo, a Congolese-Italian writer, recycles Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet in his novel Rometta e Giulieo in order to challenge the polarized dichotomy of "migrant" and "canonical" writing.</p><p>My work both draws on and critiques several, interrelated fields of scholarship, including Southern European studies, Afro-European studies, Mediterranean studies, migrant literary studies, and postcolonial studies, as well as criticism pertaining to specific canonical works these writers revisit in their works. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate that a critique of racism or xenophobia in contemporary Spain or Italy necessitates not only a critique of the Global South against Eurocentrism, but also a simultaneous critique of Europe's North-South divide.</p> / Dissertation

Lyric Possession: A Dramatization of Italian Tarantism in Song is a one-act creative project informed by research exploring the formation and evolution of Mediterranean musical, religious, and cultural identity through the practice of the tarantella. The tarantella is a musical form woven into the very fabric of the Mediterranean cultural landscape, in song, dance and folkloric history. The transformation of scholarly perspectives into dramatic format, recalling traditional Italian folk drama, illuminates the history and cultural relevance of the tarantella through the lives and songs of its practitioners. In the Salentine peninsula where magic and religion collide, the ritualistic healing practice of the tarantella has served as a musical mechanism for dealing with reactions to socio-cultural issues such as repression of sexual identity, disenfranchisement, poverty and powerlessness experienced by Southern Italian women for centuries. Believed to have been a reaction to the venom of the indigenous Italian tarantula or wolf spider, peasant women in the Salentine peninsula exhibited poisoning-like symptoms and possession by spider spirits cured only through the performance of the tarantella and through the intercession of St. Paul, the patron saint of those who perform the tarantella, the tarantists. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, to examine the musical manifestations of the Tarantella as informed by its folkloric history, particularly in consideration of gender marginalization and female power. Second, to create a musical drama that portrays the music of the tarantella in a dramatic context that will reflect its folkloric history, scholarship by the anthropological, ethnomusicological and psychological communities in the form of the ritual itself. The project proposes that the complex, multifaceted history of the tarantella may best be captured and expressed through practice via a recreation of the ritual in the form of a musical drama.

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