Partners

• Politecnico di Milano
• Università degli studi Roma Tre
• Università del Piemonte Orientale
• Università di Scienze Gastronomiche di Pollenzo

Politecnico di Milano

The Research Unit aims at reassessing a map of transatlantic exchanges, one that overcomes the traditional accounts which highlight the role and influence of the United States in the shaping of the Italian culture after WWII. The researchers will outline the presence and the influence of Italian design, fashion, architecture and urbanism in the American context, by mapping the venues and the circumstances of this exchange (e.g. travels, exhibits, conferences, publications), by identifying the main actors involved and their specific agendas, and by verifying the position of Italian design culture and products in the evolution of a shared imagination that has shaped American aesthetics and taste.

Università degli studi Roma Tre

L’Unità di Ricerca dell’Università Roma Tre si occupa prevalentemente di scambi transatlantici che riguardano il cinema e le arti visive. Lo fa però in una prospettiva multidisciplinare e di ampio respiro, che presta particolare attenzione alle relazioni tra produzione culturale e stili di vita, tra strutture testuali e contesti di ricezione, e tra oggetti materiali e forme del sentire. Per questa ragione l’Unità è composta di studiosi che attingono a metodologie diverse, e che si occupano di cinema, televisione, fotografia, video, arti visive e letteratura.

Università del Piemonte Orientale

The Research Unit will investigate the formal and informal venues, institutions, and channels that favoured the circulation of modern(ist) Italian art, literature, and music culture in the U.S., in order to both shed historical light on an understudied segment of twentieth-century transatlantic cultural history, and to philologically reconstruct cases of direct and indirect influence of Italian culture on American letters and cultural taste. Our hypothesis is that Italian literary and artistic networks have been more influential on American culture than has so far been acknowledged, and that precisely the late modernist recirculation in translation of Italian literature through American culture was crucial to the canonization of an internationally recognizable modern(ist) Italian canon.

Università di Scienze Gastronomiche di Pollenzo

The Research Unit will focus on the way in which Italian art, design, film, food, fashion, and popular music permeated U.S. consumer landscape, highlighting the connections between the spheres of production and the market, and providing an overview of the role played by Italian marketers of “Made in Italy” goods and lifestyles (Italian state and non-state actors and the Italian American community; i.e., Italian migrants to the United States and American-born descendants of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Italian migrants) and the role of receiving U.S. consumer institutions.