The Freak and ‘Disabled’ Multiculturality

Differently from positive visions of multiculturality as the richness of American diversity, in this article I tackle multiculturalism as one of the elements of the category of the freak, where cultural, ethnic and racial difference coincided with disability and both concocted to fence off diversity in American society. I understand the freak as a critical multicultural field because of its recruitment processes, as evidenced by the case of the Italian Tocci brothers, but also as a place of confinement and exoticization of American citizens who, as a consequence of their disability, came to inhabit a transnational category used to police concepts of ‘normal’ American masculinity and femininity. In this reading, multiculturality is understood hence as a fabrication that veils processes of enfreakment

The Literary Utopias of Cultural Communities, 1790-1910. Eds. Marguérite Corporaal and Evert Jan van Leeuwen.

 “Utopia,” from the combination of the Greek diminutive plural of topos, that is “place,” and the pun between the two prefixes ou, “non-,” and eu, “good,” is a term that is not-so-often used in the twenty-first century. It rather reminds us of bygone centuries, when scientists, philosophers, publishers or writers had time to dream and discuss of possible societies, and were not forced to face the disillusionments of a post-modern and a post-industrial society in which scholars are more and mo..

The Literary Utopias of Cultural Communities, 1790-1910. Eds. Marguérite Corporaal and Evert Jan van Leeuwen.

 “Utopia,” from the combination of the Greek diminutive plural of topos, that is “place,” and the pun between the two prefixes ou, “non-,” and eu, “good,” is a term that is not-so-often used in the twenty-first century. It rather reminds us of bygone centuries, when scientists, philosophers, publishers or writers had time to dream and discuss of possible societies, and were not forced to face the disillusionments of a post-modern and a post-industrial society in which scholars are more and mo..

On Westerns and Settler Migration: A Reading of “Meek’s Cutoff” by Kelly Reichardt

This essay examines Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010) as an example of ‘slow’ and feminist western film. In particular, it shows how, by applying an “austere” aesthetics (Gorfinkel 2015) and by giving prominence to the act of migrating rather than the act of settling, the movie rewrites pioneer history, offering an example of what Catherine Russel defines “migrant cinema” (2017). Because of the visual centrality given to the act of migration, with its feeling of geographical displacement and psychological apprehension, the movie situates itself alongside other contemporary films representing present-day migration, and questions the traditional western movement as a travel of self-confident expansion and colonization. In this sense, Meek’s Cutoff can be rather read as a “decolonizing” (Trimble Young and Veracini 2017) rendition of white migration in the West, mostly achieved by including two destabilizing characters within the group of white settlers, Emily Tetherow and a Cayuse Indian, who trigger reflections on matters of knowledge and alliances

Nuovi “passaggi” fra Africa e Stati Uniti: un’introduzione

This article explores the relationship between Africa and the United States, and how it has been changing because of the so called “new African diaspora” in the US. Whereas the historical transatlantic diaspora was marked by slavery, the recent migration from Africa at the beginning of the 2000s triggers new reflections, especially in relation to how blackness is perceived and represented in the United States. In particular, this essay considers the literary production of the new black diasporic writers such as Chris Abani, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edi Edugyan, and others, and how their works highlight a double movement with respect to the US African American literary tradition: a desire of closeness and inclusion, and of explicit difference, often due to a different understanding of race

Cinema, Migration, and the US: An Introduction

Introduction to the Special Section “Cinema, Migration, and the US.