American Studies in Italy

In the early 1990s, introducing the Journal of American History’s internationalization project, Maurizio Vaudagna urged his Italian colleagues and all “non-English-speaking American historians in Europe […] to abandon the melancholic but somewhat comfortable situation of being marginal in both worlds.” More than a decade later, now that studying American history has been enormously complicated by the seismic changes connected with the end of the Cold War, the tragedy of 9/11, and the attendan..

L'impresa come organismo

Two main interpretive insights lie at the heart of this research on the oil and energy company ERG, based on a vast original inquiry in unpublished records comprising family papers, company materials, business records from other companies and institutions (prominent among them British Petroleum International Ltd. and Banca Commerciale Italiana), as well as over two dozen interviews to the protagonists of this story. First, the one adopted here is essentially a view from above. It focuses on the entrepreneurial and managerial levels of the company, but also encompassing the broader economic, political, and social world in which ERG has operated and still operates. Second, there is a strong emphasis on the cultural aspects of the history of the firm, namely the strategic ideas, the values widely shared within the company and underpinning its day-by-day operations, and the image projected by ERG while addressing its customers, the consumers, and the society at large

Americanizing the World? U.S. Advertising Abroad in the American Century, the View from Italy

Largely based on unpublished company records, the article chronicles the evolution of J. Walter Thompson Italia, the Italian branch of the leading American advertising agency in the twentieth century, between Reconstruction and the “Hot Autumn.” First, it intends to offer additional material and insight on the actual, controversial impact of U.S. advertising in the country in the post-WWII era. Second, it suggests ways to further pursue Mary Nolan’s recent ambitious project of looking at transatlantic American-European relations as truly “hybridized,” that is, bidirectional and mutually influential – this especially as far as consumer culture is concerned. At the same time, it retains a more cautious and restrained notion of “Americanization.

Macchine, grandi magazzini, pubblicit\ue0. Gli Stati Uniti come nazione materiale tra Otto e Novecento

This article focuses on the concrete and symbolic process of construction, self-identification and self-presentation of U.S.-America as a “material” nation, a self-identification elaborated, albeit seldom by using this term, through the emphasis on its “exceptional” system of production, distribution, and consumption between the turn of the century and the immediate aftermath of WWI. It weaves together three, so far separate, streams of research such as the one on the American system of manufacturing, that on the emergence of modern patterns of distribution and consumption, and the literature on the sustained efforts at “exporting” abroad the “American dream”. It charts the evolution of the business practices and of the rhetoric used to forge the notion of “material nation,” the actors involved, the implications this had for the process of real and imagined nation-making and for the different social and cultural segments comprising the nation.L’articolo ha per oggetto il processo concreto e simbolico di costruzione reale e di proiezione identificativa degli Stati Uniti come “nazione materiale”, un processo elaborato, anche se raramente con l’uso di questo termine, attraverso l’enfasi sull’ “eccezionale” sistema di produzione, distribuzione e consumo fra la fine dell’Ottocento e l’immediato dopoguerra mondiale. L’articolo unisce tre aree di ricerca, fino a questo momento separate, quali le indagini sul cosiddetto “American system of manufacturing”, l’emergente letteratura sui moderni sistemi di distribuzione e consumo, e la letteratura sugli sforzi di “esportare” all’estero il “sogno americano”. Il saggio ricostruisce l’evoluzione della pratiche d’affari e della retorica usata per forgiare la nozione di “nazione materiale”, gli attori coinvolti e le implicazioni che il processo ebbe per i diversi segmenti sociali e culturali che formavano la nazione

Macchine, grandi magazzini, pubblicità. Gli Stati Uniti come nazione materiale tra Otto e Novecento

This article focuses on the concrete and symbolic process of construction, self-identification and self-presentation of U.S.-America as a “material” nation, a self-identification elaborated, albeit seldom by using this term, through the emphasis on its “exceptional” system of production, distribution, and consumption between the turn of the century and the immediate aftermath of WWI. It weaves together three, so far separate, streams of research such as the one on the American system of manufacturing, that on the emergence of modern patterns of distribution and consumption, and the literature on the sustained efforts at “exporting” abroad the “American dream”. It charts the evolution of the business practices and of the rhetoric used to forge the notion of “material nation,” the actors involved, the implications this had for the process of real and imagined nation-making and for the different social and cultural segments comprising the nation.L’articolo ha per oggetto il processo concreto e simbolico di costruzione reale e di proiezione identificativa degli Stati Uniti come “nazione materiale”, un processo elaborato, anche se raramente con l’uso di questo termine, attraverso l’enfasi sull’ “eccezionale” sistema di produzione, distribuzione e consumo fra la fine dell’Ottocento e l’immediato dopoguerra mondiale. L’articolo unisce tre aree di ricerca, fino a questo momento separate, quali le indagini sul cosiddetto “American system of manufacturing”, l’emergente letteratura sui moderni sistemi di distribuzione e consumo, e la letteratura sugli sforzi di “esportare” all’estero il “sogno americano”. Il saggio ricostruisce l’evoluzione della pratiche d’affari e della retorica usata per forgiare la nozione di “nazione materiale”, gli attori coinvolti e le implicazioni che il processo ebbe per i diversi segmenti sociali e culturali che formavano la nazione

Between international and domestic public relations: cultural diplomacy and race in the 1949 ATMA \u201cRound-the-World Tour

The article deals with the participation of a couple of African American leaders into the America's Town Meeting of the Air Round the World Tour of 1949. It shows how U.S. cultural diploamcy on the air intersected with African American efforts at advancing their cause against the backdrop of the early Cold War. Based on rare and long forgotten archival records, it adds significantly to the literature on cultural diplomacy and race during the early stages of the Cold War