Italian items in domestic spaces Representing Italianness through objects in the fiction of Helen Barolini and Chiara Barzini

In their migration, people carry objects with them, and relocate them through physical spaces and across cultural boundaries. Handed down through generations, these objects become signs of ethnicity beyond their appearance and purpose. Examining the variety of the literary representations of objects and their subsequent translation contributes to the analysis of how material culture migrates within distant cultural systems and from one language to another. This essay focuses on domestic objects depicted by two Italian authors writing about the experience of a migrant coming-of-age in the United States: Helen Barolini and Chiara Barzini. Using diverse multilingual and (self-)translation strategies, they highlight through cultural translation the difficulties of bridging their Italian and American selfhood within an Italian household relocated abroad. In doing so, their relationship with objects underlines how their diasporic experience is entangled with their achievement of self-confidence and independence as women within the context of the Italian diaspora

Transmediality as a transcultural dialogue: Pasolini between the Other and the Self

Working on Pier Paolo Pasolini in the international context of Italian studies alongside the context of Italian studies defined by national borders often gives the impression of exploring two different authors. On the one hand, this can be attributed to the specific and original nature of Pasolini’s oeuvre, based on the contradictory and often inconsistent thought carried out by the author. On the other hand, Pasolini’s case makes evident that there is still a lot of work to be done on the transnational turn often auspicated in the wider and international field of Italian studies, to which Pasolini’s work may contribute crucially, highlighting many ways to bridge mainland Italy with the Italies projected abroad. Consequently, this contribution follows the inspiration behind this bilingual collection of essays and other recent collective publications

Teorizzare un umorismo ipermoderno: il caso Walter Siti

What we talk about when we talk about humor? To what extent can one talk today about humor? The concept that Luigi Pirandello defined as the ability to express «the feeling of the opposite» (1908) appears as an essential requirement to the contemporary writer. It is a necessary tool for whom aims to represent the society of the divided subject, which is supported by an ideology grounded and built on the ambivalence of the message and the inability of mainstream audience to decode it. By analyzing texts from the major phase of Walter Siti’s oeuvre – the five “autofictional” novels, i. e. Scuola di nudo (1994), Un dolore normale (1997), Troppi paradisi (2006), Resistere non serve a niente (2012), Exit Strategy (2014) – in comparison with works from other contemporary writers, such as Philip Roth, Don DeLillo and Jonathan Coe, as well as referring to the humoristic lesson provided by Pier Paolo Pasolini, this article attempts to theorize a hypermodern humor. It is a type of humor that paradoxically keeps many features from modern humor, even if not necessarily the ability to raise a laugh. Cosa intendiamo con umorismo, e in che misura possiamo parlare di umorismo, oggi? Il concetto che durante il modernismo Luigi Pirandello ha definito come capacità di saper esprimere il «sentimento del contrario» (1908) appare come requisito fondamentale per lo scrittore contemporaneo: uno strumento necessario a chi si adoperi a appresentare la società del soggetto scisso, retta da un’ideologia che si fonda e si costruisce sull’ambivalenza dei messaggi e sulla progressiva incapacità del pubblico medio di riuscire a decifrarli. In questo articolo, attraverso una lettura dei testi tratti da quella che ho individuato come fase maggiore dell’opera di Walter Siti  – i cinque romanzi dell’”autofiction”: Scuola di nudo (1994), Un dolore normale (1997), Troppi paradisi (2006), Resistere non serve a niente (2012), Exit Strategy (2014) – in comparazione con alcuni scrittori a lui contemporanei, ossia Philip Roth, Don DeLillo e Jonathan Coe, nonché attraverso il recupero della lezione umoristica pasoliniana, è mia intenzione ragionare su una possibile teorizzazione di un umorismo ipermoderno, che, paradossalmente, ha conservato le caratteristiche dell’umorismo così come è stato trasmesso dal modernismo, tuttavia anteponendole alla capacità di provocare il riso

Discontinuous permeable adsorptive barrier design and cost analysis: a methodological approach to optimisation

The following paper presents a method to optimise a discontinuous permeable adsorptive barrier (PAB-D). This method is based on the comparison of different PAB-D configurations obtained by changing some of the main PAB-D design parameters. In particular, the well diameters, the distance between two consecutive passive wells and the distance between two consecutive well lines were varied, and a cost analysis for each configuration was carried out in order to define the best performing and most cost-effective PAB-D configuration. As a case study, a benzene-contaminated aquifer located in an urban area in the north of Naples (Italy) was considered. The PAB-D configuration with a well diameter of 0.8 m resulted the best optimised layout in terms of performance and cost-effectiveness. Moreover, in order to identify the best configuration for the remediation of the aquifer studied, a comparison with a continuous permeable adsorptive barrier (PAB-C) was added. In particular, this showed a 40% reduction of the total remediation costs by using the optimised PAB-D