This illustrated introduction to the study of modern Italian culture brings together specialists in the fields of language; politics; religious, ethnic, and gender identities; the mass media; cultural policy; and movie stars. In four thematic sections, the contributors elucidate their own slice of Italian culture. Geographies questions received notions of the Italian nation, the family, the "South" and corruption; it also looks at anthropological approaches to culture and at Italy's linguistic pluralism. Identities examines gender, religion, politics, and ethnicity as a means by which people...

A master of modern European cinema and a key figure in the Italian neorealist movement, Roberto Rossellini had one of the longest and most varied careers of all major directors. This book presents an overview of Rossellini's works and examines key issues and themes covering various phases of his career.

This study examines "Rome Open City" and its place in Roberto Rossellini's career. The film is based on events that took place in Nazi occupied Italy 1944, one year before the film was made. The author argues that the film has value as a commerorative piece and as a documentary record.

Italy's Margins explores how certain places and social groups in Italy have been defined as marginal or peripheral since unification. This marginalization involves not only concrete policies but also ways of perceiving people and places as outside society's centre. The author looks closely at how photography and writing have supported political and social exclusion and, conversely, how they have been enlisted to challenge it. Five cases are examined: the peripheries of Italy's major cities after unification; its East African colonies in the 1930s; the less developed areas of its south in the...