Multi/Interdisciplinary Investigations into Italy & World War I
Annual Conference of the American Historical Association;
a sponsored session of the Society of Italian Historical Studies
New York City
January, 2-5, 2015
Panel Description
2015 marks the 100th anniversary of Italy's entry into World War I. The theme of the January 2015 conference of the American Historical Association (AHA) is “History and the Other Disciplines” (http://bit.ly/1g3FAPb). Specifically, the AHA invites “participants to share their experiences of encounters with other disciplines: how these encounters affected their teaching, research, writing, and public interpretive work, and how they reshaped their fields over time.” Additionally, it encourages “panels that explore some substantive historical terrain or topic situated at the intersection of history and another discipline, as well as panels that bring historians into conversation with colleagues from other disciplines in order to reflect on the pleasures and frustrations of cross-disciplinary collaboration.”
To this end, this panel was put together to focus on Italy and the World War I era from the multi/interdisciplinary perspectives, and the resulting challenges and opportunities of such approaches. Ernest Ialongo, an historian, discusses the use of Futurist art in narrating the evolution of Futurist politics in the years leading up to and including World War I. Cristina Beltrami, an art historian, traces the evolution of World War I memorials in Italy and ties this evolution to the transition from Liberalism to Fascism. Jacqueline Reich, a film scholar, investigates the political and military usages of the film Maciste alpino during World War I. And, Alessia Palanti, another film scholar, focuses on Italian women filmmakers during the war and how their films reveal the psychological impact of the conflict.
Participants:
Chair:
Adrian Lyttelton, Professor of European Studies, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University
Papers/Panelists:
“Futurism from Foundation to World War: The Art and Politics of an Avant-Garde Movement”
Ernest Ialongo, Assistant Professor of History, Hostos Community College, CUNY; Chair, Columbia University Seminar in Modern Italian Studies
“Maciste Goes to War: Maciste alpino (1916)”
Jacqueline Reich, Professor & Chair of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University
"Cinema: femminile; plurale--Italian Women Filmmakers through the Great War"
Alessia Palanti, PhD Candidate, Columbia University, Department of Italian
Comment: Adrian Lyttelton
Conference Program: https://aha.confex.com/aha/2015/webprogram/Session12453.html
Published Papers:
Published essays from the panel are available in the Journal of Modern Italian Studies 21, #2 (2016), at: