Reviews by Valentina Romanzi
ContactZone, 2022
Review of Mark Bould's The Anthropocene Unconscious
If - Insolito e Fantastico, 2021
Recensione del romanzo "Avrai i miei occhi" di Nicoletta Vallorani
Iperstoria, 2021
Review of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures by André Brock
Ad Alta, 2020
In the last chapter of his 2007 bestseller Call Me By Your Name, titled “Ghost Spots,” André Acim... more In the last chapter of his 2007 bestseller Call Me By Your Name, titled “Ghost Spots,” André Aciman introduces a reflection on what he terms ‘parallel lives.’ The two protagonists, Elio and Oliver, had been lovers for a short time in the 1980s, when the latter stayed with the former’s family on a university program in Italy. They meet again after fifteen years and they muse on the different paths their lives have taken, and on how things might have been if they made different choices.
Find Me, the 2019 sequel to Call Me By Your Name, picks up this thread and explores the parallel lives of the characters of the first book after Oliver returns to the United States, leaving Elio in Italy.
Iperstoria, 2017
La raccolta di racconti Uè Paisà, curata e tradotta da Carla Francellini, è degna di nota sia per... more La raccolta di racconti Uè Paisà, curata e tradotta da Carla Francellini, è degna di nota sia per l'intento iniziale sia per il risultato ottenuto. Contiene tredici racconti inediti di scrittori, figli o nipoti di italiani emigrati negli Stati Uniti, e tocca temi quanto mai disparati.
Iperstoria, 2019
Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America, Brett Story illustra le molteplici... more Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America, Brett Story illustra le molteplici modalità con cui il carcere supera i confini della prigione per riversarsi nella società. Presentando casi di studio che
attraversano il territorio americano, Brett descrive il carcere come spazio fisico e sociale, non solo all’interno degli istituti di pena ma anche e soprattutto in forma diffusa, nelle grandi metropoli e nelle piccole realtà
statunitensi.
Iperstoria, 2019
Sometimes it is in the often-overlooked detail that one encounters evidence of quality. In Ruha B... more Sometimes it is in the often-overlooked detail that one encounters evidence of quality. In Ruha Benjamin's latest work Captivating Technology. Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life it is possible to find clear signs of that from the very cover. A woman of colour is looking away from the observer, her mouth open.
Iperstoria, 2019
Questo lavoro di Pilar Martinez Benedí si apre con una visione d'insieme sul panorama delle (neur... more Questo lavoro di Pilar Martinez Benedí si apre con una visione d'insieme sul panorama delle (neuro)scienze cognitive in relazione agli studi letterari, in cui l'autrice tenta di evidenziare le più importanti tappe di un'indagine, per sua stessa ammissione, dai caratteri ancora piuttosto difficili da delineare.
Iperstoria, 2018
With his book Composition, Creative Writing Studies, and the Digital Humanities, Adam Koehler set... more With his book Composition, Creative Writing Studies, and the Digital Humanities, Adam Koehler sets himself a challenging goal: exploring the often contrasting yet somewhat overlapping fields of Composition and Creative Writing studies in order to find common ground on which to start developing a new discipline, that he names "Critical-Creative Composition".
Iperstoria, 2016
The Body of Property, by Chad Luck, is without any doubt a peculiar book. Its main aim is to join... more The Body of Property, by Chad Luck, is without any doubt a peculiar book. Its main aim is to join two seemingly very separate fields of knowledge - law and literature - in an organic and coherent critical work that revolves around antebellum American fiction and the fundamental yet quite ephemeral concept of property.
Iperstoria, 2015
Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1984, Democracy è un romanzo che colpisce tanto per la vicenda ... more Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1984, Democracy è un romanzo che colpisce tanto per la vicenda quanto per il modo in cui essa è presentata al lettore. La narrazione frammentata, l'inusuale voce narrante, i ricorrenti riferimenti metanarrativi la rendono un'opera che ben si inserisce nel panorama della letteratura postmoderna, dove notevole attenzione è posta sulla forma piuttosto che sul contenuto.
Translations by Valentina Romanzi
Iperstoria, 2023
An Interview with poet and anthropologist Jenny L. Davis and Four Poems from “Trickster Academy”
Iperstoria, 2019
Poeta e scrittore di fama internazionale, Jimmy Santiago Baca (1952-) non ha imparato a scrivere ... more Poeta e scrittore di fama internazionale, Jimmy Santiago Baca (1952-) non ha imparato a scrivere che in età adulta. Ha vissuto in un orfanotrofio nel New Mexico dall'età di cinque anni fino a quando, a undici, non è scappato per poi vivere di espedienti per strada.
Ácoma, 2018
"Veniamo descritti in senso razziale così spesso, come gruppo" dice nel suo spettacolo il comico ... more "Veniamo descritti in senso razziale così spesso, come gruppo" dice nel suo spettacolo il comico arabo-americano Dean Obeidallah, "che non molto tempo fa ho sentito un giornalista della CNN usare l'espressione 'Gli arabi sono i nuovi neri'. Gli arabi sono i nuovi neri".
Iperstoria, 2018
Marilyn Jean Buck è morta il 3 agosto 2010, a sessantadue anni, tre
settimane dopo essere uscita... more Marilyn Jean Buck è morta il 3 agosto 2010, a sessantadue anni, tre
settimane dopo essere uscita di prigione. Era la figlia di un predicatore texano e aveva scontato venticinque degli ottanta anni in carcere a cui era stata condannata. Aveva trascorso molti di quegli anni in una cella per tre persone nella prigione federale di Dublin, in California
Iperstoria, 2016
La messa al bando delle lingue minoritarie ha implicazioni etiche profonde che vanno oltre il dib... more La messa al bando delle lingue minoritarie ha implicazioni etiche profonde che vanno oltre il dibattito pedagogico, nel quale si contrappone normalmente English only, l’uso esclusivo dell’inglese, a quello della
lingua madre.
Iperstoria, 2015
La sorveglianza è diventata un tratto sempre più comune della vita di tutti i giorni, messa in at... more La sorveglianza è diventata un tratto sempre più comune della vita di tutti i giorni, messa in atto sia dallo stato sia dalla più ampia sfera delle grandi società capitalistiche. Questa fusione registra la trasformazione dello stato politico nello stato controllato dalI’interesse economico e dell’economia di mercato in un’economia criminale.
Papers by Valentina Romanzi
JAAAS, 2023
Naughty Dog's video games The Last of Us (2013) and The Last of Us Part II (2020) stage a complex... more Naughty Dog's video games The Last of Us (2013) and The Last of Us Part II (2020) stage a complex tale of human drama in post-apocalyptic settings, retrieving several features of the Frontier myth. In this essay, I argue that the characters' narrative arc is a post-apocalyptic, American Frontier tale in which the individual and collective levels clash (as they often do in such stories), generating moral challenges for the characters and, in turn, for the player controlling them. Thus, I set out to analyze how TLOU draws on and subverts some of the traditional tropes and characters belonging to the classic American Frontier tradition, investigating a number of issues related to individualism, collectivism, violence, and selfishness.
C’era una volta (uno scrittore) a Hollywood, 2024
In questo saggio intendo esplorare come la spinta revisionista di Quentin Tarantino, già espressa... more In questo saggio intendo esplorare come la spinta revisionista di Quentin Tarantino, già espressa in Bastardi senza gloria (2009), Django Unchained (2012) e The Hateful Eight (2015), abbia intersecato in C’era una volta a… Hollywood la corrente nostalgica che sta caratterizzando la narrativa occidentale. Ne risulta un testo che esprime un mito retrotopico (Bauman 2017), ossia che richiama le caratteristiche fondamentali del mito facendo tuttavia leva sullo sguardo nostalgico verso il passato per epurarlo dai suoi eventi più negativi. Tale processo revisionista attribuisce all'evento sufficiente dignità da giustificarne l’elevazione a mito, pur mantenendo una certa consapevolezza critica nei riguardi del momento storico in questione.
Iperstoria, 2023
About forty years ago, feminist scholars formulated several independent definitions of an ethics ... more About forty years ago, feminist scholars formulated several independent definitions of an ethics of care (Gilligan 1982; Ruddick 1989; Noddings 1984), suggesting the need to reframe human collective and personal interactions. However, care theory fails for the most part to consider the lived experiences and the needs of marginalized subjects (Gary 2022). This study observes care theory from a linguistic perspective in three audiovisual texts featuring examples of nonnormative care. The sci-fi TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, and Raised by Wolves will be considered, with a focus on androids acting as caregivers. The linguistic analysis, following a Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), will focus on discursive strategies relating to the parties involved, their relational ties, care behaviors, and the androids' adequacy as caretakers. The emerging perspectives may be mapped onto current discourse on minority groups' access to fostering or adoption and their reproductive rights.
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Reviews by Valentina Romanzi
Find Me, the 2019 sequel to Call Me By Your Name, picks up this thread and explores the parallel lives of the characters of the first book after Oliver returns to the United States, leaving Elio in Italy.
attraversano il territorio americano, Brett descrive il carcere come spazio fisico e sociale, non solo all’interno degli istituti di pena ma anche e soprattutto in forma diffusa, nelle grandi metropoli e nelle piccole realtà
statunitensi.
Translations by Valentina Romanzi
settimane dopo essere uscita di prigione. Era la figlia di un predicatore texano e aveva scontato venticinque degli ottanta anni in carcere a cui era stata condannata. Aveva trascorso molti di quegli anni in una cella per tre persone nella prigione federale di Dublin, in California
lingua madre.
Papers by Valentina Romanzi
Find Me, the 2019 sequel to Call Me By Your Name, picks up this thread and explores the parallel lives of the characters of the first book after Oliver returns to the United States, leaving Elio in Italy.
attraversano il territorio americano, Brett descrive il carcere come spazio fisico e sociale, non solo all’interno degli istituti di pena ma anche e soprattutto in forma diffusa, nelle grandi metropoli e nelle piccole realtà
statunitensi.
settimane dopo essere uscita di prigione. Era la figlia di un predicatore texano e aveva scontato venticinque degli ottanta anni in carcere a cui era stata condannata. Aveva trascorso molti di quegli anni in una cella per tre persone nella prigione federale di Dublin, in California
lingua madre.
(2019) follows agents Red and Blue as they move through space and time
to fight a seemingly endless war between their respective factions. Written
in epistolary form, it traces the evolution of their relationship from enmity
to star-crossed love. A mix of poetic language and science fictional prose
and tropes, the novella touches upon several issues pertaining to the
contemporary reflection on the posthuman. The interpretive framework
of this essay hinges on the concepts of metamorphosis and metaphor,
deployed to explore how the novella continually updates the subjectivity of
its protagonists through a series of contacts and interactions with various
kinds of Otherness. The goal of this essay is to show that the ontological
value of the protagonists’ selves shapeshifts both through their interaction
with each other’s alterity and through their contact with the letters – that
is, the metaphorical language of their epistolary exchange. As the missives
take ever-different forms according to their chrono-spatial context, their
message is absorbed through touch, taste, smell, sight, and other senses,
resulting in an embodied assemblage of addresser, message, and addressee that well represents the posthuman pull towards a hybrid subject, in a text that equally eschews the boundaries of genre
In questo saggio propongo di analizzare The Oppenheimer Alternative nell’ottica del dibattito contemporaneo sulla scienza e la tecnologia in ambito americano. Questo romanzo, difatti, ben rappresenta l’altalenante opinione pubblica su uno dei “miti fondativi” degli Stati Uniti. La fiducia nel progresso, contrapposta a un ricorrente presagio di apocalisse imminente, è una delle caratteristiche principali della società americana fin dalle sue origini puritane. Se per secoli la paura della fine del mondo è stata controbilanciata da una fiducia quasi incrollabile nel progresso scientifico e tecnologico, la creazione e l’utilizzo della bomba atomica nel 1945 ha segnato il momento storico in cui l’ago della bilancia si è spostato drasticamente verso la paura dell’apocalisse, non più mera suggestione religiosa, ma ormai concreta evenienza legata all’esistenza dell’energia atomica. A metà tra romanzo storico e fantascienza, The Oppenheimer Alternative intreccia lo slancio verso il futuro tipicamente americano e la fede quasi cieca nei confronti delle scienze (la fisica in particolare) con l’orrore dell’imminente apocalisse – non di ispirazione religiosa, ma scientificamente individuata, provata e affrontata. La scienza vi è dunque rappresentata in tutte le sue sfaccettature: nelle famose parole di Oppenheimer stesso, come “distruttore di mondi” e allo stesso tempo come salvatore del genere umano.
Il romanzo offre dunque una prospettiva a tutto tondo su uno degli elementi costitutivi dell’identità americana, seguendo da vicino un protagonista controverso come Robert Oppenheimer, che forse più di qualsiasi altro scienziato americano dell’epoca moderna incarna sia il valore salvifico sia il potere distruttivo della scienza.
L'intero volume è disponibile in open access: https://www.scuoladipitagora.it/collane-scuola-di-pitagora/le-balene/what-s-popping-open-access
De Crevecoeur’s essay also introduced the concept of the ‘melting pot’ to describe the yearned-for-homogeneity of a nation aspiring to merge the different cultures informing it, rather than to preserve their differences. Ever since, the United States has strived to present a solid front against the rest of the world, returning time and time again to the defining features of its citizens, and to what sets them apart from their European counterparts. Yet, over the past few decades, it has become evident that internal divisions and differences are increasing, rather than decreasing. While the national narrative of the United States insists on advocating the exceptionality of its people, it is also continuously confronted by the hard truth of their lived experiences (Sieber 2005; Hodgson 2009; Grandin 2019; Spragg 2019).
A kind of internal splintering is especially noticeable in the polarization of contemporary public discourse and in the way it has exposed a country fractured into factions and bitter divisions across identity lines. Long overdue civil, political, and social rights battles have radicalized most public debates, from racial issues connected to voting rights and disenfranchisement (e.g., the long fight to ensure voting rights to African Americans, from the birth of the NAACP at the beginning of the twentieth century to the recent Fair Fight Action movement) to questions of representation and cultural appropriation (e.g., the debate surrounding Jeanine Cummins’s 2020 novel American Dirt, Scarlett Johansson’s casting as a Japanese character in the 2017 movie Ghost in the Shell, or the controversial use of fashion and hairstyles belonging to different cultures, as in the case of Katy Perry’s performance at the 2013 American Music Awards or Justin Bieber’s latest hair-dos).
Furthermore, the United States has always been on the lookout for an enemy that would reinforce its own identity. During the American Frontier expansion, such figure was embodied by Native people living on conquered lands. Later on, a similar antagonistic mechanism was fueled by the animosity against Germany, sparked during the first global conflict and exacerbated during WWII. During the Cold War, the role of the archenemy was then played by the “Commies'' and,after the turn of the century, by “Arab terrorists.” Yet, despite its readiness to intervene on the international military stage and to single out an enemy that could function as its archetypal rival, the United States has also long been fractured by visceral internal fights. More than ever, after the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol, an especially American tradition of domestic violence—spanning from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement—has taken center stage, leading to a reckoning that the enemy oftentimes lies within the nation itself.
This issue of JAm It! seeks contributions that address how different iterations of real and/or symbolic internal enemies have been generated and represented in US culture. Further, we invite reflections on how, on the level of policy, discourse, and societal dynamics, such internal divisions have been flattened out for the sake of a uniform—rather than united—nation. Finally, to encourage a nuanced and balanced understanding of the topic, we also welcome contributions that highlight how fractures and differences, as well as the very need for a real or imagined internal enemy, have had virtuous outcomes in US history and its formation.
In this essay, I explore the polymorphous identities in Blackfish City, with particular reference to two characters (Soq and the orcamancer) and the city itself. Firstly, Qaanaaq’s shapeshifting identity lies in the plurality of its people, in the differences and cultural contaminations that echo throughout the novel. It is a ‘city without a map,’ to paraphrase a podcast recorded in the novel, and thus its identity is a patchwork of different traditions and habits retrieved from lost civilizations. Secondly, the orcamancer and other members of her family have a direct connection to an animal to which they are ‘nanobonded.’ They act in unison and influence each other, forming a posthuman unit of two identities bonded for life into one symbiotic organism.
Thirdly, polymorphism can be found in the character of Soq, a person “beyond gender […] some days butch and some days queen, but always Soq, always the same and always uncircumscribable underneath it all” (42). Soq is referred to with the pronouns ‘they/them/their,’ a choice which underlines their non-binary gender and adds a layer to their plural identity, acquired when Soq contracts ‘the breaks,’ an STD which floods their mind with their lover’s memories. Additionally, I argue that Soq’s plural identity also encloses the first two cases of polymorphism mentioned above, due to their family link to the Orcamancer and their deep understanding of the city. This makes them the best representative of a new generation of Qaanaaqians, if not of the city itself, and a layered character whose plural identity ensures they will be fit to understand the shapeshifting nature of the ecosystem in which they live and rule it with awareness.
Part One illustrates the methodological framework, exploring the concept of dystopia, offering an overview of the American myths and of their current status and spotlighting some relevant sociological theories.
Part Two applies the proposed methodological framework to four texts, investigating the sub-genres of political, technological and environmental dystopia. The primary works, chosen to show both the relevance of the abovementioned American myths to dystopian narratives and the pervasiveness of the genre across the media, are Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments (2019), Dave Eggers’s The Circle (2013), David Cage’s video game Detroit: Become Human (2018), and the Hughes Brothers’ 2010 movie The Book of Eli.