Gaetano Salvemini and Italians in Exile: A Conversation
April 13, 2016
Join us for a special evening of conversation around the presentation of a new publication, Gaetano Salvemini: Lettere Americane, 1927-1949 (Donzelli Editore, 2015), with the editor, Renato Camurri, and Professors Romy Golan, Ernest Ialongo, and Stanislao Pugliese. Moderating the evening will be Raffaele Bedarida, a 2013-14 CIMA Fellow.
Gaetano Salvemini: Lettere Americane, 1927-1949 collects previously unpublished letters written by the Italian antifascist historian and political activist Gaetano Salvemini during his years of exile in the United States. Contrary to traditional accounts, which depicted Salvemini’s exile as a period of isolation dedicated solely to scholarly research, Camurri’s volume reveals his uninterrupted importance as a public figure. Not only was he active as a teacher and opinion maker at Harvard University and fully integrated into the intellectual community in Cambridge, he also played a central role in the construction of a network of antifascist European intellectuals in the wider United States. Salvemini, therefore, emerges as a model figure of a European exile in America.
Camurri’s volume inaugurates a new series, Italiani dall’Esilio, published by Donzelli Editore with the support of Paolo Marzotto, which is dedicated to exploring the history of Italian exiles in the American continent.
Participants:
Renato Camurri is associate professor of Contemporary History at the University of Verona, Italy. He has conducted extensive research on nineteenth-century Italian and European political and intellectual history. In the last few years he has been involved in a large project dedicated to the history of exile and cultural migrations in the twentieth century. He is recipient of a Lauro De Bosis Fellowship at Harvard University, a Fullbright Research Scholar Fellowship, and a Fernard Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. He is former research fellow at EHESS, Paris and frequent Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University. He is the founder and co-chair of Annual Gaetano Salvemini Colloquium in Italian History and Culture, Harvard University. His most recent publications include: L’Europa in esilio. La migrazione degli intellettuali verso le Americhe tra le due guerre, special issue of the journal Memoria e Ricerca, 31 (2009); Mussolini’s Gift. Exiles from Fascist Italy, a special issue of Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 5 (2010); and two monographs, Franco Modigliani L’Italia vista dall’America. Riflessioni e battaglie di un esule, (Turin: Bollati e Boringhieri, 2010); Max Ascoli. Antifascista, intellettuale, giornalista (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012). He is working on a new book, Between two worlds: the exile of Italian intellectuals in the United States (1922-1945)
Romy Golan is Professor of 20th Century Art at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France Between the Wars and Muralnomad: The Paradox of Wall Painting, Europe 1927-1957 (Yale University Press, 1995 and 2009). Among her recent publications are: “Vitalità del Negativo/Negativo della Vitalità,” October no. 150, (Winter 2014); “The Scene of a Disappearance” in Giosetta Fioroni: L’Argento (The Drawing Center, New York, 2013); “Flashbacks and Eclipses in Italian Art in the 1960s,” Grey Room 49 (Fall 2012). Her essay “Campo Urbano: Episodes from an Unwritten History of Participation” is forthcoming in Bruno Munari, Peter Matilde Nardelli and Pier Paolo Antonello eds. (Peter Lang Pub. 2016).
Ernest Ialongo is Assistant Professor of History at Hostos Community College in The City University of New York. He holds a PhD in Modern European History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and an MA and BA in History from York University (Toronto, Canada). He is the co-editor of New Directions in Italian and Italian American History: Selected Essays from the Conference in Honor of Philip Cannistraro (2013), the co-editor of a special section of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies entitled “Reconsidering Futurism” (September 2013), and the author of various articles dealing with Futurism, politics, and culture in liberal and Fascist Italy. He has presented his work at a variety of national and international venues, and is currently the Chair of the Columbia University Seminar in Modern Italian Studies. Most recently, he published the book Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: The Artist and his Politics with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2015).
Stanislao G. Pugliese is professor of modern European history and the Queensboro Unico Distinguished Professor of Italian and Italian American Studies at Hofstra University. He is a former research fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Oxford University, Harvard University and the Institute for the Study of the Resistance in Naples. He is the author, editor or translator of a dozen books on Italian and Italian American history. His book, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone, won the Premio Flaiano in Italy; the Frankel Prize in London and the Marraro Prize from the American Historical Association. He is working on a new book, Dancing on a Volcano in Naples: Scenes From the Siren City.
Raffaele Bedarida holds a PhD from the Art History department of the CUNY Graduate Center, New York and an MA from the University of Siena, Italy. A former CIMA fellow, he is Adjunct Professor at Cooper Union and regularly lectures on modern and contemporary art topics at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and MoMA. He is the author of a monograph in Italian, Bepi Romagnoni. Il Nuovo Racconto (Silvana Editoriale, 2005) and editor of books on contemporary artists, Reuven Israel (Montrasio Arte, 2009); Susanna Pozzoli (Allemandi, 2010); and Mariagrazia Pontorno (Charta, 2013). His monograph Corrado Cagli. Gli Anni Americani (1937-1947), in press, will be published by Donzelli as part of the series “Italiani dall’Esilio.” He is currently working on his manuscript, Export / Import: The Promotion of Contemporary Italian Art in the United States, 1935-1969.
