Il volume è pubblicato anche con il contributo del Centro Studi di Genere del Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici dell’Università di Trieste. Funding for this publication was provided in part by the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Trieste (Humanities Department). Cover Image: Francesco Pezzicar (1831-1890), L’emancipazione dei negri (“The Emancipation of the Negroes”), bronze sculpture 235 cm high, signed and dated F. Pezzicar 1873, purchased by the Trieste Civic Museum “Revoltella” in 1931. I testi pubblicati in questo volume sono liberamente disponibili su: / The texts included in this volume are available online at: http://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/handle/10077/11293 impaginazione Verena Papagno © copyright Edizioni Università di Trieste, Trieste 2015. Proprietà letteraria riservata. I diritti di traduzione, memorizzazione elettronica, di riproduzione e di adattamento totale e parziale di questa pubblicazione, con qualsiasi mezzo (compresi i microfilm, le fotocopie e altro) sono riservati per tutti i paesi. ISBN 978-88-8303-689-7 (print) eISBN 978-88-8303-690-3 (online) EUT - Edizioni Università di Trieste Via E. Weiss, 21 – 34128 Trieste http://eut.units.it https://www.facebook.com/EUTEdizioniUniversitaTrieste Discourses of Emancipation and the Boundaries of Freedom Selected Papers from the 22nd AISNA Biennial International Conference Edited by Leonardo Buonomo and Elisabetta Vezzosi with the collaboration of Gabrielle Barfoot and Giulia Iannuzzi EUT EDIZIONI UNIVERSITÀ DI TRIESTE Contents 7 Acknowledgments Elisabetta Marino 79 The Italian American Family Leonardo Buonomo between Past and Present: The Elisabetta Vezzosi Place I Call Home (2012) by Maria 9 Introduction Mazziotti Gillan, and Mystics in the Family (2013) by Maria Famà 1. Emancipation and the Temporality of the Body Sunn Shelley Wong 87 Chronopoetics: Race, Time, and Cristina Giorcelli Narrative in Carlos Bulosan’s 15 Did Apparel (Eighteen-eighties- America Is in the Heart Nineteen-twenties) Help American Women’s Stefano Luconi Emancipation? A Socio-Literary 97 The “Land of the Free”? The Problematic Response United States in the Eyes of Italian American Radicals Marinella Rodi-Risberg 39 Trauma, Temporality, and Perri Giovannucci Testimony in Carolivia Herron’s 107 Empathy in the Work of Thereafter Johnnie Richard Wright Angelo Capasso 3. Radicalism, 47 Deposition, Decomposition. Emancipation, Losing the Body Sublime: and Revolution Marina Abramović between Performance and Performativity Enrico Botta 119 The Columbiad: Slavery, 2. Topographies of Freedom: Imperialism and the Founding Race, Ethnicity, and Culture Fathers’ “State of Fantasy” Pirjo Ahokas Alberto Benvenuti 63 “Onto the hard path toward 129 African American Radicals and freedom”: Urban Environments Revolutionary Cuba from 1959 and Asian American Agency until the Black Power Years Francesco Eugenio Barbieri Cristina Scatamacchia 71 Toward a Transnational 139 Dave Dellinger’s Political Perspective on Seattle’s Legacy to Occupy Wall Street Japantown: Nagai Kafū’s American Stories 4. Writing Nature: Nation-Building Process: the Representations of Wildness American Civil War and Italian & Liberty in the New World Unification Giulia Iannuzzi Matteo Battistini 151 Science, Engagement, 219 “We may be caught in the trap Estrangement: Remarks on Kim of a garrison state”: Harold Stanley Robinson’s Californian D. Lasswell, the American Ecotopia Middle Class and the Political Legitimacy of the National Paola Loreto Security State 161 Women’s Ways to Nature: Steinbeck’s (Mock)Pastoral Diptych Michele Cento of Gardening (& Childless) 231 The Revolution of Rising Wives in The Long Valley Entitlements: Daniel Bell and the Logic of Segregation in the Paola Anna Nardi Post-Industrial State 169 “Here, am I, in the midst of this immense forest”: Irish Carla Konta Immigrants in the American 243 Languages of Freedom in a Wilderness Coca-Cola Communist Country Pasquale Verdicchio Jelena Šesnić 177 The Real Work: Negotiating the 253 Asian American Transnational Anthro-Ecocentric Divide Literature and United States American Cold War History Richard Kidder 185 Signs Written upon the Water: 6. Fantasy, Popular Culture, On Some Representations of and Dissent the Great Lakes as Inland Seas Alice Casarini Paolo Simonetti 265 Twilight of the Grrrls: Stephenie 195 “Schooled by the Inhuman Sea”: Meyer’s Rehash of the Maritime Imagination and the Feminine Mystique Discourses of Emancipation in Herman Melville’s Clarel Serena Fusco 273 Food, Narrative, and Fantasy 5. The Universalism of in David Leavitt’s The Body of American Freedom and Its Jonah Boyd Boundaries: Nationalism, Internationalism, Salvatore Proietti Transnationalism 283 Philip K. Dick’s Suburban Jeremiad Cristina Bon 205 The Controversial Concept 293 Index of Emancipation in the Acknowledgments The organization of the 22nd AISNA Biennial Conference and the publication of this volume would not have been possible without the contribution of many in- stitutions and individuals. We are deeply grateful to AISNA’s members for choos- ing Trieste as the location of the conference and, in particular, to AISNA’s board and its then president, Andrea Mariani, for their valuable assistance. We would like to thank the former chancellor of the University of Trieste, Francesco Peroni, and the head of the Humanities Department, Marina Sbisà, for greenlighting the conference and encouraging our efforts. The Humanities Department’s adminis- trative staff gave us important assistance before, during, and after the conference and we would like to thank, in particular, Gloria Norio and Furio Miscioscia. To- gether with the United States Embassy in Rome, and the CRTrieste Foundation, the Humanities Department also provided us with indispensable financial sup- port and to these three institutions we are deeply indebted. Our thanks also go to our colleagues at the University of Trieste who were part of the organizing committee: Guido Abbattista, Mauro Bussani, Claire Fennell, Georg Meyr, and Raffaella Rumiati. An important round table on research work in Trieste and its ties with the United States (Ricerca Scientifica a Trieste e Stati Uniti: Legami, Scambi, Progetti) and a welcome reception, were held in the beautiful Palazzo del Gover- no thanks to the hospitality of Trieste’s Prefect, Francesca Adelaide Garufi, and the sponsorship of the Zidarich winery. Additional assistance for the organiza- tion of the conference was provided by Trieste’s Italian American Association & American Corner and CISPEA (the Italian inter-university consortium for the study of the history and politics of the United States). We are also very grateful to the director of the Revoltella Museum of Modern Art, Maria Masau Dan, for offering our guests a guided tour of the museum on the last day of the confer- ence. We are keenly aware that the overall success of the conference rested in no small part on the enthusiasm and generosity of our student volunteers Paola Codiglia, Valentina Cralli, Francesca Guarnieri, Sheila Khawaja, and, in particu- lar, Martina Ferro-Casagrande, Annalisa Mogorovich, and Giulia Iannuzzi. We thank them most sincerely. From the start we decided that this volume would include only a selection of the papers presented at the conference. Accordingly, each of the essays submit- ted for publication in this volume was first read, critiqued, and evaluated by two anonymous referees. We were fortunate to be able to avail ourselves of the exper- tise and generosity of numerous colleagues from Europe and the United States and to all of them we extend our heartfelt thanks. As with the organization of the conference, so with the publication of this volume, we received encouragement and assistance from Marina Sbisà, the Humanities Department, and the United 7 States Embassy. We would also like to acknowledge the support of the current AISNA board and its president, Giuseppe Nori. Finally, we wish to express our deepest gratitude to Gabrielle Barfoot and Giulia Iannuzzi for their invaluable contribution to the editing of this volume. Leonardo Buonomo and Elisabetta Vezzosi leonardo buonomo - elisabetta vezzosi 8 Introduction leonardo buonomo elisabetta vezzosi Taking inspiration from the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s Emancipa- tion Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the 22nd International Biennial Conference of Italy’s American Studies Association was held in Trieste on September 19-21, 2013. The city’s strong ties with the United States¬dating back to 1797, when a United States Consulate was first established there, and culminating in the 1947-54 period when Trieste, as a “free territory,” was partly under American administration¬made it a fitting location for this event. So also did Trieste’s rich and complicated history of national, cultural, eth- nic, and religious diversity, still perceptible today in its demographic makeup, architecture, and lifestyle. Entitled Discourses of Emancipation and the Boundaries of Freedom, the confer- ence witnessed a very large international participation, incontrovertible evi- dence that its general topic and the historic landmarks to which it paid tribute resonated strongly with scholars of widely differing backgrounds. Over the course of three days, plenary and panel speakers discussed issues of personal and national liberty, of social, political, and religious expression, and exchanged views about the ongoing battle to end discrimination on the basis of race, eth- nicity, and sexual orientation. Retracing