Get to know our fellows

Curating America’s Wars in Vietnam and Iraq: Whose War is on View?

-What is your academic background and what is your current position in UCHI/at UConn/Your Home Institution?

I am a PhD candidate in Italian Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut, and a dissertation fellow at UCHI. I received my MA in Italian from UConn and my BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures, with a major in American Studies and a minor in German, from the University of Florence, Italy.

-What is the project you’re currently working on?

I am currently writing my PhD dissertation entitled The Sale of Parga in 19^th Century Italian Imagery:1815-1856. In my dissertation, I examine the impact of an episode of the Greek War of Independence – the sale of the Greek city of Parga to the Ottoman Turks by the English government in 1819 – on the cultural work of Romantic Italian intellectuals and artists. I place the sale of Parga at the intersection of cultural, political, and historical discourses, and argue that this minor historical event is a prism to chart the major leading forces, tensions, and ideas that coalesced in the formation of Italian cultural nationalism. With this research project, I intend to extend the boundaries of the Italian national movement – also known as Risorgimento – to another national cause (the Greek one) and, by implication, to the larger European geo-political and geo-cultural space, thus shedding light on the transnational aspects of 19^th century Italian nationalist culture.

-How did you arrive at this topic?

The idea of this project is a shared effort between my advisor, Professor Norma Bouchard, and myself. We were discussing possible topics for my dissertation and I expressed my desire to work on 19^th century Italian literature. She suggested that I start by studying what has been defined as “the new historiography of the Risorgimento,” which has re-conceptualized the Italian national movement in transnational terms. The concept of transnationalism fascinated me, and I found particularly stimulating the idea of applying a new theoretical perspective to a topic that, at least in Italy, has been canonized as a foundational moment in the formation of the Italian nation and national identity. We identified in the cession of Parga a case study to analyze Risorgimento literature from this new perspective, thus contributing to the on-going research in this field.

-What impact might your work have on a larger public understanding of your topic?

My hopes for this research are to reach scholars of the Risorgimento both in Europe and the US, who are engaged in questions of nations and national identity, Mediterranean studies, transnationalism, and their intersection with personal and collective emotional concerns. The Italian Risorgimento will continue to stimulate a remarkable critical dialogue among scholars, for its peculiar intersection of a number of fields of research relevant to the humanities, such as history, politics, literature, visual arts, social sciences, ethics, and religion. This research project, in particular, due to its interdisciplinary nature that calls forth the core of the humanities and discusses some universal principles, such as nationality, freedom, and political hospitality, could represent a case study to further investigate the development of a Mediterranean identity in the modern era. This issue is particularly relevant to contemporary Italy – and Europe – due to the massive waves of migrants reaching the shores of Italy every day. As a consequence of this phenomenon, contemporary Italy is struggling to redefine and rethink that concept of Italianness created by the intellectuals who promoted the national movement at the beginning of the 19th century.

-What is your academic background and what is your current position in UCHI/at UConn/Your Home Institution?

I am a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Connecticut and a dissertation fellow at UCHI. I received my masters in English from UConn and my bachelor’s degree in English at Southern Connecticut State University.

-What is the project you’re currently working on?

I am writing a dissertation titled “The Return of Dagon: Failed Iconoclasm in Early Modern English Literature.” The dissertation explores the intersection between English Renaissance literature and the iconoclastic movements of the post-Reformation period. It argues that early modern writers were often interested in the ways in which idolatrous artifacts might survive, resist, or even undermine the actions and intentions of their assailants. I maintain that this archive of failed iconoclasm calls into question theories of disenchantment applied to the Reformation. Iconoclasm, I show, ironically provoked a broad cultural interest in the agency of material artifacts.

-How did you arrive at this topic?

During my reading of English literature and polemical pamphlets, I became increasingly interested in the deep-seated fear among radical Protestants about the dangers of idolatry. Why were these radicals so fearful of idolatry, if, as they claimed, idolatrous objects and images were merely “dumb,” lifeless, or inert?

My interest is probably also driven by my Roman Catholic upbringing. Having once been an altar boy, I had close proximity to the kinds of ritual artifacts—incense, candles, bells, liturgical vestments, crucifixes, stained glass windows—that radical Puritans of the early modern period would find abominable.

-What impact might your work have on a larger public understanding of your topic?

Public discourse surrounding iconoclasm typically presents it as absolute loss: We deplore iconoclasm because it violently erases our access to the past. My dissertation shows that early modern people often thought about iconoclastic incidents much differently. They did not automatically equate iconoclasm with erasure. Rather, they were often attentive to how certain artifacts might survive or resist the process, thus calling the efficacy of iconoclasm into question. Iconoclasm, in other words, elevated early modern interest in the capacity of material artifacts to transform human actions and intentions. In the twenty-first century, our closest analogue to this might be our increasing recognition of how digital technologies transform our consciousness and behaviors in ways we cannot fully control for.