Reimagining the Baroque in Italian Modernism. From the fin-de-siècle to Lucio Fontana

While Italian art of the twentieth century is usually associated with either the avant-garde practices of Futurism or the classicism of Fascist visual culture, the Italian modernists' complex engagement with concepts of the ‘Baroque’ has yet to be explored. Through an extensive analysis of paintings, sculptures, publications, collecting practices, and exhibitions, my dissertation addresses this lacuna by investigating how the Baroque was discursively constructed and visually represented in Italian modernist artistic and cultural debates between 1880 and 1945. I study how artists and critics such as Umberto Boccioni, Giorgio De Chirico, Adolfo Wildt, Lucio Fontana, and Roberto Longhi championed or disparaged the Baroque in the context of heated debates over the import of Italy’s rich cultural heritage, its status in modern Europe, and the potential role of avant-garde art as a catalyst for national regeneration. In contrast to previous scholars I argue that the development of modern art in Italy was actively shaped by cultural perceptions about the Baroque. My dissertation therefore sheds new light on the role of style in the cultural politics of Italy, which in turn will transform our understanding of visual culture in modern Italy, and of twentieth-century representations of the Baroque in art, literature, and aesthetics.

How actions create--not just reveal--preferences.

The neo-classical economics view that behavior is driven by - and reflective of - hedonic utility is challenged by psychologists' demonstrations of cases in which actions do not merely reveal preferences but rather create them. In this view, preferences are frequently constructed in the moment and are susceptible to fleeting situational factors; problematically, individuals are insensitive to the impact of such factors on their behavior, misattributing utility caused by these irrelevant factors to stable underlying preferences. Consequently, subsequent behavior might reflect not hedonic utility but rather this erroneously imputed utility that lingers in memory. Here we review the roles of these streams of utility in shaping preferences, and discuss how neuroimaging offers unique possibilities for disentangling their independent contributions to behavior.

Cumulative exposure to traumatic events in older adults.

OBJECTIVES: The present study examined the impact of cumulative trauma exposure on current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity in a nonclinical sample of adults in their 60s. The predictive utility of cumulative trauma exposure was compared to other known predictors of PTSD, including trauma severity, personality traits, social support, and event centrality. METHOD: Community-dwelling adults (n = 2515) from the crest of the Baby Boom generation completed the Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire, the PTSD Checklist, the NEO Personality Inventory, the Centrality of Event Scale, and rated their current social support. RESULTS: Cumulative trauma exposure predicted greater PTSD symptom severity in hierarchical regression analyses consistent with a dose-response model. Neuroticism and event centrality also emerged as robust predictors of PTSD symptom severity. In contrast, the severity of individuals' single most distressing life event, as measured by self-report ratings of the A1 PTSD diagnostic criterion, did not add explanatory variance to the model. Analyses concerning event categories revealed that cumulative exposure to childhood violence and adulthood physical assaults were most strongly associated with PTSD symptom severity in older adulthood. Moreover, cumulative self-oriented events accounted for a larger percentage of variance in symptom severity compared to events directed at others. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the cumulative impact of exposure to traumatic events throughout the life course contributes significantly to posttraumatic stress in older adulthood above and beyond other known predictors of PTSD.

Changes in neuroticism following trauma exposure.

Using longitudinal data, the present study examined change in midlife neuroticism following trauma exposure. Our primary analyses included 670 participants (M(age) = 60.55; 65.22% male, 99.70% Caucasian) who completed the NEO Personality Inventory at ages 42 and 50 and reported their lifetime exposure to traumatic events approximately 10 years later. No differences in pre- and post-trauma neuroticism scores were found among individuals who experienced all of their lifetime traumas in the interval between the personality assessments. Results were instead consistent with normative age-related declines in neuroticism throughout adulthood. Furthermore, longitudinal changes in neuroticism scores did not differ between individuals with and without histories of midlife trauma exposure. Examination of change in neuroticism following life-threatening traumas yielded a comparable pattern of results. Analysis of facet-level scores largely replicated findings from the domain scores. Overall, our findings suggest that neuroticism does not reliably change following exposure to traumatic events in middle adulthood. Supplemental analyses indicated that individuals exposed to life-threatening traumas in childhood or adolescence reported higher midlife neuroticism than individuals who experienced severe traumas in adulthood. Life-threatening traumatic events encountered early in life may have a more pronounced impact on adulthood personality than recent traumatic events.

Witnessing Crisis in Contemporary and Golden Age Spain

In this volume, experts on the Spanish Golden Age from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States offer analyses of contemporary works that have been influenced by the classics from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.