La carriera degli attori italiani di prosa dalla scena allo schermo (1909-1916)

Most actors of the Italian silent cinema in the early 1910s have a theatrical training. Some of them are already asserted or famous actors (like Cesare Dondini, Ermete Novelli, Ermete Zacconi, Giovanni Grasso) who are invited “to pose” for the cinema following their reputation, according to a strategy of an aesthetic and cultural legitimacy launched in 1909 by film d'art of the Pathé Consortium. I think it is the proverbial readiness and strength of the stage Italian actors that create a decisive contribution to the rapid development of the national cinema industry, despite its serious structural deficiencies, from the protoindustrialized phase (1909) to the golden age of divismo (starting in 1913), until the first signs of decadence (1919), and the so-called “fall” of the UCI production and distribution system. This is the main topic of the thesis: an investigation on the Italian stage actors engaged in the film industry (“from stage to screen” as the Italian title says, but in a “post-Vardac” approach) through many different sources: periodicals, memories, personal and business letters, and also contracts, found in several archive funds. A specific chapter is dedicated to the artistic career of Febo Mari (1881-1939), real name Alfredo Rodriguez, witch is a time-sample symptomatic of deep ties established between the growing film publishing and the Italian theatrical production system in the 1910s. The Mari debut in cinema and his ascent toward screen “divo” status coincides with the parable that leads from emergence to decadence of divismo in Italy.

La psicologia della Gestalt. Ricerche teoriche e sperimentali sulla percezione sonora e musicale (1890-1939)

The aim of the present work is a historical survey on Gestalt trends in psychological research between late 19th and the first half of 20th century with privileged reference to sound and musical perception by means of a reconsideration of experimental and theoretical literature. Ernst Mach and Christian von Ehrenfels gave rise to the debate about Gestaltqualität which notably grew thanks to the ‘Graz School’ (Alexius Meinong, Stephan Witasek, Anton Faist, Vittorio Benussi), where the object theory and the production theory of perception were worked out. Stumpf’s research on Tonpsychologie and Franz Brentano’s tradition of ‘act psychology’ were directly involved in this debate, opposing to Wilhelm Wundt’s conception of the discipline; this clearly came to light in Stumpf’s controversy with Carl Lorenz and Wundt on Tondistanzen. Stumpf’s concept of Verschmelzung and his views about consonance and concordance led him to some disputes with Theodor Lipps and Felix Krueger, lasting more than two decades. Carl Stumpf was responsible for education of a new generation of scholars during his teaching at the Berlin University: his pupils Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka and Max Wertheimer established the so-called ‘Berlin School’ and promoted the official Gestalt theory since the 1910s. After 1922 until 1938 they gave life and led together with other distinguished scientists the «Psychologische Forschung», a scientific journal in which ‘Gestalt laws’ and many other acoustical studies on different themes (such as sound localization, successive comparison, phonetic phenomena) were exposed. During the 1920s Erich Moritz von Hornbostel gave important contributions towards the definition of an organic Tonsystem in which sound phenomena could find adequate arrangement. Last section of the work contains descriptions of Albert Wellek’s studies, Kurt Huber’s vowel researches and aspects of melody perception, apparent movement and phi-phenomenon in acoustical field. The work contains also some considerations on the relationships among tone psychology, musical psychology, Gestalt psychology, musical aesthetics and musical theory. Finally, the way Gestalt psychology changed earlier interpretations is exemplified by the decisive renewal of perception theory, the abandon of Konstanzannahme, some repercussions on theory of meaning as organization and on feelings in musical experience.

Il "caso" Maroncelli. Organizzazione del consenso e vincoli massonici nell'Italia radicale e nella New York della Tammany Hall, 1840-1890

Questa tesi parte da un evento “minore” della storia del XIX secolo per tendere, poi, ad alcuni obiettivi particolari. L’evento è costituito da uno strano funerale postumo, quello di Piero Maroncelli, carbonaro finito alla Spielberg, graziato, poi emigrato in Francia e in America, il cui corpo viene sepolto a New York nell’estate del 1846. Quarant’anni dopo, nel 1886, i resti di Maroncelli vengono esumati e – attraverso una “trafila” particolare, di cui è protagonista la Massoneria, da una sponda all’altra dell’Atlantico – solennemente trasferiti nella città natale di Forlì, dove vengono collocati nel pantheon del cimitero monumentale, inaugurato per l’occasione. Gli eventi celebrativi che si consumano a New York e a Forlì sono molto diversi fra loro, anche se avvengono quasi in contemporanea e sotto regie politiche ispirate dal medesimo radicalismo anticlericale. E’ chiaro che Maroncelli è un simbolo e un pretesto: simbolo di un’italianità transnazionale, composta di un “corpo” in transito, fuori dello spazio nazionale, ma appartenente alla patria (quella grande e quella piccola); pretesto per acquisire e rafforzare legami politici, mercè mobilitazioni di massa in un caso fondate sul festival, sulla festa en plein air, nell’altro sui rituali del cordoglio per i “martiri” dell’indipendenza. L’opportunità di comparare questi due contesti – l’Italia, colta nella sua periferia radicale e la New York della Tammany Hall -, non sulla base di ipotesi astratte, ma nella concretezza di un “caso di studio” reale e simultaneo, consente di riflettere sulla pervasività dell’ideologia democratica nella sua accezione ottocentesca, standardizzata dalla Massoneria, e, d’altro canto, sui riti del consenso, colti nelle rispettive tipicità locali. Un gioco di similitudini e di dissomiglianze, quindi. Circa gli obiettivi particolari – al di là della ricostruzione del “caso” Maroncelli -, ho cercato di sondare alcuni temi, proponendone una ricostruzione in primo luogo storiografica. Da un lato, il tema dell’esilio e del trapianto delle esperienze di vita e di relazione al di fuori del proprio contesto d’origine. Maroncelli utilizza, come strumento di identitario e di accreditamento, il fourierismo; la generazione appena successiva alla sua, grazie alla Giovine Italia, possiede già un codice interno, autoctono, cui fare riferimento; alla metà degli anni Cinquanta, ad esso si affiancherà, con successo crescente, la lettura “diplomatica” di ascendenza sabauda. Dall’altro, ho riflettuto sull’aspetto legato ai funerali politici, al cordoglio pubblico, al trasferimento postumo dei corpi. La letteratura disponibile, al riguardo, è assai ricca, e tale da consentire una precisa classificazione del “caso” Maroncelli all’interno di una tipologia della morte laica, ben delineata nell’Italia dell’Ottocento e del primo Novecento. E poi, ancora, ho preso in esame le dinamiche “festive” e di massa, approfondendo quelle legate al mondo dell’emigrazione italiana a Mew York, così distante nel 1886 dall’élite colta di quarant’anni prima, eppure così centrale per il controllo politico della città. Dinamiche alle quali fa da contrappunto, sul versante forlivese, la visione del mondo radicale e massonico locale, dominato dalla figura di Aurelio Saffi e dal suo tentativo di plasmare un’immagine morale e patriottica della città da lasciare ai posteri. Quasi un’ossessione, per il vecchio triumviro della Repubblica romana (morirà nel 1890), che interviene sulla toponomastica, sull’edilizia cemeteriale, sui pantheon civico, sui “ricordi” patriottici. Ho utilizzato fonti secondarie e di prima mano. Anche sulle prime, quantitativamente assai significative, mi sono misurata con un lavoro di composizione e di lettura comparata prima mai tentato. La giustapposizione di chiavi di lettura apparentemente distanti, ma giustificate dalla natura proteiforme e complicata del nostro “caso”, apre, a mio giudizio, interessanti prospettive di ricerca. Circa le fonti di prima mano, ho attinto ai fondi disponibili su Maroncelli presso la Biblioteca comunale di Forlì, alle raccolte del Grande Oriente d’Italia a Roma, a periodici italoamericani assai rari, sparsi in diverse biblioteche italiane, da Milano a Roma. Mi rendo conto che la quantità dei materiali reperiti, sovente molto eterogenei, avrebbero imposto una lettura delle fonti più accurata di quella che, in questa fase della ricerca, sono riuscita a condurre. E’ vero, però, che le suggestioni già recuperabili ad un’analisi mirata al contenuto principale – le feste, la propaganda, il cordoglio – consentono la tessitura di una narrazione non forzata, nella quale il ricordo della Repubblica romana viaggia da una sponda all’altra dell’Atlantica, insieme ai resti di Maroncelli; nella quale il rituale massonico funge da facilitatore e da “mediatore culturale”; nella quale, infine, il linguaggio patriottico e la koinè democratica trans-nazionale riescono incredibilmente a produrre o a incarnare identità. Per quanto tempo? La risposta, nel caso forlivese, è relativamente facile; in quello della “colonia” italiana di New York, presto alterata nella sua connotazione demografica dalla grande emigrazione transoceanica, le cose appaiono più complesse. E, tuttavia, nel 1911, cinquantesimo dell’Unità, qualcuno, nella grande metropoli americana, si sarebbe ricordato di Maroncelli, sia pure in un contesto e con finalità del tutto diverse rispetto al 1886: segno che qualcosa, sotto traccia, era sopravvissuto.

"the easter rising of 1916: A step towards the independence of ireland analysed through the works of irish writers."

The 1916 Easter Rising, an unsuccessful insurrection which resulted in the Irish War of Independence, generated a deep change in the political landscape in Ireland. The purpose of this work is to describe this crucial period in the history of Ireland through the voices of Irish writers who expressed their ideas and feelings about the way Ireland was close to gaining its independence. Thanks to songs, poems and literature, I analysed the events of that period through the eyes of the Irish people. Authors like Roddy Doyle and William Butler Yeats were fundamental in examining this topic very thoroughly. Through their works, they were able to convey their knowledge about the events of those years and, at the same time, to give their own opinion, as Irish people, on the topic.

Charles P. Daly's Gendered Geography, 1860-1890

The American Geographical Society (AGS) serves as a case study for considering the nature of “gendered geography” in the nineteenth-century United States. This article links the ideals and programmatic interests of the society—which were fundamentally commercial in nature—with the personal subjectivity of its chief protagonist, Charles P. Daly, AGS president from 1864 until his death in 1899. Daly is presented as an “armchair explorer” who shifted the focus of the society away from statistical representations of the world toward the action packed narrative descriptions of the world supplied by embodied explorers in the field. The gender dynamics associated with the center versus the field provide a useful way to contrast both sides of Daly’s persona—as a scholar performing detached, careful study yet someone who also derived a great deal of personal authority by staging popular and dramatic spectacles in New York City, speechifying and presenting himself on stage at geographical society meetings with returning heroic explorers. Daly not only served as New York’ smost influential access point to the Arctic at the time, he also served as an important node in the reproduction of masculine culture in promotion of a particularly masculinist commercial geography. Key Words: American Geographical Society, Charles Patrick Daly, gender and geography, history of geography, masculinity.

Strategies of Representation, Relationship, and Resistance: British Women Travelers and Mormon Plural Wives, c. 1870-1890

During the 1870s and 1880s, several British women writers traveled by transcontinental railroad across the American West via Salt Lake City, Utah, the capital of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. These women subsequently wrote books about their travels for a home audience with a taste for adventures in the American West, and particularly for accounts of Mormon plural marriage, which was sanctioned by the Church before 1890. "The plight of the Mormon woman," a prominent social reform and literary theme of the period, situated Mormon women at the center of popular representations of Utah during the second half of the nineteenth century. "The Mormon question" thus lends itself to an analysis of how a stereotyped subaltern group was represented by elite British travelers. These residents of western American territories, however, differed in important respects from the typical subaltern subjects discussed by Victorian travelers. These white, upwardly mobile, and articulate Mormon plural wives attempted to influence observers' representations of them through a variety of narrative strategies. Both British women travel writers and Mormon women wrote from the margins of power and credibility, and as interpreters of the Mormon scene were concerned to established their representational authority.

Civic Discipline: Geography in America, 1860-1890

Civic Discipline argues that the story of the origins of American geography is a distinctly "New York story." Wealthy businessmen began America's first geographical society - the American Geographical Society - in 1851, inspired by what geographical knowledge of the globe could offer an expanding American commercial Empire at home and abroad. AGS meetings were spectacularly popular among the public and press. At them, geography was cast as a science in the service of the public and civic good. Meanwhile though, AGS men's spatial and financial "missions" became closely linked. They helped improve derelict spaces in New York City and weighed in on controversial scientific questions of the day in the Arctic, yet the geographical knowledge they advanced - such as in the American West and in Central Africa - also created enormous personal wealth. Civic Discipline shows that it was not just that historical events shaped geography, but rather, that geography shaped historical events.

Flash in the Pan: Cross-Class Cooperation in 1916 Iron Range Strike

In the Iron Range Strike of 1916, working-class wives picketed alongside their husbands in a conflict-ridden and dangerous setting. Mine deputies abused immigrant women on the picket lines and in their homes, with several disquieting reports receiving statewide attention in Minnesota. Many middle-class reformers in the Twin Cities grew sympathetic to the plight of northern mining families and became controversially involved the labor struggle. Some middleclass women worked alongside working-class wives and radical organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). At the center of this gendered analysis is the cross-class cooperation between an upper-middle class woman, Lenora Austin Hamlin, a radical reformer, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and the story of a working-class housewife, Mikla Masonovich. This study will ask how authentic, prevalent, and unproblematic their stories of cross-class cohesive action actually were. In answering this, it will address and identify those factors that impeded women’s potential for unity. “Flash in the Pan” argues that as a result of both real and perceived differences, these networks of women remained isolated, inhibiting each from gaining sufficient power to work cohesively, and marginalizing their influence. Drawing upon a variety of sources, including media representations in newspapers, and archives of social, labor and women’s organizations, this regional study lends state-level insight into the larger gender-labor historiography.

THE FANNED FLAMES OF DISCONTENT: A SOLIDARITY-INSPIRED HISTORY OF THE IDENTITY/IDEOLOGY, CULTURAL HISTORY, AND RHETORICAL STRATEGIES OF THE WOBBLIES DURING THE 1916 MINNESOTA IRON ORE STRIKE

Rooted in critical scholarship this dissertation is an interdisciplinary study, which contends that having a history is a basic human right. Advocating a newly conceived and termed, Solidarity-inspired History framework/practice perspective, the dissertation argues for and then delivers a restorative voice to working-class historical actors during the 1916 Minnesota Iron Ore Strike. Utilizing an interdisciplinary methodological framework the dissertation combines research methods from the Humanities and the Social Sciences to form a working-class history that is a corrective to standardized studies of labor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Oftentimes class interests and power relationships determine the dominant perspectives or voices established in history and disregard people and organizations that run counter to, or in the face of, customary or traditional American themes of patriotism, the Protestant work ethic, adherence to capitalist dogma, or United States exceptionalism. This dissertation counteracts these traditional narratives with a unique, perhaps even revolutionary, examination of the 1916 Minnesota Iron Ore Strike. The intention of this dissertation's critical perspective is to poke, prod, and prompt academics, historians, and the general public to rethink, and then think again, about the place of those who have been dislocated from or altogether forgotten, misplaced, or underrepresented in the historical record. Thus, the purpose of the dissertation is to give voice to historical actors in the dismembered past. Historical actors who have run counter to traditional American narratives often have their body of "evidence" disjointed or completely dislocated from the story of our nation. This type of disremembering creates an artificial recollection of our collective past, which de-articulates past struggles from contemporary groups seeking solidarity and social justice in the present. Class-conscious actors, immigrants, women, the GLBTQ community, and people of color have the right to be remembered on their own terms using primary sources and resources they produced. Therefore, similar to the Wobblies industrial union and its rank-and-file, this dissertation seeks to fan the flames of discontented historical memory by offering a working-class perspective of the 1916 Strike that seeks to interpret the actions, events, people, and places of the strike anew, thus restoring the voices of these marginalized historical actors.