Meriel Tulante argues that place and identity are highly evocative referents in Sebastiano Vassalli’s (1941 – 2015) narration of his environment, the Novarese pianura, which could be described as the account of multiple losses: a way of life, language, memory of historical events, and a physical landscape. In this way, the act of remembering place encompasses just as much the positive impetus to record a physical reality as the more negative acknowledgement of the potential for cancellation and oblivion. For Vassalli, the recording of place serves an important documentary function as he wrestles with the definition of cultural memory. He is aware of the transience of physical place and therefore believes that it must be preserved in words or images if it is to endure through time. Vassalli includes the ways of life of local communities and ecosystems, as well as geographical sites, which have been overlooked by official histories and excluded from national, political conversations. Place thus extends beyond landscape to contain a wealth of ethnographic, cultural, and ecological information necessary for the correct integration of past, present, and future, and that brings a distinctly historical focus to his recording of space.

Gina Mangravite, by contrast, explores literary tourism, gender and sexuality, and identity-formation in her examination of novelist Elena Ferrante’s transmission of the southern Italian metropolis of Naples to readers across the globe, many of whom have never stepped foot there. Several media outlets and blogs, including The Guardian, however, have boosted an increase in tourism as an effect of Ferrante’s books and televised/cinematic adaptations. This presentation explores the Naples crafted by Ferrante and questions how increased literary tourism contributes to or detracts from that literary construct of Naples. More specifically, Mangravite will offer a case study of Naples along the lines of gender, class, and space in Elena Ferrante’s first novel, L’amore molesto (1995). Against a literary and scholarly background that often understands Naples as female and maternal, I delve deeper into Naples as a masculine city in Ferrante’s work. Man in this context expands beyond his physical being through the streets of the city and in turn the city imposes itself—its regulations, norms, and expectations—upon man, seeping through his skin. Despite this seemingly porous relationship that may often be taken for granted between man and city as one of ease (unlike for woman and city as one of strife), the relationship is sticky and contentious. I suggest that an important element of this stickiness is capitalism, and that class, gender, and space interact and inform each other to craft Naples as a literary and cinematic product of global consumption.

Finally, Andrea Baldi demonstrates how capitalism, architecture, and the emotions interact in his exploration of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film La notte (1961) and Anna Maria Ortese’s articles on Milan. In their attempt to expose the alleged dark side of Italy’s so-called Economic Miracle, in the 1950s and 1960s, Ortese and Antonioni alike portray the clash between the alluring yet alienating contemporary architecture of the prosperous downtown area and the bleakness of its peripheral, decaying districts. In their anxious flânerie, their protagonists search for spaces of authenticity while witnessing the collapse of human bonds and the frantic tempo of capitalist modernity, Despite this fundamental analogy, significant differences separate the two authors’ narratives. Ortese’s anonymous reporter/narrator is marginalized because of her low socio-economic status, gender, and Southern roots, and entertains a troubling relationship with the “capital of the Italian industry.” Antonioni’s Lidia, on the other hand, is a privileged, wealthy urbanite, whose existential angst leads her towards the suburbs and the recovery of a pre-modern dimension. However, she is not immune to the challenges facing a woman walking on her own, who is subject to the intrusive male gaze. During their strolls, both the protagonists survey the cityscape through their visual and haptic apprehension of the surrounding environment.

Each of the three panelists will speak for a maximum of 20 minutes, then be followed by a 15-minute session of questions and comments.