Description
Book SynopsisThis book documents and analyzes how the contemporary Mediterranean city manages and negotiates its identity as a result of recent reconfigurations in its cultural, religious, and social landscape. The events of Sept. 11, 2001 have recast difference as a central trope of identification in urban borderland settings, unleashing heated debates about cultural convergences and animating anxieties about an arguable clash of civilizations in modern cities. These emerging uncertainties have also grown stronger as the homogenizing forces of globalization unsettle essential principles of the nation-state and nationhood and render fixed perceptions of distinctive and singular people and cultures more tenuous. Recent scholarship and public discourse have accordingly framed discussions of these encounters around concerns of geo-political security and international policy. Unfortunately, framed within these terms, our understanding of how various groups within the Mediterranean metropolis deal with
Trade Review“A thoughtful and timely study, in light of the current Mediterranean migration crisis. Ardizzoni and Ferme’s edited book offers through its unique, provocative and transversal reading of Mediterranean port cities fresh perspectives on their historical metamorphosis into complex, contradictory and porous cultural, artistic, philosophical and economic agoras.” -- Safoi Babana-Hampton, Michigan State University
“An inspiring and innovative collection of essays on cultural complexities and social challenges in contemporary Mediterranean cities.” -- Federica Frediani, University of Lugano
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Mediterranean, the City, and Cultural Encounters Valerio Ferme and Michela Ardizzoni Chapter 1: Decadent Nights: A Cocaine-Filled Reading of 1920s Post-Ottoman Istanbul G. Carole Woodall Chapter 2: Close(d) Encounters: Tangier, the Arts, and the North-South Divide Mary Vogl Chapter 3: Cityscapes as Dystopias in Moroccan Film: Hicham Lasri’s L’Os de fer (2007) Valérie K. Orlando Chapter 4: New Imagined Frenchness: Med’In Marseille and the Identity Debates in France Nabil Echchaibi Chapter 5: Neapolitan Media Activism and Translocal Identities Michela Ardizzoni Chapter 6: Where is Naples? Locating Naples in John Turturro’s film Passione Guillaume Bernardi Chapter 7: Lands of Approximation: The Use of Chinese Icons in Roberto Saviano’s Gomorra and Ermanno Rea’s La dismissione Valentina Fulginiti Chapter 8: Utopia by the Sea: The Disappearance of the City and the Myth the Mediterranean in Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Mediterraneo, and Il Postino Valerio Ferme About the Contributors
