In its first edition, the summer school “Mediating Italy in Global Culture” intends to provide a selected group of graduate and post-graduate students with a set of tools and materials useful for understanding and studying the forms of distribution, circulation and reception that “mediate” the Italian audiovisual and media culture in other national contexts, primarily in the United States. Furthermore, this experience will give students the opportunity to present and discuss their research with their peers and faculty.
During this one-week summer school, lectures, meetings and seminars will address the most common media imageries commonly related to Italy, their reworking by the cultural industries and the grassroots work of fans and opinion leaders. Furthermore, this school investigates also the consumption of said imagery of Italy by both general/mainstream audiences as well as more defined and targeted ones. The focus will be on the dense and intertwined ties that film, television, and media products establish with a broader perception of the Made in Italy, shaped also by other sectors (as cooking, fashion or design). The US, especially, play an important role in constantly rereading and re-framing the image of Italy in the world, through forms of mediation and popularization of national audiovisual and cultural content, thus overlapping and amalgamating their reading with the Italian “original” identity.
The summer school “Mediating Italy in Global Culture”, addressing both general theoretical and methodological perspectives and specific topics across various phenomena and media, aims at tracing the circulation routes of Italian screen culture in the US and in the global media landscape. Many classic and contemporary case histories testify the recent wide and transversal interest for Italian popular culture, which develops in part according to some traditional routes, linked to a consolidated image of Italy, and partly through original, unprecedented forms of valorization of the Made in Italy and what it represents. Lectures and seminars will address Italian cinema (and its circulation in movie theaters, in festivals, on digital platforms), television (with special attention to fiction, both mainstream and premium, and to specific titles), children and young adults animation (sector of a renewed Italian excellence, starting from WinX), virtual reality (from the point of view of exchange and reciprocal influence between technology and imageries, especially in regard to the enhancement of Italian cultural heritage, linked to pictorial and literary canons), and transmedia phenomena (the ties between fashion, advertising and photography, or publishing successes adapted by film and TV, as in the cases of Gomorrah or Elena Ferrante).
The activities of the summer school include also a meeting with Gomorrah and La mafia uccide solo d’estate head writer Stefano Bises and special lectures/tours involving institutions such as the Cineteca di Bologna and Fashion Research Museum. Across the week, the student will also present and discuss their ongoing research, with daily workshops devoted to specific topics, perspectives, methods, and media.
The summer school relied on the patronage of Consulta Universitaria Cinema (CUC), the community of Italian film and media scholars, and is offered in collaboration with the national research project "CInCIt. Circolazione Internazionale del Cinema Italiano / International Circulation of Italian Cinema" (PRIN 2015, Research Projects of National Interest, MIUR).
Download the program of the 2018 Summer School Mediating Italy in Global Culture to find out more about all the lectures and activities.
Download the annotated bibliography prepared by the students of the 2018 Summer School Edition