Intimacy and Italian Migration Gender and Domestic Lives in a Mobile World [Hardcover]

his provocative collection of essays adds a new dimension to our understanding of nation-building through its examination of the role of intimate cultural processes. First, by exploring the private lives of migrants from Italy through biography, oral history, and ethnography, these essays suggest why and howacross culturesItalianness has come to be associated with a particular kind of femininity and supposedly distinctive elements of domestic life symbolized by long-held stereotypes of the Italian mother. On a larger scale, while the editors and contributors share with previous works on the Italian diaspora a keen interest in the imagining of nations across national borders, here they refocus our attention to the significance of the domestic, particularly the lives of individual men and women, their families, and the communities they lovedand left behind.

From Mazzini the asexual republican leader to Rudolph Valentino, Latin
lover incarnate, and from kitchens to bedrooms, Intimacy and Italian Migration re-questions the ways in which national identities are constructedfrom abroad and from the home. This innovative collection of articles compares everything from the Italian mother in Australia, Ireland, and
Germany, to the translocal practices of Italian emigrant families. Its strength lies in addressing both stereotypes and experience in the
gendered construction of Italian identity around the world.

A multitude of eminently accessible, albeit primarily scholarly, perspectives under the umbrella of the concept of family and the role of women.. . . A solid collection of articles that break new ground. In contrast to traditional studies, this volume focuses on the translocal and transnational aspects of migration and places specific emphasis on how factors such as gender, questions of identity and the policies of nation-states affect, and are affected by, the everyday thoughts, decisions and life experiences of individuals.

From Italy as nation lñ