Worlds Fairs Italian Style

According to conventional wisdom, Italy was not an influential participant in the nationalistic and imperialistic discourses that world's fairs produced in countries such as Great Britain, France, and the United States. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, Italy hosted numerous national and international exhibitions expounding notions of national identity, imperial expansion, technological progress, and capitalist growth. World's Fairs Italian-Style explores world's fairs in Italy at the turn of the twentieth century in comparison to their more famous counterparts in France, England, and the United States. Cristina Della Coletta demonstrates that, because of its social fragmentation and hybrid history, Italy was a site of both hegemony and subordination – an aspiring imperial power whose colonization started from within. She focuses on two best-selling authors, Emilio Salgari and Guido Gozzano, and illustrates how these authors interpreted their age's 'exposition mentality.' Salgari and Gozzano's exposition narratives, Della Coletta argues, reveal Italy's uncertainties about own sense of national identity, and its belated commitment to Western imperialism. Of interest to students and scholars of literature, cultural history, and Italian, World's Fairs Italian-Style provides a fascinating glimpse into a hitherto unexplored area of study, and brings to light a cultural phenomenon that played a significant role in shaping Italy's national identity.

Expanding Nationalisms at World’s Fairs: Identity, Diversity, and Exchange, 1851–1915 introduces the subject of international exhibitions to art and design historians and a wider audience as a resource for understanding the broad and varied political meanings of design during a period of rapid industrialization, developing nationalism, imperialism, expanding trade and the emergence of a consumer society. Its chapters, written by both established and emerging scholars, are global in scope, and demonstrate specific networks of communication and exchange among designers, manufacturers, markets and nations on the modern world stage from the second half of the nineteenth century into the beginning of the twentieth. Within the overarching theme of nationalism and internationalism as revealed at world’s fairs, the book’s essays will engage a more complex understanding of ideas of competition and community in an age of emergent industrial capitalism, and will investigate the nuances, contradictions and marginalized voices that lie beneath the surface of unity, progress, and global expansion.

Offers text and 128 rare, vintage photographs of two hundred buildings and includes coverage of the original ferris wheel, the first midway, and Edison’s kinetoscope.

Throughout Italy's 20 regions, the "sagre", an event to celebrate the preparation and eating of food, takes on a different character, and this book is itself a celebration of the foods of these wonderful regions. Features 150 recipes. 62 photos. Targeted media.

Since the first world's fair in London in 1851, at the dawn of the era of industrialization, international expositions served as ideal platforms for rival nations to showcase their advancements in design, architecture, science and technology, industry, and politics. Before the outbreak of World War II, countries competing for leadership on the world stage waged a different kind of war—with cultural achievements and propaganda—appealing to their own national strengths and versions of modernity in the struggle for power. World's Fairs on the Eve of War examines five fairs and expositions from across the globe—including three that were staged (Paris, 1937; Dusseldorf, 1937; and New York, 1939-40), and two that were in development before the war began but never executed (Tokyo, 1940; and Rome, 1942). This coauthored work considers representations of science and technology at world's fairs as influential cultural forces and at a critical moment in history, when tensions and ideological divisions between political regimes would soon lead to war.

Beyond the world fairs in London, Paris or Chicago, numerous smaller, ambitious exhibitions took place in provincial cities and towns worldwide. This volume takes a novel look at the exhibitionary cultures of the period 1840-1940. By examining the motivations, scope, and impact of lesser-known exhibitions in, for example, Australia, Japan, Brazil, as well as a number of European countries, the volume opens up new angles in the way the global phenomenon of a great exhibition can be examined through the prism of the regional.

Volare develops an analysis of the contemporary popular media-driven image of Italy. The high visibility of Italian fashion and industrial design, "Italian" settings for advertising, shelves of Italian foods in every supermarket, and select gentrified cuisines all demonstrate the way in which Italy has become a global pop icon. This book, written and designed to capture the energy of its subject, explores the phenomenon of Italy as icon, which extends through the transformations of popular culture now sweeping the world. The global culture, unified by the market and by transnational media corporations, has produced a series of stereotypes and semantic references that might be termed the "Italian dream, " which occupies a space on the continuum of spectacular images the world sees as the American dream, French allure, and classic English style. In turn, the Italian icon, freed of territorial boundaries linking it to the land it ostensibly depicts, influences not only the external view of Italians but Italians' own views of themselves. Italy has created a dream, which is dreamed by others, and it is necessary to realize the existence of this dream for it to become reality.