- Tallahassee, Florida, United States
Silvia Valisa
Florida State University, Modern Languages and Linguistics, Faculty Member
- My research is focused on the theories and practices of modernity in Italian culture between the 19th and 20th centur... moreMy research is focused on the theories and practices of modernity in Italian culture between the 19th and 20th century. I am interested in the history and theory of the novel, in the history of text technologies, in gender theory and visual studies (photography and cinema).
My first book "Gender, Narrative and Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel" (University of Toronto Press, 2014) explores the notion of fictional character in the Italian novel, and discusses novels' gendering processes as related to narrative paradigms and trajectories, rather than to the characters' referential dimension.
My second project, "News, Notes and Novels: the Sonzogno Stabilimento in post-Unification Italy" explores the history of one of the most important post-unification publishing firms in Italy, Milan-based Sonzogno. "News, Notes and Novels" will consist both of a book monograph and of a digital repository.edit
Questa è l'Appendice all'articolo "Cosa scrivevano le donne di fine Ottocento? Il contributo italiano alla Woman’s Building Library della World Fair di Chicago (1893)" pubblicato in gender/sexuality/Italy, 5 (2018). Per un'introduzione... more
Questa è l'Appendice all'articolo "Cosa scrivevano le donne di fine Ottocento? Il contributo italiano alla Woman’s Building Library della World Fair di Chicago (1893)" pubblicato in gender/sexuality/Italy, 5 (2018).
Per un'introduzione alla genesi ed alle categorie della Lista, si veda l'articolo.
Per un'introduzione alla genesi ed alle categorie della Lista, si veda l'articolo.
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Combining close textual readings with a broad theoretical perspective, Gender, Narrative, and Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel is a study of the ways in which gender shapes the principal characters and narratives of seven important... more
Combining close textual readings with a broad theoretical perspective, Gender, Narrative, and Dissonance in the Modern Italian Novel is a study of the ways in which gender shapes the principal characters and narratives of seven important Italian novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (1827) to Elsa Morante’s Aracoeli (1982).
Silvia Valisa’s innovative approach focuses on the tensions between the characters and the gender ideologies which surround them, and the ways in which this dissonance exposes the ideological and epistemological structures of the modern novel. A challenging account of the intersection between gender, narrative, and epistemology that draws on the work of Georg Lukács, Barbara Spackman, and Teresa de Lauretis, this volume offers an intriguing new approach to investigating the nature of fiction.
Silvia Valisa in an assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University.
Silvia Valisa’s innovative approach focuses on the tensions between the characters and the gender ideologies which surround them, and the ways in which this dissonance exposes the ideological and epistemological structures of the modern novel. A challenging account of the intersection between gender, narrative, and epistemology that draws on the work of Georg Lukács, Barbara Spackman, and Teresa de Lauretis, this volume offers an intriguing new approach to investigating the nature of fiction.
Silvia Valisa in an assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University.
Research Interests:
Florida State University Libraries presents the digitization of Italian newspaper Il secolo, published by Sonzogno from 1866 through 1925. The goal is to provide access to an important primary source for scholars and readers interested... more
Florida State University Libraries presents the digitization of Italian newspaper Il secolo, published by Sonzogno from 1866 through 1925.
The goal is to provide access to an important primary source for scholars and readers interested in the political, economic, and cultural life in Italy.
The current selection consists of the years 1866-67 and 1877-1882, in addition to nine months from the year 1885. By the end of 2018 all years between 1866 and 1882 will be accessible.
This is a project conducted in collaboration with the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense of Milan.
The goal is to provide access to an important primary source for scholars and readers interested in the political, economic, and cultural life in Italy.
The current selection consists of the years 1866-67 and 1877-1882, in addition to nine months from the year 1885. By the end of 2018 all years between 1866 and 1882 will be accessible.
This is a project conducted in collaboration with the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense of Milan.
Research Interests:
This is a sample, completed in 2013, of a digital catalog of Italian publishing house Sonzogno. No actual texts are provided - only the complete metadata of each book and periodical published by Sonzogno in 1885. When available, the book... more
This is a sample, completed in 2013, of a digital catalog of Italian publishing house Sonzogno.
No actual texts are provided - only the complete metadata of each book and periodical published by Sonzogno in 1885. When available, the book series is indicated, as are links to fully digitized versions of the text.
The sample was obtained by harvesting the catalogs of 8 Italian and US libraries, and by checking each record against CLIO (the Catalogo Italiano dei Libri dell'Ottocento). This allowed us to exceed all previous sources in quantity of records and accuracy of data. We hope.
Authors: Silvia Valisa, Sanghee Oh, and Wonchan Choi
No actual texts are provided - only the complete metadata of each book and periodical published by Sonzogno in 1885. When available, the book series is indicated, as are links to fully digitized versions of the text.
The sample was obtained by harvesting the catalogs of 8 Italian and US libraries, and by checking each record against CLIO (the Catalogo Italiano dei Libri dell'Ottocento). This allowed us to exceed all previous sources in quantity of records and accuracy of data. We hope.
Authors: Silvia Valisa, Sanghee Oh, and Wonchan Choi
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Questo saggio presenta la ricostruzione della lista di libri inviati dall’Italia alla Woman’s Building Library della Fiera Mondiale di Chicago del 1893. I 222 testi, radunati nel corso di pochi mesi da Alice Howard Cady e Fanny Zampini... more
Questo saggio presenta la ricostruzione della lista di libri inviati dall’Italia alla Woman’s Building Library della Fiera Mondiale di Chicago del 1893. I 222 testi, radunati nel corso di pochi mesi da Alice Howard Cady e Fanny Zampini Salazar, diventarono parte della prima biblioteca pubblica al mondo interamente dedicata alla scrittura al femminile. In quanto tali, costituiscono una testimonianza eccezionale della partecipazione delle donne italiane alla letteratura ed alle scienze mondiali. Discutendo le tipologie e i generi dei testi, questo saggio identifica una collezione eterogenea di opere e di autrici, e riflette sulle limitazioni logistiche ed ideologiche che condizionarono l’attività delle scrittrici italiane nel secondo Ottocento. Nella conclusione, discute come questa raccolta, proprio a causa delle scelte non istituzionali e del “caos” qualitativo che la caratterizzano, sia da considerare estremamente rappresentativa della creatività al femminile del secondo Ottocento italiano.
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This essay considers the ending of Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna (1906) in terms of its much-discussed fictionalization of autobiographical material. It then highlights the narrative and literary (dis)continuity that exists between the... more
This essay considers the ending of Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna (1906) in terms of its much-discussed fictionalization of autobiographical material. It then highlights the narrative and literary (dis)continuity that exists between the ending and the book that followed, Il passaggio (1919). Arguing that we can read the movement from Una donna to Il passaggio in terms of a hermeneutical shift from suspicion, in Ricoeur’s terms, to a reparative position, to use Sedgwick’s phrase, this essay envisions as fundamental to Aleramo the possibilities inscribed in narrative, the power to move (and remove) one’s body from the materiality assigned to women by patriarchy, and to reinsert it within a citational economy of trust in the written word and the written word’s surprises.
Keywords: Sibilla Aleramo, Il passaggio, Una donna, gender and sexuality, early-twentieth century, Italian novel, novel and autobiography, hermeneutics of suspicion, paranoid and reparative reading, Paul Ricoeur, Eve K. Sedgwick
Italian Culture, April 2017
Keywords: Sibilla Aleramo, Il passaggio, Una donna, gender and sexuality, early-twentieth century, Italian novel, novel and autobiography, hermeneutics of suspicion, paranoid and reparative reading, Paul Ricoeur, Eve K. Sedgwick
Italian Culture, April 2017
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Page 1. From the SelectedWorks of Silvia Valisa January 2008 Gendered Quests: Analysis, Revelation and the ... Page 2. Silvia Valisa, University of California, Berkeley This is a 4-pages excerpt of an article published in The Italianist,... more
Page 1. From the SelectedWorks of Silvia Valisa January 2008 Gendered Quests: Analysis, Revelation and the ... Page 2. Silvia Valisa, University of California, Berkeley This is a 4-pages excerpt of an article published in The Italianist, 2008. ...
... other texts by different authors that had appeared in Il Pungolo della domenica, and a 'fiore vizzo'. This wilted flower is a reference to an ... I am deeply grateful to Angela Matilde Capodivacca, Ipek A. Celik and... more
... other texts by different authors that had appeared in Il Pungolo della domenica, and a 'fiore vizzo'. This wilted flower is a reference to an ... I am deeply grateful to Angela Matilde Capodivacca, Ipek A. Celik and Mark Pietralunga for reading earlier versions of this essay. ...
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This poster reports on a work-in progress project of building a digital library for metadata records of books published by Sonzogno between 1800 and 1943. Metadata records from seven major libraries that have Sonzogno collections were... more
This poster reports on a work-in progress project of building a digital library for metadata records of books published by Sonzogno between 1800 and 1943. Metadata records from seven major libraries that have Sonzogno collections were harvested and used for building a unified collection for this project. Omeka, open-source software for building digital libraries, was used to host, manage, and provide the public with access to the collection. Currently, a sample set of the metadata of books published in 1885 is available from the digital library (http://sonzogno.cci.fsu.edu/). This poster reports on the current status of the project, explaining the process and challenges associated with building a digital library of the metadata collection (metadata harvesting and crosswalk) using Omeka.
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Book Review of Mitchell, Katharine. "Italian Women Writers: Gender and Everyday Life in Fiction and Journalism 1870-1910". Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014
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Book Review of Di Blasi, Gragnolati and Holzhey, "The Scandal of Contradiction: Pasolini's Multistable Subjectivities, Traditions, Geographies". Vienna: Turia+Kant 2012.
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Book Review of Amberson, Deborah: "Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature. Modernist Embodiment in Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi and Carlo Emilio Gadda." Oxford: Legenda, 2012.... more
Book Review of Amberson, Deborah: "Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature. Modernist Embodiment in Italo Svevo, Federigo Tozzi and Carlo Emilio Gadda." Oxford: Legenda, 2012.
http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/qua/article/view/19895/16446
http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/qua/article/view/19895/16446
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... quoted from and inspired by DH Lawrence, who famously wrote an introduction to La madre). Annalisa Lilliu offers a compelling comparatist and historical study of endogamous relationships (love stories and/or marriages between cousins... more
... quoted from and inspired by DH Lawrence, who famously wrote an introduction to La madre). Annalisa Lilliu offers a compelling comparatist and historical study of endogamous relationships (love stories and/or marriages between cousins in particular) in Grazia Deledda and ...
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This powerpoint accompanied a 2013 presentation devoted to "The Industrial Origins of Text-Image Intermediality: Sonzogno's "Il secolo" in the 1860s-1880s." It was delivered in January 2013 at the MLS conference in Boston in a panel... more
This powerpoint accompanied a 2013 presentation devoted to "The Industrial Origins of Text-Image Intermediality: Sonzogno's "Il secolo" in the 1860s-1880s." It was delivered in January 2013 at the MLS conference in Boston in a panel devoted to Intermediality in Italian Modern Culture.
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Questo saggio presenta la ricostruzione della lista di libri inviati dall’Italia alla Woman’s Building Library della Fiera Mondiale di Chicago del 1893. I 222 testi, radunati nel corso di pochi mesi da Alice Howard Cady e Fanny Zampini... more
Questo saggio presenta la ricostruzione della lista di libri inviati dall’Italia alla Woman’s Building Library della Fiera Mondiale di Chicago del 1893. I 222 testi, radunati nel corso di pochi mesi da Alice Howard Cady e Fanny Zampini Salazar, diventarono parte della prima biblioteca pubblica al mondo interamente dedicata alla scrittura al femminile. In quanto tali, costituiscono una testimonianza eccezionale della partecipazione delle donne italiane alla letteratura ed alle scienze mondiali. Discutendo le tipologie e i generi dei testi, questo saggio identifica una collezione eterogenea di opere e di autrici, e riflette sulle limitazioni logistiche ed ideologiche che condizionarono l’attività delle scrittrici italiane nel secondo Ottocento. Nella conclusione, discute come questa raccolta, proprio a causa delle scelte non istituzionali e del “caos” qualitativo che la caratterizzano, sia da considerare estremamente rappresentativa della creatività al femminile del secondo Ottocento italiano.
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Research Interests:
This essay considers the ending of Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna (1906) in terms of its much-discussed fictionalization of autobiographical material. It then highlights the narrative and literary (dis)continuity that exists between the... more
This essay considers the ending of Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna (1906) in terms of its much-discussed fictionalization of autobiographical material. It then highlights the narrative and literary (dis)continuity that exists between the ending and the book that followed, Il passaggio (1919). Arguing that we can read the movement from Una donna to Il passaggio in terms of a hermeneutical shift from suspicion, in Ricoeur’s terms, to a reparative position, to use Sedgwick’s phrase, this essay envisions as fundamental to Aleramo the possibilities inscribed in narrative, the power to move (and remove) one’s body [corpo] from the materiality assigned to women by patriarchy, and to reinsert it within a citational economy of trust in the written word [corpus] and the written word’s surprises.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT This poster reports on a work-in progress project of building a digital library for metadata records of books published by Sonzogno between 1800 and 1943. Metadata records from seven major libraries that have Sonzogno collections... more
ABSTRACT This poster reports on a work-in progress project of building a digital library for metadata records of books published by Sonzogno between 1800 and 1943. Metadata records from seven major libraries that have Sonzogno collections were harvested and used for building a unified collection for this project. Omeka, open-source software for building digital libraries, was used to host, manage, and provide the public with access to the collection. Currently, a sample set of the metadata of books published in 1885 is available from the digital library (http://sonzogno.cci.fsu.edu/). This poster reports on the current status of the project, explaining the process and challenges associated with building a digital library of the metadata collection (metadata harvesting and crosswalk) using Omeka.
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eterna, ma nella caducità dell’istante. E l’uomo sta esattamente nel fra tra storia e vita. È lì che opera e pratica l’autentica persuasione. Di conseguenza, l’idea di autocontraddizione presente nel saggio di Yvonne Hütter, «[l]a... more
eterna, ma nella caducità dell’istante. E l’uomo sta esattamente nel fra tra storia e vita. È lì che opera e pratica l’autentica persuasione. Di conseguenza, l’idea di autocontraddizione presente nel saggio di Yvonne Hütter, «[l]a retorica filosofica di Michelstaedter e la sua autodistruzione», è sicuramente un concetto forte, ma centrale per la filosofia della persuasione. La modalità con cui Michelstaedter ci parla di vita persuasa tende senz’altro «ai paradossi e alle incoerenze» (183), ma questa tensione è frutto di una potenza imprevedibile del reale, per cui difficilmente definibile e inquadrabile nel grande sistema della Storia e della Verità. La persuasione, infatti, sta nel lampeggiare storico degli individui singoli. E da qui, da questa inafferrabilità di fondo e da questa mancanza di relazione, che vive e opera realmente la persuasione. Perciò è nella potenza—e non nel potere—che si è pienamente liberi. Liberi anche di «autocontraddirsi». In tal senso la filosofia michels...
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Alessia Belli and Astrid Estuardo Flaction, Les striges en Italie du Nord: Édition critique et commentaire des traités de démonologie et sorcellerie de Girolamo Visconti (Milan, c. 1460) et de Bernard Rategno (Côme, c. 1510). (Micrologus Library 97.) Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2019. ...more