Charles Leavitt
I am Associate Professor of Italian and Film and Associate Director of the Center for Italian Studies at the University of Notre Dame. I am also a Research Fellow of the University of Reading, UK, and a Fellow of both the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
My first book, Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History was awarded the 2020 prize in Film and Media Studies by the American Association of Italian Studies. [https://utorontopress.com/9781487507107/] My research interests include modern and contemporary Italian literature and cinema, post-war Italian history, and the intersections between the Italian and African-American experience.
A fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy, I have received an Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Reading and a Kaneb Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Notre Dame.
Phone: 1-574-631-6886
Address: Charles Leavitt
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
University of Notre Dame
343 O'Shaughnessy Hall
Notre Dame, IN, USA 46556-5639
My first book, Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History was awarded the 2020 prize in Film and Media Studies by the American Association of Italian Studies. [https://utorontopress.com/9781487507107/] My research interests include modern and contemporary Italian literature and cinema, post-war Italian history, and the intersections between the Italian and African-American experience.
A fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy, I have received an Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Reading and a Kaneb Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Notre Dame.
Phone: 1-574-631-6886
Address: Charles Leavitt
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
University of Notre Dame
343 O'Shaughnessy Hall
Notre Dame, IN, USA 46556-5639
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Italian reception of German Neue Sachlichkeit in the 1920s and explores their role in the development of Italian Neorealism in the 1940s. I argue that, precisely because Italian critics approached the German critical category – and indeed all critical categorisation – with scepticism, they facilitated the more indiscriminate use in Italian of the term «neorealismo», which originated, at least in part, as a calque for the German «Neue Sachlichkeit», but which came eventually to constitute a distinct – and distinctly Italian – critical category. Focusing in particular on Giovanni Necco’s 1933 essay Neorealismo made in Germany, I argue that, in the Italian context, questions of classification and definition were deemed
peripheral to the critic’s task, meaning that references to «neorealismo», while customary, remained largely heuristic. As a result, Italian «neorealismo» was free gradually to shift and to expand towards its current definitions.
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Italian reception of German Neue Sachlichkeit in the 1920s and explores their role in the development of Italian Neorealism in the 1940s. I argue that, precisely because Italian critics approached the German critical category – and indeed all critical categorisation – with scepticism, they facilitated the more indiscriminate use in Italian of the term «neorealismo», which originated, at least in part, as a calque for the German «Neue Sachlichkeit», but which came eventually to constitute a distinct – and distinctly Italian – critical category. Focusing in particular on Giovanni Necco’s 1933 essay Neorealismo made in Germany, I argue that, in the Italian context, questions of classification and definition were deemed
peripheral to the critic’s task, meaning that references to «neorealismo», while customary, remained largely heuristic. As a result, Italian «neorealismo» was free gradually to shift and to expand towards its current definitions.