Moving Beyond Venice: Literary Landscapes of Movement in Northern Italy’s “Diffused City”
Literary Second Cities, 2017
This chapter leaves the lagoon-city of Venice behind to look at the network of ‘secondary’ cities... more This chapter leaves the lagoon-city of Venice behind to look at the network of ‘secondary’ cities on its mainland. For its rapid and scattered development, Venetian ‘citta diffusa’ has already been recognized as a perfect laboratory to explore postmodern cityscapes. Particularly, the chapter will focus on the ‘landscape of movement’ as a key structuring element of diffused urbanization and of its literary narration. The journey involves movement along the arterial route of the motorway connecting Milan and Venice, and analyses different case studies, from the 1989 novel by Gianfranco Bettin Qualcosa che brucia to Giorgio Falco’s 2009 collection L’ubicazione del bene, to propose these literary works as cognitive tools that contribute to the ‘readability’ of Italy’s north-eastern urban sprawl, even from a geographical perspective.
Il fumetto e la mappa: per una didattica creativa della cartografia
Una mappa può raccontare una storia? E una storia, o per meglio dire una narrazione scritta, può ... more Una mappa può raccontare una storia? E una storia, o per meglio dire una narrazione scritta, può orientare il lettore nella pagina e nel mondo come una mappa? Il rapporto fra narrativa e carte geografiche oggi è al centro di diversi dibattiti volti ad esplorare le potenzialità e le problematicità del legame fra il linguaggio apparentemente oggettivo della cartografia e il linguaggio soggettivo e pregnante del raccontare.
The still deeply rooted desire for totalizing monochromatic accounts that explain the map in term... more The still deeply rooted desire for totalizing monochromatic accounts that explain the map in terms of it being a socially produced symbolic object, a tool of power, a form derived from a particular epistemology of the gaze, or a masculinist representation, seem to me to miss the point of the post-structuralist turn: that is, that not only are maps multivocal, […] but so also must be our accounts of them.
J-Reading - Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography, 2015
This article suggests the use of comics, particularly of graphic novels, as valuable instructiona... more This article suggests the use of comics, particularly of graphic novels, as valuable instructional tools for teaching cartography. Of particular interest is the idea that comics can be used to develop students’ geographical competencies, their ability to think actively about cartographical issues, and their capacity to interact with “maps as mappings” (Dodge, Kitchin and Perkins, 2009). The theoretical references used to conduct the deep interdisciplinary proposal and analysis include: the growing field of literary cartography, recent post-representational theories in cartography, and the emerging field of “comic book geography” (Dittmer, 2014). The article reads comics as maps and analyzes their map-like features to demonstrate that both maps and comics ask the reader-user to be actively engaged to decipher, orient, and practice them. Proposing to read “maps as comics”, “maps of comics”, “maps and mappings in comics”, and “comics as maps and mappings”, the article suggests the poss...
Starting from the graphic novel Etenesh. L’odissea di una migrante [Etenesh. The odyssey of a mig... more Starting from the graphic novel Etenesh. L’odissea di una migrante [Etenesh. The odyssey of a migrant] by Paolo Castaldi (2011), the present contribution proposes to interpret the comic book as a ‘space of encounter’ between disparate subjectivities and as a ‘place of mediation’ between different cultural and geographical perspectives. The first part of the article aims to situate the analysis of Etenesh within the recent field of ‘comic book geographies’, paying particular attention to the encounter between comics, postcolonial, and geographical studies in the emerging debate around ‘postcolonial comics’. Furthermore, the graphic novel by Paolo Castaldi is proposed as an example of how comics could profitably enter contemporary ‘Italian postcolonial studies’. The second part will present the reasons why it is appropriate to embrace ‘interviews’ as methodological tools in postcolonial geographical research: on the one hand, I respond to the question about who is the interviewer, pre...
Starting from the recently emerged field of ‘comic book geography’ (Dittmer 2014), the article pr... more Starting from the recently emerged field of ‘comic book geography’ (Dittmer 2014), the article proposes ‘comic book cartography’ as a further research line to explore the intersections bewteen comics and cartography. The proposed transdisciplinary approach is based on the encounter between geography and geocriticism, comics studies and post-representational theories in cartography. Through a ‘carto-centred’ reading of both Italian and international case studies, the comic book is interpreted as a map inolving author and reader in an orientation practice.
Pandemic cartographies: a conversation on mappings, imaginings and emotions
Mobilities, 2021
ABSTRACT This paper is a response to the pervasive spread of both cartographic materials related ... more ABSTRACT This paper is a response to the pervasive spread of both cartographic materials related to the COVID-19 pandemic and critical commentaries about such materials. Written by four Italian map-scholars with different theoretical backgrounds but similar socio-cultural and emotional concerns, this paper emerged spontaneously, following the impulse to grasp the rapid movement of coronavirus cartographies, particularly online. Through conversations carried out during the lockdown, the authors collaboratively observed how both scientific and governmental, as well as existential and affective features of the pandemic have been informed by cartographic imaginings. This plurality of cartographic visuals and mapping practices, which appeared soon after the coronavirus outbreak, requires exponential research angles. Approaching the pandemic through and in the proximity of maps, mapping practices, map-like objects and creative cartographies, this paper aims to foreground the speculative, empirical and fast-moving expressions of the pandemic’s cartographic imagery.
Mozzi è comparsa nella raccolta di racconti dal titolo Sconfinare. Il nord-est che non c'è (Pavan... more Mozzi è comparsa nella raccolta di racconti dal titolo Sconfinare. Il nord-est che non c'è (Pavan e Bettin, 1999), in cui undici scrittori contemporanei cercano di riflettere, attraverso la letteratura, su un concetto e su un territorio, il "nord-est", dai confini quanto mai labili e sfuggenti.
Quartieri. Viaggio al centro delle periferie italiane
Striscia/ illustrazioni di @ Elena Mistrello, Giada Peterle, Mattia Moro, Alekos Reize, Giuseppe ... more Striscia/ illustrazioni di @ Elena Mistrello, Giada Peterle, Mattia Moro, Alekos Reize, Giuseppe Lo Bocchiaro
Refiguring Italian Cultural Quarters: 'Il Ghetto di Venezia. 500 anni di vita' (film by Emanuela Giordano, 2015) and 'Primavere e Autunni' (Graphic novel by Ciaj Rocchi and Matteo Demonte, 2015)
This piece briefly summarizes the contents of part of a University course in cultural geography h... more This piece briefly summarizes the contents of part of a University course in cultural geography held at the University of Padua in the 2015/16 academic year, with the aim of suggesting a possible didactical contextualization for two recent creative works devoted to very different examples of “cultural quarters” in Italy (the Venetian Jewish quarter and so-called “Milan’s Chinatown”). The very first notion of comparing the docufilm Il Ghetto di Venezia. 500 anni di vita [The Venice Ghetto. 500 Years of Life] (2015) and the graphic novel Primavere e Autunni [Springs and Autumns] (2015) originated from a purely formal appreciation of them. The works, in fact, both present pieces of creative cartography of the cultural quarter, which have particularly stimulated our imaginations as cultural geographers (Figs 1 and 2). Subsequently, a deeper analysis of the complex implications of these informed and carefully arranged creative works led us to consider them precious resources for the teaching of cultural geography. Creative works became crucial given that we built upon them educational projects that refer to complex, transcalar, and multidimensional relations between cultural processes and spaces. In the initial part of this article, therefore, we draw on recent international and Italian literature on ethnic spatial concentration to contextualize the two works presented here.
Refiguring Italian Cultural Quarters: "Il Ghetto di Venezia. 500 anni di vita" [The Venice Ghetto. 500 Years of Life] (Film by Emanuela Giordano, 2015) and "Primavere e Autunni" [Springs and Autumns] (Graphic Novel by Ciaj Rocchi and Matteo Demonte, 2015)
This piece briefly summarizes the contents of part of a University course in cultural geography h... more This piece briefly summarizes the contents of part of a University course in cultural geography held at the University of Padua in the 2015/16 academic year, with the aim of suggesting a possible didactical contextualization for two recent creative works devoted to very different examples of “cultural quarters” in Italy (the Venetian Jewish quarter and so-called “Milan’s Chinatown”). The very first notion of comparing the docufilm Il Ghetto di Venezia. 500 anni di vita [The Venice Ghetto. 500 Years of Life] (2015) and the graphic novel Primavere e Autunni [Springs and Autumns] (2015) originated from a purely formal appreciation of them. The works, in fact, both present pieces of creative cartography of the cultural quarter, which have particularly stimulated our imaginations as cultural geographers (Figs 1 and 2). Subsequently, a deeper analysis of the complex implications of these informed and carefully arranged creative works led us to consider them precious resources for the teac...
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