Derek Duncan's timely study is the first book in English to examine constructions of male homosexuality in Italian literature. In admirably clear and elegant prose, Duncan analyzes texts ranging from the 1890s through the 1990s. He brings canonical authors like D'Annunzio and Pasolini together with under-appreciated writers like Comisso, and also looks at less conventionally literary genres. Duncan takes on the thorny theoretical issues surrounding questions of gay identity and also provides a sound historical context for his discussion of how Italian narrative sheds light on Italian homosexuality and on the broader issues attending contemporary sexuality, including complicating factors such as race. While the early texts considered were produced at a historical moment when 'homosexuality' as a culturally meaningful entity had yet to crystallize, recent autobiographies show the authors reflecting explicitly on questions of gay identity and what it means to be a homosexual male in present-day Italy. In charting the emergence of the homosexual in twentieth-century Italy, however, Duncan's focus is less on questions of identity than on the meaning attributed to sex between men in the broader cultural context. His book is a significant contribution to Italian literary criticism and to gender, gay, and cultural studies.

Derek Duncan's timely study is the first book in English to examine constructions of male homosexuality in Italian literature. In admirably clear and elegant prose, Duncan analyzes texts ranging from the 1890s through the 1990s. He brings canonical authors like D'Annunzio and Pasolini together with under-appreciated writers like Comisso, and also looks at less conventionally literary genres. Duncan takes on the thorny theoretical issues surrounding questions of gay identity and also provides a sound historical context for his discussion of how Italian narrative sheds light on Italian homosexuality and on the broader issues attending contemporary sexuality, including complicating factors such as race. While the early texts considered were produced at a historical moment when 'homosexuality' as a culturally meaningful entity had yet to crystallize, recent autobiographies show the authors reflecting explicitly on questions of gay identity and what it means to be a homosexual male in present-day Italy. In charting the emergence of the homosexual in twentieth-century Italy, however, Duncan's focus is less on questions of identity than on the meaning attributed to sex between men in the broader cultural context. His book is a significant contribution to Italian literary criticism and to gender, gay, and cultural studies.

The 1930s were one of the most important decades in defining the history of the twentieth century. It saw the rise of right-wing nationalism, the challenge to established democracies and the full force of imperialist aggression. Cultural Encounters makes an important contribution to our understanding of the ideological and cultural forces which were active in defining notions of national identity in the 1930s. By examining the work of writers and journalists from a range of European countries who used the medium of travel writing to articulate perceptions of their own and other cultures, the book gives a comprehensive account of the complex intellectual climate of the 1930s.

These timely reconsiderations of European Travel writing from the 1930s reassert the oppositional primacy of subjective translations and disavow hermetic notions that travel should or even can be divorced from socio-political or cultural contexts. * Journeys Cultural Encounters offers a rich, varied and yet impressively coherent collection of essays on the meanings and practices of travel writing in 1930s Europe. Carefully building on theoretical interest in travel writing of recent years, the essays follow written journeys to Graham Greene's Liberia and Lorca's Cuba, to Fascist Italy's Greece and France's Indochina, and many more. Throughout, texts and authors are shown to be alive with hybrid constructions of self and of ideological, national and colonial identity. What is more, the book provides compelling reasons for seeing 1930s travel writing as being of particular fascination, lying on a cusp between the Depression, totalitarianism, colonialism and modernism, and the seeds of mass tourism, post-colonialism and globalization.* Re-reading German literature since 1945, Robert Gordon, Cambridge University The 1930s were one of the most important decades in defining the history of the twentieth century. It saw the rise of right-wing nationalism, the challenge to established democracies and the full force of imperialist aggression. Cultural Encounters makes an important contribution to our understanding of the ideological and cultural forces which were active in defining notions of national identity in the 1930s. By examining the work of writers and journalists from a range of European countries who used the medium of travel writing to articulate perceptions of their own and other cultures, the book gives a comprehensive account of the complex intellectual climate of the 1930s. Charles Burdett is lecturer in Italian at the University of Bristol and co-editor of European Memories of the Second World War (1999). He is currently working on representations of Africa in fascist Italy. Derek Duncan is lecturer in Italian at the University of Bristol. He has published extensively on twentieth century Italian literature with particular reference to questions of gender and sexuality.

An Open Access edition of this book will be available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. In a world increasingly defined by the transnational and translingual, and by the pressures of globalization, it has become difficult to study culture as primarily a national phenomenon. A Handbook offers students across Modern Languages an introduction to the kind of methodological questions they need to look at culture transnationally. Each of the short essays takes a key concept in cultural study and suggests how it might be used to explore and illuminate some aspect of identity, mobility, translation, and cultural exchange across borders. The authors range over different language areas and their wide chronological reach provides broad coverage, as well as a flexible and practical methodology for studying cultures in a transnational framework. The essays show that an inclusive, transnational vision and practice of Modern Languages is central to understanding human interaction in an inclusive, globalized society. A Handbook stands as an effective and necessary theoretical and thematically diverse glossary and companion to the 'national' volumes in the series.

Scholars of Italian colonialism have been reluctant to acknowledge the influence that local populations and their culture had on Italians and on the ways in which they settled and administered the territories they occupied. This tendency has reinforced the notion that the European domination of Africa was total both culturally and politically. Yet there is evidence to suggest that in every sphere of colonial life, the relationship between colonizers and colonized was more dynamic and complex than has been assumed. The essays in this interdisciplinary volume address the gap in Italian colonial/post-colonial studies by examining how different notions of 'hybridity' help illuminate the specific nature and circumstances of the Italian colonial and postcolonial condition. Some of the contributors see hybridity as a positive challenge to fixed categorizations. Others contend that its hasty deployment promotes a lack of attention to local difference. Foregrounding specific instances of cultural practice across a range of media from literature to oral testimony and the internet, this volume represents a new stage in the study of Italy's colonial past and its postcolonial afterlife.

Until relatively recently, the Italian colonial experience was largely regarded as an incidental aspect of Italy's past. Studies of liberal Italy and even fascism underplayed both the significance of the state's colonial ambition and its broader cultural impact. In the post-war era, even less consideration has been given to how this colonial legacy still affects Italy and the countries it occupied and colonized. This book arises out of a major two-day international conference held at the Italian Cultural Institute in London in December 2001. The essays investigate the ways in which the Italian colonial experience continues to be relevant even after the end of empire. They explore the ways in which the memories of Italy's colonial past have been crafted to accommodate the needs of the present and the extent to which forgetting colonialism became an integral part of Italian culture and national identity. These issues have come into sharper relief of late as labour migration to Italy has led to new social and cultural encounters within Italy. The essays additionally investigate the colonial legacy from the perspective of Italy's former colonies, highlighting the enduring social, cultural and political ramifications of the colonial relationship. This interdisciplinary collection contains contributions from international experts in the fields of history, cultural studies (literature and film), politics and sociology.